After months of military buildup and brinkmanship on its border with Ukraine, Russia invaded its ex-Soviet neighbor with a multi-pronged attack, threatening to destabilize Europe and draw in the United States.
A whirlwind of diplomatic efforts to stave off a Russian invasion in recent weeks failed to defuse tensions that had mounted over months.
Russia had been tightening its military grip around Ukraine since last year, amassing tens of thousands of soldiers, as well as equipment and artillery, on the country’s doorstep.
The escalation in the years-long conflict between Russia and Ukraine has triggered the greatest security crisis in Europe since the Cold War. Russia’s attacks on several parts of Ukraine raise the specter of a dangerous showdown between Western powers and Moscow.
So how did we get here? The picture on the ground is shifting rapidly, but here’s a breakdown of what we know.
What’s the situation on the border?
Several areas across Ukraine came under attack on Thursday morning after Russian President Vladimir Putin declared the start of a “special military operation” and warned of bloodshed unless Ukrainian forces lay down their arms.
The move came after months of speculation about what Moscow’s intentions were with the troops it had massed on the Ukrainian border. More than 150,000 Russian troops encircled the country on three sides, like a sickle, according to estimates from US and Ukrainian intelligence officials.
Some of those forces began pouring across the border, crossing into Ukraine from the north in Belarus and to the south from Crimea, according to the Ukrainian State Border Service. Elsewhere, explosions rang out in multiple cities, including the capital Kyiv.
The coordinated assault came days afterPutin announced that Moscow would officially recognize the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR), in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, ordering the deployment of Russian troops there in what was widely believed to be the opening salvo to a broader military confrontation.
The territory recognized by Putin extended beyond the areas controlled by pro-Russian separatists, raising red flags about Russia’s intended creep into Ukraine.
Russia repeatedly denied it was planning an assault, but an escalation in shelling in eastern Ukraine heightened fears that it could be stoking the violence to justify a wider conflict.
As the situation on Ukraine’s border has intensified,NATO has raised the readiness of its rapid response force, while member countries put troops on standby and deployed battalions, planes and ships to the region. The US ordered 3,000 additional soldiers to be deployed to Poland, bringing the total number of reinforcements sent to Europe in recent weeks to about 5,000.
The US says it has no intention of sending troops into Ukraine, which is not a NATO member. On Thursday, NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg condemned the Russian attack as a “grave breach of international law, and a serious threat to Euro-Atlantic security.”
The US has unveiled a “first tranche” of new sanctions against Russia, including on two large financial institutions, the country’s sovereign debt, and Russian elites and their family members.
US President Joe Biden has vowed the world will “hold Russia accountable” for the invasion, and is expected to spell out a set of additional sanctions, which were once meant to deter such an assault.
Biden and European leaders have previously warned that Russia would suffer serious consequences should Putin move ahead with a wider invasion. But that has not stopped Russia from continuing to bolster its military positions.
In late 2021 and early 2022, satellite images revealed new Russian deployments of troops, tanks, artillery and other equipment cropping up in multiple locations, including near eastern Ukraine, Crimea and Belarus, where its forces were participating in joint drills with Moscow’s closest international ally.
Despite receiving funding, training and equipment from the US and other NATO member countries, experts say Ukraine would be significantly outmatched by Russia’s military, which has been modernized under Putin’s leadership. If an all-out war broke out between the two countries, tens of thousands of civilians could die and up to 5 million could be made refugees, according to some estimates.
What has set the stage for the conflict?
Ukraine was a cornerstone of the Soviet Union until it voted overwhelmingly for independence in a democratic referendum in 1991, a milestone that turned out to be a death knell for the failing superpower.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO pushed eastward, bringing into the fold most of the Eastern European nations that had been in the Communist orbit. In 2004, NATO added the former Soviet Baltic republics Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Four years later, it declared its intention to offer membership to Ukraine some day in the distant future — crossing a red line for Russia.
Putin sees NATO’s expansion as an existential threat, and the prospect of Ukraine joining the Western military alliance a “hostile act” — a view he invoked in a televised speech on Thursday, saying that Ukraine’s aspiration to join the military alliance was a dire threat to Russia.
In interviews and speeches, Putin has previously emphasized his view that Ukraine is part of Russia, culturally, linguistically and politically. While some of the mostly Russian-speaking population in Ukraine’s east feel the same, a more nationalist, Ukrainian-speaking population in the west has historically supported greater integration with Europe.
Source: CNN
