Russo-Ukrainian war (2022–present)

Based on Wikipedia: Russo-Ukrainian war (2022–present)

On a cold February morning in 2022, Vladimir Putin went on television and told the world a lie. He called it a "special military operation." Within minutes, missiles began falling on Ukrainian cities, and Europe found itself facing its deadliest conflict since the Second World War.

The invasion that followed has killed hundreds of thousands of soldiers on both sides. Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have died. Nearly eight million Ukrainians have been forced from their homes but remain in their country, while another six to seven million have fled abroad entirely. This exodus represents the largest refugee crisis Europe has seen since 1945.

As of December 2025, Russian forces occupy almost one-fifth of Ukraine's territory.

The Lies That Launched a War

Putin's justifications for the invasion were extraordinary in their dishonesty. He claimed that Ukraine's government consisted of neo-Nazis—a remarkable accusation to level at a country whose president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is Jewish. Putin alleged that these supposed Nazis were committing genocide against Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine. No credible evidence supported this claim.

He said Russia's goal was to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine. In practice, this meant launching airstrikes on apartment buildings, maternity hospitals, and train stations full of fleeing civilians.

Perhaps most tellingly, Putin questioned whether Ukraine had any right to exist as an independent nation at all. This wasn't a border dispute or a security concern. It was an attempt to erase a country of forty-one million people from the map.

A Promise Made and Broken

To understand why this invasion shocked the world, you need to understand what Russia had promised.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine found itself in possession of the world's third-largest nuclear arsenal. These weren't weapons Ukraine had built—they were Soviet missiles that happened to be stationed on Ukrainian soil. But possession, as they say, is nine-tenths of the law.

Ukraine faced a choice. It could keep the nuclear weapons and become an instant nuclear power. Or it could give them up in exchange for something else: security guarantees.

In 1994, Ukraine chose to give up the weapons. Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom signed what became known as the Budapest Memorandum. In it, they promised to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and borders. Russia made this promise. Russia signed this document.

Twenty years later, Russia would break it completely.

The Rehearsal: Crimea and the Donbas

The 2022 invasion wasn't Russia's first attack on Ukraine. It was the culmination of eight years of aggression that began in 2014.

That year, Ukrainians took to the streets in protests known as Euromaidan. The cause was simple: Ukraine's parliament had approved moving closer to the European Union, but President Viktor Yanukovych—under pressure from Moscow—suddenly reversed course and chose alignment with Russia instead.

The protests grew massive. The government responded with violence. Almost one hundred protesters were killed, most of them shot by police snipers. Yanukovych eventually fled the country in secret, and Ukraine's parliament voted to remove him.

Russia saw an opportunity.

On February 27, 2014, soldiers without insignia began appearing in Crimea, a Ukrainian peninsula that juts into the Black Sea. These were Russian troops, though Moscow initially denied it. They surrounded Ukrainian military bases. Within weeks, Russia held a hastily organized referendum—widely condemned as fraudulent—and announced that Crimea was now Russian territory.

Several scholars have compared this annexation to Nazi Germany's absorption of Austria in 1938: a larger power swallowing a neighbor through manufactured consent and military intimidation.

But Crimea was only the beginning. Pro-Russian groups—covertly funded and organized by Moscow—seized buildings in the eastern Ukrainian cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. They proclaimed independent "people's republics." Russia supplied them with troops, tanks, and artillery while denying any involvement.

The war in the Donbas region had begun. It would simmer for eight years, killing over fourteen thousand people, before exploding into the full-scale invasion of 2022.

The Myth of NATO Expansion

Russia claims it invaded Ukraine because of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the military alliance that includes the United States, Canada, and most of Europe. According to Moscow, NATO's expansion toward Russia's borders left it no choice but to act.

This explanation collapses under scrutiny.

First, the facts: When Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014, Ukraine was officially neutral. It was not seeking NATO membership. It was only after Russia seized Crimea and invaded the Donbas that Ukraine's parliament voted to pursue joining the alliance. Russia's aggression created the very situation Moscow claimed to fear.

Second, by 2022, Ukraine was further from NATO membership than it had been in years. Several NATO members would likely have vetoed Ukraine joining. Russia's occupation of Crimea and the Donbas had, paradoxically, already blocked Ukraine's path to membership, since NATO doesn't accept countries with ongoing territorial disputes.

Third, Russia had explicitly agreed—multiple times—that countries had the right to choose their own security arrangements. In 1999, Russia signed the Charter for European Security, affirming that every nation could "choose or change its security arrangements" and join military alliances. In 2005, Putin himself said that if Ukraine wanted to join NATO, "we will respect their choice."

The NATO explanation was a pretext, not a cause.

What Russia Actually Wanted

If not NATO, then what?

The answer lies in something Putin wrote in July 2021, seven months before the invasion. In an essay titled "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians," Putin called Ukraine "historically Russian lands" and claimed there was "no historical basis" for Ukrainians being a separate nation from Russians.

