On Thursday morning, February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighboring country, Ukraine. The initial attack was focused on key Ukrainian cities, with its capital, Kyiv, bearing the brunt of the attack. The invasion was on the ground and aerial, with explosions heard across villages and cities. By that afternoon, dozens of soldiers and civilians had been killed.
But this wasn’t when the conflict truly began.
A brief history of Russia and Ukraine
Russia has controlled Ukraine for approximately 350 years, dating back to their shared history in 9th-century Kyiv. The fertile plains and soil of Ukraine made it ideal for growing a wide range of crops capable of sustaining the vast Russian-owned lands.
By the time the Russian Empire collapsed in 1917, it had controlled most of western Ukraine for more than a century. However, during the Russian civil war of 1917, both Bolshevik and anti-Bolshevik forces eventually invaded the newly independent Ukrainian state. The Bolsheviks defeated the Ukrainian army and the anti-Bolsheviks in 1921, and the resulting state was referred to as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
The treatment Ukrainians suffered under Russian soviet rule, including the 1930s famine, known as the Holodomor—which killed almost 4 million Ukrainians—contributed to the occupation by Nazis in June 1941. When Soviet Leaders regained control of Ukraine, they transferred control of Crimea to the Soviets stationed in Ukraine, a region particularly important because it housed the Soviet Union’s Black Sea Fleet. Additionally, one-third of the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons were stationed in Ukraine, raising major concerns when the regime collapsed in 1991.
This led to Ukraine exchanging those nuclear weapons with Russia in return for recognition and respect of Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty. This became known as the Budapest Memorandum, signed in 1994.
Peace did not last long because in 2014, pro-Russian separatists and Russian troops seized government buildings in Crimea, declaring independence from Kyiv.
In a move that surprised nobody and was heavily criticized, Russia formally annexed Crimea in March 2014.
While fighting between pro-Russian groups and the military in Ukraine continued, peace talks between Ukraine and Russia at the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015 culminated in the Minsk agreements, resulting in a ceasefire and withdrawal of weapons.
In the following years, Ukraine focused on completing the steps necessary to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a collective organization of European nations whose purpose is to “guarantee the freedom and security of its members through political and military means.”
More recently, Hein Hoemans, Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester, stated that Vladimir Putin, the current President of Russia, “wants to reestablish directly or indirectly, by annexation or by puppet-regimes, a Russian empire–be it the former USSR or Tsarist Russia.”
Early Events
In the months before the invasion, Putin stationed troops along the Ukrainian border, citing concerns about Nazism and rampant militarization occurring in the Slavic country. He also demanded that NATO not expand to include the territory of Ukraine. This buildup increased the Russian president’s belief that Ukraine would fall easily within a week. Western intelligence shared similar predictions, estimating that Kyiv would fall in three days.
The initial Russian assault of February 2022 consisted of missile strikes against military asset holdings, as well as civilian areas such as hospitals and residential complexes. The Ukrainian city of Kherson was the first major city to fall in the campaign’s first few weeks.
On April 6th, Russia withdrew all troops from the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions. Additionally, it was followed by a new offensive in eastern Ukraine on April 18th.
The sinking of the Russian missile cruiser Moskva by Ukrainian strikes occurred on April 14 and was the first instance of US involvement, as the US shared intelligence that helped Ukraine.
During the following months, fighting was largely contained to the eastern and southern parts of Ukraine, with attacks focused on port cities located on the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.
On August 29, Ukraine began a counteroffensive to retake Kherson and push Russian forces further east beyond the Dnipro River. CNN reported that the Ukrainian city of Orikhiv suffered over 200 attacks in six hours.
However, this counteroffensive was only partly successful. A month later, Putin announced the annexation of the partially occupied areas of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson.
However, Ukraine launched a surprise attack on October 2nd and recovered hundreds of square miles of key territory. This was immediately followed by the destruction of the Kerch Strait Bridge connecting Russia to Crimea via a truck bomb, an operation claimed by Ukraine.
During the first weeks of November, Ukrainian forces retook Kherson after the Russians withdrew across the Dnipro.
This last major event during the first year of the Russo-Ukrainian war has been dubbed a significant embarrassment for Russia, as it lost the only regional capital it had occupied during the initial year of the invasion.
By the end of 2022, the war had transformed from a rapid invasion into a prolonged struggle, claiming more civilian lives with each passing day—a war that continues even now, shaping the country’s future.
