Russo-Ukrainian War

The Russo-Ukrainian war refers to Russia’s first invasion into Ukraine in February 2014. Ukraine was a former Soviet nation that had been aligned with Russia as part of the Soviet Union until 1991 when it gained independence. After this, Ukraine began aligning itself with Western nations and sought admittance into NATO. In 2014, Ukrainian protestors ousted their pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych after he refused to allow the country to join the European Union (EU). After he was removed from power, Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, sent military troops into Ukraine to annex Crimea, a strategically important region of Ukraine where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is located. In the mid-2020s, Crimea remained a Russian republic.

After the annexation of Crimea, Ukrainians continued to fight with Russian-backed rebels. During one of these battles, rebels launched a missile attack that accidentally hit a commercial airliner, killing all onboard. The accident outraged other countries, whose leaders insisted that the fighting end. While a peace agreement was reached in 2015, the Ukrainian military continued fighting the rebels, resulting in thousands of casualties.

On February 24, 2022, Russia once again invaded Ukraine, this time escalating to a full-scale war that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of people having to flee to safety in nearby countries.

Background

Wedged between Russia and several other European nations, Ukraine has been at the crossroads of migration and human settlement for centuries. The precursor of Ukraine was first formed in the ninth century CE; however, except for brief periods throughout history, the region has been under the control of other powers, including Lithuania, Poland, and Russia. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine declared its independence, much to the chagrin of Russia, whose leaders wanted to reclaim the territory. After gaining independence, Ukraine was left with an enormous Russian nuclear stockpile consisting of intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads. In the 1994 treaty known as the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine agreed to return the weapons in exchange for the three other countries signing the treaty—the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia—respecting its independence. Ukraine began to transition from a Soviet republic to a capitalist society. It privatized businesses and developed international economic opportunities.

However, letting go of Ukraine meant that Russia had to relinquish important military advantages. Moscow had used Ukraine as a buffer to give the city valuable time to prepare for an invasion or a retaliatory nuclear strike. Without Ukraine, Russia remained vulnerable to attacks from the West.

Russian president Vladimir Putin considered it threatening that Ukraine had allied itself with Western countries. After the fall of the Soviet Union, other former Russian republics joined the European Union (EU) or NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), including Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. Without these republics, Russia had lost power in Eastern Europe.

Before it declared its independence, Ukraine had been partly or completely controlled by Russia for centuries. About one in six people in Ukraine speak Russian as their native language and tie their ancestry to Russia. This is especially true of those residing in Eastern Ukraine, a part of the country that borders Russia.

Political Turmoil

From 1994 to 2004, Leonid Kuchma was president of Ukraine. Kuchma helped guide the newly independent nation into a capitalist society. However, after Kuchma was accused of ordering the death of a journalist in 2000, he did not run for reelection. Kuchma’s successor, Viktor Yanukovych, had been hand-picked by Putin. He ran against Viktor Yushchenko, who had been poisoned and left disfigured in the final months of the campaign. Yanukovych won the election but was accused of voter fraud. After this win, massive protests broke out. These became known as the Orange Revolution. After a third vote, the tables turned, and Yushchenko prevailed.

Yushchenko chose Yulia Tymoshenko as minister. She and Yushchenko attempted to bring Ukraine into NATO. US president George W. Bush supported the move, but France and Germany aligned with Russia in opposing it. A compromise was reached—Ukraine would “one day” become a member of NATO. When this would occur, however, was never determined.

President Yanukovych

Yanukovych was elected president in 2010. He had strong ties to Russia and lived in Eastern Ukraine. While most Ukrainians sought to integrate more fully with the European Union (EU), the pro-Russian Yanukovych was vehemently against this. Under intense pressure from Moscow, Yanukovych refused to sign a 2013 planned association with the EU. He instead met with Putin and agreed to deepen Ukraine’s alliance with Russia. In exchange for his cooperation, Putin promised to give Ukrainians low-interest loans and a reduction on natural gas prices.

Yanukovych’s decision outraged Ukrainians and ignited massive protests throughout the country. The thousands of demonstrators established a camp in Kyiv’s Maiden (Independence Square) and became known as the Maiden protestors. In February 2014, the Ukrainian military opened fire on the Maiden protestors, killing dozens and injuring hundreds. The protestors fought back, and ultimately succeeded, overthrowing the Ukrainian government and ousting Yanukovych.

Overview

The region of Crimea in Southern Ukraine is situated on the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea. Control of Crimea has frequently changed hands among nearby nations for centuries. However, for about two hundred years, Crimea was part of Russia. In 1954, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. However, this transfer was essentially meaningless because Ukraine was also under Russian control. In 1991, when the Soviet Union disbanded, international leaders expected Russia to take back Crimea, but this did not happen. Crimeans were divided on whether to remain with Russia or join the newly independent Ukraine. They ultimately decided to join Ukraine, and Russia promised to respect this decision.

