Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will forever mark the brutal return of high-intensity interstate warfare in Europe. The conflict, which began in 2014 when Moscow seized Crimea while supporting Donbass separatism after the pro-European Maidan revolution in Kyiv, escalates eight years later. On February 22, 2022, Vladimir Putin recognizes the independence of the two separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk while his troops have been massing in the hundreds of thousands around the Ukrainian border for several months, officially for exercises.
At this point, US intelligence services warn of a very high risk of an invasion, an overestimated risk according to kyiv and other Western services. However, the invasion was launched two days later, to the surprise even of many Russian soldiers who thought they were also participating in exercises.
At 5:30 a.m. local time, Vladimir Putin addresses the Russian nation from the Kremlin and announces the start of a “special military operation” against kyiv, explaining that he wants to “denazify” the country. As his speech is broadcast on television, missiles are already raining down on all bases and positions of the Ukrainian army. In the aftermath, the first Russian tanks cross the border and open three fronts, one of which directly threatens the capital of Ukraine, kyiv. International condemnations are immediate and almost unanimous. On March 2, at the UN, 5 out of 193 countries vote against the resolution condemning the violation of Ukrainian territorial integrity: Russia and Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea and Syria. Of the 30 countries that abstained, China. The Europeans and Americans, for their part, are already beginning to organize support for kyiv.
???????????? Columns of Russian tanks are streaming unopposed into northern Ukraine via the Belarussian-Ukrainian Border crossing known as “The Three Sisters”
Amid conflicting information in the confusion of the first day of the invasion, it appears that Russia sent special forces and mercenaries to Kiev to find President Volodymyr Zelensky and behead the Ukrainian state, with no success. Hostomel Airport, near kyiv and needed to land large aircraft carrying large quantities of troops and equipment, is also particularly targeted. Its capture, however, took longer than expected and the fierce fighting ultimately rendered it unusable, dealing a severe blow to Russian plans to quickly take the capital.
The pregnant woman in the photo has died, according to the Associated Press. Her unborn child has also died. The woman was injured in the Russian attack on the maternity hospital in Mariupol on March 9. Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka via Instagram. pic.twitter.com/n2v5I9k7DH
In Mariupol besieged by the Russians, Ukrainian doctors continue to operate as best they can the maternity ward, already hit several times by bombardments. That day, four people are killed and a woman who was giving birth loses her child in the strike, before succumbing in turn. Two weeks later, the same city will see its theater destroyed by an explosion when it was sheltering a thousand civilians. Four hundred to six hundred people lost their lives in a crime that Russia tried to cover up once the city was recaptured.
On April 8, it was the turn of the train station in Kramatorsk, the last major city in the Donetsk region under Ukrainian control, to be hit as thousands of Ukrainians gathered there to flee the fighting. Fifty-seven lost their lives in this bombardment which Moscow denies and attributes, like the others, to the Ukrainian army.
After a month of counter-offensive to loosen the noose around Kiev, the Ukrainians push the Russians back to the border of Belarus and discover the horror. During a month of Russian occupation, the inhabitants of this village and other localities on the road to kyiv were tortured, raped, massacred. Men, women and children altogether constitute more than 1,200 victims of war crimes in this region, including 458 in the martyred city of Boutcha alone. At this point in the war, the Russians have retreated everywhere from northern Ukraine to the still-threatened Kharkiv region.
The cruiser Moskva, flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, is hit by two Ukrainian missiles in the open sea and sinks. The ship had become known a few weeks earlier for its interaction with the Ukrainian soldiers on Serpent’s Island: when the Moskva proposed surrender by radio, the defenders responded with “Russian ship, fuck you!” which immediately became legendary. The loss of this 12,000 ton vessel would represent both the biggest Russian loss (in economic terms) of the conflict and the largest ship lost in action in the world since World War II. Moscow says the Moskva suffered a fire that affected an ammunition depot.
The last center of resistance in the city of Mariupol, the Azovstal metallurgical plant was still hosting more than 2,500 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians when the final phase of the siege of the city began in mid-April. After a month of fierce fighting, out of food and ammunition, the remaining soldiers surrendered and were taken prisoner by the Russians. With the fall of this pocket, the Russians can then join their conquests of southern Ukraine and those of Donbass and control a large strip from Kherson to Luhansk and all around the Sea of ??Azov.
The first Ukrainian counter-offensive of the conflict allows kyiv to recover in a few weeks several thousand square kilometers of its territory in the East. In this region, the offensive was finally slowed down after the capture of the strategic town of Izium and laid the contours of the front line as it would be for the winter, at the entrance to Donbass. In the South, the effort is slipping towards Kherson, at the entrance to the Dnieper delta.
The day after Vladimir Putin’s birthday, part of the bridge connecting the Crimean peninsula to Russia through the Kerch Strait collapsed following an explosion. If the Ukrainians threatened to destroy this symbolic structure since its construction in 2014, after the illegal annexation of Crimea to Russia, Kiev denied being behind what Moscow called a terrorist act. Four people lost their lives in the explosion. After hasty work, the bridge was reopened to heavy goods vehicles in December.
A decisive offensive begun two weeks earlier enabled the Ukrainians to retake the last city still controlled by the Russians on the right bank of the Dnieper, Kherson. Ukrainian artillery targeted and destroyed all bridges over the river, surrounding thousands of Russian troops in the town without supplies. Moscow eventually abandoned the city on November 11, having evacuated what troops and equipment it could with barges down the river.
Almost 600 kilometers from the front line, in the heart of Russian territory, the Engels air base suffered several explosions for which Moscow and analysts attributed responsibility to Ukraine. kyiv denies having hit this base, which notably hosts Russian strategic bombers used to attack Ukrainian territory. Such an attack was probably carried out using old Soviet drones taken from museums and refurbished by the Ukrainian army.
On New Year’s Eve, the military quarters of Makiivka, in occupied Ukrainian territory, are hit by missiles launched from American Himars acquired by kyiv. The attack reportedly killed between 89 people, according to Russian authorities, and 400, according to Ukrainian sources. The targeted buildings would have been spotted thanks to the dozens of telephones activated by the Russian mobilized who were stationed there.
The largest Russian casualty in a single attack since the start of the war, this stunt led Moscow to recognize that security rules were not being followed by all of its men. The effectiveness of the equipment provided by Washington was once again confirmed.
Consult our file: War in Ukraine