In November 2023, Ukraine’s commander said the war had “reached a stalemate.” Three months later, in February 2024, his successor, General Syrsky, ordered troops out of Avdiivka. The Council on Foreign Relations calls that withdrawal Russia’s most significant victory since Bakhmut. The decade of fighting that led there began somewhere else entirely.
2014: Maidan, Crimea, Donbas
President Viktor Yanukovich suspended EU trade talks in November 2013 and turned toward Moscow. Protesters filled Kyiv’s Maidan square for months, and the clashes killed dozens of people, Al Jazeera recounts. In February 2014 parliament voted him out and he fled the country.
Armed men took over Crimea’s parliament almost at once and raised the Russian flag. Russia has said it acted to “protect Russian citizens” and Russian speakers, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. A referendum on March 16 produced what officials called “overwhelming support” for joining Russia, and Moscow annexed the peninsula.
In April, pro-Russian separatists in the east declared independence, and the Donbas conflict began. In May, separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk held independence referendums of their own. Ukraine elected Petro Poroshenko that month, on a pro-NATO, pro-EU platform. In July, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down on its way from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. All 298 people aboard died. Investigators traced the missile to Russian sources; Moscow denied involvement.
2022: full-scale invasion
By early February 2022, Russia had massed troops along the Belarus border. On February 21 Putin ordered forces into Luhansk and Donetsk, and the US answered with sanctions. Three days later he announced a “full-scale land, sea and air invasion.” On March 2, 141 of 193 UN member states condemned it.
Ukrainian resistance proved stronger than expected, and with Western intelligence and weapons it turned back the advance on Kyiv. Russia pulled out of the capital region. Reports of “summary executions, torture, and rape” led to referrals to the International Criminal Court. Russia then pushed in the east and had taken Mariupol by May.
The momentum swung in the autumn. A Ukrainian counteroffensive in September retook a large part of Kharkiv territory. In November Ukraine regained Kherson, and Russian troops fell back west of the Dnipro River. Putin nonetheless declared Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia annexed, a move the Council on Foreign Relations calls illegal.
2023 to 2024: the front hardens
Russia captured Soledar early in 2023 and besieged Bakhmut for months, at an estimated “one hundred thousand casualties.” It claimed control of the city by late May. Ukraine’s counteroffensive began in June and ran into stiff resistance. By November the commander’s verdict was in, and Avdiivka followed in February 2024.
Sources
- War in Ukraine | Global Conflict Tracker
- Timeline: Ukraine's turbulent history since independence in 1991
