The Road to War

The seeds of the 2022 invasion were planted in the winter of 2013–14, when Ukraine's pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych abruptly rejected an EU association agreement and accepted a $15 billion bailout from Moscow instead. Millions of Ukrainians flooded Kyiv's Maidan Nezalezhnosti — Independence Square — in what became the Euromaidan revolution. When Yanukovych ordered security forces to clear the square, protesters fought back. Over 100 people died. Yanukovych fled to Russia in February 2014.

Within weeks, Russian forces seized Crimea in a swift, near-bloodless operation using unmarked soldiers — the 'little green men' — and a sham referendum. Simultaneously, Russian-backed separatists in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine declared the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. A low-intensity war that would kill 14,000 people over eight years had begun. The Minsk I and Minsk II agreements nominally froze the front lines but resolved nothing.

By late 2021, US intelligence agencies were detecting massive Russian force buildups near Ukraine's borders. Putin published a lengthy essay claiming Ukrainians and Russians were 'one people' and that Ukraine as a state was a Western construct. NATO rejected his ultimatums demanding a halt to eastern expansion. On February 21, 2022, Putin formally recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk republics and ordered 'peacekeeping forces' into the Donbas. Three days later, the full invasion began.