This wasn't a security concern. It was an ideology—one that denied Ukraine's right to exist.

Putin began invoking the concept of "Novorossiya," or "New Russia," a term from the Russian Empire that covered much of southern Ukraine. The message was clear: these lands belonged to Russia, and Russia intended to take them back.

There were economic motives too. Ukraine sits on enormous mineral wealth. The Donbas region contains significant lithium deposits—a metal essential for the batteries that power electric vehicles and smartphones. Ukraine's grain production helps feed the world. A Russian general confirmed in 2022 that seizing Ukrainian lithium was indeed a goal of the invasion.

One Canadian think tank estimated that Russia seized energy reserves, metals, and minerals worth at least twelve trillion dollars in the territories it occupied. Ukraine's total raw material reserves may exceed twenty-six trillion dollars.

The Invasion Begins

In late 2021, Russia began massing troops near Ukraine's borders. Western intelligence agencies warned that an invasion was imminent. Russia denied it, calling the buildup mere "military exercises."

The denials continued until the day before the attack.

On February 21, 2022, Putin announced that Russia recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk "people's republics" as independent states. The next day, Russian troops entered these territories as supposed "peacekeepers."

Then came February 24.

The invasion struck from three directions simultaneously. From the north, Russian forces poured out of Belarus toward Kyiv, Ukraine's capital. From the south, they advanced from Crimea. From the east, they pushed toward Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city.

Russia's plan, later revealed by intelligence assessments, was breathtaking in its arrogance. Moscow expected to defeat Ukraine within ten days. Russian forces would capture or kill the Ukrainian government, establish "filtration camps" for the population, execute people who had participated in the 2014 protests, and annex the country.

They believed they could take Kyiv in three days.

The Resistance

Ukraine did not fall in three days. It did not fall in ten days. It has not fallen at all.

The Ukrainian military fought back with a ferocity that stunned Russia and the world. Russian forces advancing on Kyiv encountered fierce resistance and logistical nightmares. Their supply lines stretched thin. Tanks ran out of fuel. Soldiers ran out of food. By April 2022, Russia had withdrawn from the north entirely, abandoning its attempt to capture the capital.

What they left behind was horror.

In the town of Bucha, outside Kyiv, investigators found evidence of mass executions. Civilians had been shot in the streets, in their homes, with their hands bound. The Bucha massacre became a symbol of Russian atrocities in the war.

Russia shifted its focus to the east and south. The city of Mariupol endured a brutal siege before falling in May 2022. Much of the city was reduced to rubble. A maternity hospital was bombed. A theater clearly marked with the word "children" in giant letters visible from the air was destroyed, with hundreds of civilians sheltering inside.

Throughout 2022, Russia launched missiles at civilian targets across Ukraine, including strikes on power plants and heating infrastructure timed for the coldest months of winter. The goal was clear: freeze the civilian population into submission.

It didn't work.

Ukraine Strikes Back

In the fall of 2022, Ukraine launched counteroffensives that recaptured significant territory. In September, Ukrainian forces liberated most of Kharkiv Oblast in a lightning campaign that sent Russian troops fleeing. In November, Ukraine retook the city of Kherson—the only regional capital Russia had managed to capture—along with all territory west of the Dnipro River.

Russia responded by illegally annexing four Ukrainian provinces it only partially controlled. The annexation was recognized by virtually no one outside Russia.

In August 2024, Ukraine did something unexpected: it invaded Russia. Ukrainian forces crossed into Russia's Kursk Oblast, seizing territory in the country that had attacked them. It was the first time a foreign military had held Russian soil since World War II.

Russia, struggling to respond, brought in an unusual ally: North Korean soldiers. Thousands of troops from one of the world's most isolated nations were deployed to help Russia fight in its own territory—a measure of how badly the war has strained Russian resources.

The World Responds

The invasion triggered the most unified international response to aggression in decades.

The United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution condemning the invasion and demanding Russia withdraw. The vote wasn't close: 141 countries in favor, only five opposed.

The International Court of Justice—the highest court of the United Nations—ordered Russia to immediately halt military operations. Russia ignored the order.

The Council of Europe expelled Russia. This body, distinct from the European Union, promotes human rights across the continent. Russia had been a member since 1996.

Dozens of countries imposed sanctions on Russia and its ally Belarus. The sanctions targeted Russian banks, oligarchs, and entire sectors of the economy. Western companies fled Russia. The ruble collapsed, though it later partially recovered.

Most significantly, the West began supplying Ukraine with weapons. What started as defensive equipment—anti-tank missiles, anti-aircraft systems—gradually escalated to include artillery, drones, armored vehicles, and eventually tanks and long-range missiles. The United States alone has provided over fifty billion dollars in military aid.

The International Criminal Court opened investigations into crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide. It issued arrest warrants for Putin and five other Russian officials. If Putin sets foot in any of the court's 124 member countries, he is theoretically subject to arrest—though whether any country would actually detain him remains untested.

