Russian air strikes and a ground assault hit Ukraine on February 24, 2022, along three lines: from Belarus toward Kyiv, from Crimea in the south, and from the Donbas toward Kharkiv. Vladimir Putin had announced it himself in a televised address, calling it a “special military operation.”
His stated aim was to “demilitarise and denazify” Ukraine. He said the point was to support the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, and he claimed without basis that Kyiv’s government was made up of neo-Nazis committing genocide against Russians in the Donbas. The day before the attack, Putin and other Russian officials were still denying any plan to invade.
The road to war
The groundwork went back years. Russian soldiers without insignia took Crimea in early 2014, and Moscow annexed it in March after a referendum held under occupation that was widely disputed. The war in Donbas began that April. Troops massed near the border in March and April 2021 and again from October. In July 2021 Putin published an essay calling Ukraine “historically Russian lands.” Observers from the OSCE counted more than 90,000 ceasefire violations in 2021, most in Russian-controlled territory.
In December, Moscow issued an ultimatum to the West. It demanded that NATO end its activity in Eastern European member states and bar Ukraine from ever joining. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg answered that “Russia has no veto.” Emmanuel Macron and Olaf Scholz both met Putin in February 2022 to talk him out of an invasion. Scholz said Putin told him Ukraine should not be an independent state.
Three days before the invasion, on February 21, Putin announced recognition of the two breakaway republics and sent troops into the Donbas, calling it a “peacekeeping mission.” That day he also said “Modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia.” The Federation Council voted unanimously to authorise force outside Russia.
What followed
Russia’s plan, as described in accounts of the invasion, called for beating Ukraine within ten days and capturing or killing its government. It failed. By April 2022 Ukraine had pushed back the northern arm of the attack and kept Kyiv. The fighting turned into a conventional war in the south and east, and months later Russia unilaterally declared that it had annexed four Ukrainian oblasts.
Ukraine imposed martial law, ordered a general mobilisation and cut diplomatic ties with Russia.
The UN General Assembly passed a resolution demanding a full Russian withdrawal. The International Court of Justice ordered Russia to stop military operations, and the Council of Europe expelled it. Many countries imposed sanctions on Russia and Belarus. Inside Russia, anti-war protesters faced mass arrests and tighter censorship.
The International Criminal Court opened an investigation into war crimes, crimes against humanity, the abduction of Ukrainian children and genocide, and issued arrest warrants for Putin and other Russian officials.
In February 2024, Putin sat down with American commentator Tucker Carlson, his first interview with a Western journalist since the invasion began. Historians later pointed to many false claims in what he said.