However, after Yanukovych was ousted from power, Russian influence in Ukraine was lost, and Putin sent Russian forces into the country to annex Crimea. He directed his military and intelligence agents to disarm Ukrainian forces and take control of the region. Crimea was strategically important to Russia. With control of Crimea, Moscow could more easily access its naval base in the city of Sevastopol, where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is located. Russia could also install advanced air defenses in the region, making it more powerful. Annexing Crimea would make it easier for Russia to threaten the rest of the United Kingdom (UK).

The people of Crimea are more closely tied to Russia than most Ukrainians. Most Crimeans are Russian. Those who were pleased that Russia had annexed the region held rallies in support of Yanukovych. In March 2014, Crimeans participated in a referendum in which they voted on whether they wanted to rejoin Russia or remain part of Ukraine. About 97 percent voted in favor of becoming a Russian republic. However, the referendum took place while the area was occupied by hostile Russian troops, so many consider it a farce. Despite this, on March 18, 2014, Russia and the Republic of Crimea signed a treaty absorbing Crimea and Sevastopol into the Russian Federation.

Outraged over the annexation, the United States and the EU imposed harsh economic sanctions on Russia as punishment. While the international community does not recognize the annexation of Crimea, Russia has controlled the territory since 2014. An official survey taken a year after the annexation showed that most Crimeans were pleased to once again be part of Russia and believed that the annexation should have been allowed under international laws.

Russian-Backed Rebels

In April 2014, fighting broke out again between the Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatist rebels, who were later revealed to be Russian special forces. The rebels began increasing in number in Eastern Ukraine shortly after the Russian military invaded and annexed Crimea. They seized towns in the eastern region of Donbas in retaliation for Ukrainians driving away Yanukovych. In addition to the rebels infiltrating Ukraine, President Putin had amassed thousands of Russian troops along the Ukrainian-Russian border.

In July, the Ukrainian military began launching attacks to force the rebels out of the country. Russia then supplied them with high-tech surface-to-air missiles. The rebels planned to use these missiles to bring down Ukrainian fighter planes. However, they accidentally hit Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was traveling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. The attack killed 283 passengers, including eighty children and fifteen crew members. In October 2015, the Dutch Safety Board (DSB) concluded that the plane had crashed after being hit by a Russian surface-to-air missile. In 2021, four former members of the Russian military were put on trial in absentia by Dutch prosecutors. The men, who were still at large, were alleged to have provided the Russian rebels with the missile that downed the plane, and prosecutors demanded that they serve life sentences. In late 2022, three of the men were found guilty in absentia and sentenced to life in prison.

Second Invasion

A 2015 peace deal ended the major battles in the Russo-Ukrainian war. However, skirmishes between Russian rebels and the Ukrainian government have resulted in the death of more than fourteen thousand people. However, Putin has claimed that the 2014 war never actually ended, and that the Ukrainian government was systematically exterminating the Russian people of Eastern Ukraine, although no evidence exists to support these assertions.

A few days before the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin unilaterally recognized the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, regions that had declared themselves the “People’s Republic.” The United States and the EU issued sanctions on Russia for the move. When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, it damaged its relationship with Western countries. Nearby countries also feared a Russian invasion, believing that Putin may seek control of the former republics that were once part of the Soviet Union.

While Western countries, including the United States, refused to engage in direct conflict with the Russian military, they provided the Ukrainian army with weapons and billions of dollars in funding. The United States and countries throughout the world also issued heavy sanctions on Russia that included banning all Russian imports of oil and gas, freezing the assets of Russia’s banks, and banning Russian flights from airspaces. Individual businesses, such as McDonald’s, Starbucks, and Coca-Cola, suspended trade in Russia. The United States formally determined that Russia, including Putin, had committed war crimes by intentionally targeting civilian infrastructures such as healthcare facilities and schools, killing thousands of civilians.

By mid-2022, Russian forces had made less progress than expected, due in large part to Ukraine’s people staunchly resisting the invasion. Russia was unable to take over Kyiv, the country’s capital. As many as four million Ukrainians had fled their homes and crossed borders into nearby nations. Negotiations between Ukraine and Russia also continued. Of issue was whether Ukraine would agree to neutrality, meaning that it would not join NATO or interfere in international conflicts. However, Ukraine would only consider neutrality if Western nations guaranteed its security, something that cannot be done during a time of war.

Over the next three years, fighting between Russia and Ukraine continued. In 2023 and 2024, Russia made key advances on several fronts, including significant attacks on Ukrainian energy facilities and the capture of nearly two hundred settlements across Ukraine. Despite these efforts, Ukraine continued to make advances in the east and south, destroying Russian forces in several important areas, particularly in the Kursk region of southern Russia, where the Russian military faced high casualties. The Ukrainian army also received increased support from NATO, including advanced weaponry, as well as from the US and its allies. In early 2025, Russia received help from North Korea in the form of approximately 11,000 soldiers joining with Russian forces in the Kursk region.

By early 2025, both sides had experienced substantial casualties, with an estimated 62,000 Ukrainian soldiers and over 150,000 Russian soldiers killed as a direct result of the war, though figures may be far higher as large numbers of soldiers had also been reported missing in action. Meanwhile, the US had committed over $175 billion in aid to Ukraine, making it the largest provider of assistance to the region.

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