On 24 February 2022, Russian forces crossed into Ukraine in an assault NPR described as Europe’s biggest military operation since the Second World War. The invasion did not come from nowhere. By then the two countries had been fighting for eight years, and the roots go back to the day the Soviet Union ended.
Independence and a promise
Ukrainians voted for independence in December 1991, approving it with 92% of the ballots. The Soviet Union dissolved on Dec. 26. In December 1994 Kyiv, holding the world’s third-largest nuclear stockpile, gave up its warheads and long-range missiles under the Budapest Memorandum. In return the United States, Britain and Russia pledged to respect Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty and existing borders.
Maidan and Crimea, 2014
The break came in the winter of 2013-2014. President Viktor Yanukovych, citing pressure from Russia, refused to sign an association agreement with the European Union. Protesters filled Kyiv’s Maidan, the largest demonstrations since the Orange Revolution. Clashes between police and demonstrators in late February killed more than 100 people, the worst single week the country had seen since leaving the USSR. Yanukovych fled to Russia ahead of an impeachment vote on Feb. 22, and parliament removed him by a unanimous vote. Moscow called the change of government an illegal coup.
Armed men then turned up at checkpoints and facilities across Crimea. Vladimir Putin first denied they were Russian soldiers and later admitted it. With Russian troops controlling the peninsula, the local parliament voted to join Russia, and a referendum produced 97% in favour, a result that was disputed. Putin announced the annexation to the Russian parliament on March 18, 2014. The United States and its European allies answered with sanctions and have never recognised the takeover. NPR noted that it remains the only time since World War II that a European country used military force to seize another’s territory.
The Donbas war
In April 2014, with about 40,000 Russian troops massed near Ukraine’s eastern border, separatists stormed government buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk and proclaimed the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Russia denied having troops on Ukrainian soil. Ukrainian officials said otherwise.
The International Crisis Group describes fierce fighting through 2014 and 2015 that left a third of the two regions, the most urbanised part, in the hands of two Russian proxy statelets. Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany met in Belarus and signed the first Minsk agreement on Sept. 5, 2014. The ceasefire broke down quickly. A second deal, Minsk II, followed in February 2015. It cut the violence but was never implemented, according to the Crisis Group, and the war settled into trench warfare, with roughly 75,000 troops along a front line 420 kilometres long. By early 2022 the conflict had killed over 14,000 people and displaced more than a million, NPR reported.
The build-up to invasion
Russia sent about 100,000 troops toward Ukraine’s borders in April 2021, officially for exercises. It announced a pullback, but tens of thousands stayed. A second build-up ran from December 2021 into February 2022. In a December call Joe Biden warned Putin of “real costs” if he invaded, and Putin responded with security demands that included a permanent bar on Ukraine joining NATO.
On Feb. 21, 2022, Putin recognised the two separatist republics as independent, which, in the Crisis Group’s assessment, effectively ended any discussion of carrying out the Minsk terms. Three days later the invasion began.
Sources
- A timeline of Ukraine's history (NPR)
- Conflict in Ukraine's Donbas: A Visual Explainer (International Crisis Group)