The Human Cost

Numbers struggle to capture what this war has meant for those caught in it.

Hundreds of thousands of soldiers have been killed or wounded on both sides. The exact figures are disputed and likely unknowable, but the scale is staggering—casualties that dwarf any European conflict in living memory.

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians have died. Many were killed in Russian attacks. Others died from lack of medical care, heat, or food in besieged cities.

The United Nations reports that Russia is committing severe human rights violations in occupied territories. There are documented cases of torture, arbitrary detention, and forced deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia—a practice the International Criminal Court has specifically cited in its case against Putin.

The refugee crisis has reshaped Europe. Poland alone has taken in millions of Ukrainians. Germany, the Czech Republic, and other countries have absorbed hundreds of thousands more. The influx has strained resources but also demonstrated remarkable solidarity.

The war has disrupted global food supplies. Ukraine is one of the world's largest grain exporters—the "breadbasket of Europe." Russian blockades and attacks on Ukrainian ports sent food prices soaring worldwide, hitting the poorest countries hardest.

Environmental damage has been catastrophic. Forests have burned. Fields have been contaminated with unexploded ordnance that will take decades to clear. The destruction of a major dam in 2023 flooded vast areas downstream. Scientists have described the environmental toll as ecocide.

The Cost to Russia

Putin's war has not come cheap.

Direct Russian spending on the invasion has exceeded two hundred fifty billion dollars. When you add economic losses from sanctions and business withdrawals, the total damage to Russia's economy may reach one point three trillion dollars by the end of 2025.

The human cost within Russia is harder to measure but clearly substantial. Hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers have been killed or wounded. The Russian government has gone to extraordinary lengths to hide casualty figures from its own population.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Russians—many of them young, educated professionals—have fled the country to escape military conscription or political repression. This brain drain will affect Russia for generations.

Protests within Russia have been met with mass arrests and increasingly draconian censorship. Russians can be imprisoned simply for calling the war a "war" rather than a "special military operation." Independent media has been crushed. The space for dissent has virtually disappeared.

Where Things Stand

As of late 2025, the war continues with no end in sight.

Russia occupies nearly twenty percent of Ukraine's territory, including Crimea and large portions of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions. The front lines have stabilized into something resembling World War I trench warfare in places—grinding, attritional combat over small patches of devastated land.

Peace negotiations have repeatedly stalled. Russia has refused calls for a ceasefire. Ukraine, for its part, refuses to accept Russian occupation of its territory as permanent. Zelenskyy has outlined peace conditions that include full Russian withdrawal—terms Russia shows no willingness to accept.

The war has become a test of endurance: Can Ukraine hold on long enough for Western support to continue? Can Russia sustain its losses indefinitely? Will domestic pressures force either side to the table?

No one knows how this ends.

What This War Revealed

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has shattered assumptions that guided international relations for decades.

It proved that full-scale conventional war between major powers is still possible in the twenty-first century. Many analysts had assumed that economic interdependence and nuclear deterrence made such conflicts obsolete. They were wrong.

It revealed the limits of security guarantees. Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons in exchange for promises from Russia, the United States, and Britain to respect its borders. Those promises proved worthless when tested. Other countries considering nuclear disarmament are certainly taking note.

It demonstrated both the power and limitations of economic sanctions. Sanctions have hurt Russia significantly but have not stopped the war or changed Putin's calculus. The Russian economy has proven more resilient than many predicted, partly through adaptation and partly through continued trade with countries like China and India that declined to join the sanctions regime.

It showed that authoritarian information control can fail. Despite Russian propaganda, Ukrainians knew what was happening. Despite Russian censorship, many Russians learned the truth anyway. Social media, satellite imagery, and the sheer volume of witnesses made this the most documented war in history.

Most fundamentally, it reminded the world that borders can still be changed by force—and that the international order depends on countries willing to defend it.

A Question of Will

In the end, this war comes down to a question that cannot be answered by counting tanks or measuring economies: Who wants it more?

For Russia, the war is a choice. Putin chose to invade. He could choose to stop. The war serves his vision of a restored Russian empire, but Russia's survival as a nation does not depend on conquering Ukraine.

For Ukraine, the war is an existential struggle. Ukrainians are fighting for their homes, their families, their right to exist as an independent nation. They did not choose this war, but they have chosen to fight it.

Zelenskyy, the comedian-turned-president who became an unlikely wartime leader, captured this asymmetry early in the invasion. When the United States reportedly offered to evacuate him as Russian forces closed on Kyiv, his response was simple:

"I need ammunition, not a ride."

Three years later, Ukrainians are still fighting. The ammunition is still flowing. And the outcome remains uncertain.

What is certain is that the war has already changed the world. It has redrawn the map of European security. It has revived NATO after years of drift. It has demonstrated that aggression, even by a nuclear power, can be resisted. And it has shown, at tremendous cost in blood and suffering, that the idea of Ukraine as an independent nation is not something Vladimir Putin can simply wish away.

The Ukrainian people have made that abundantly clear.