Paul Kirby
European Digital Editor
Reuters
When Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Ukraine up to 200,000 soldiers, his purpose was to wipe out the capital Kiev in a few days.
He wanted to overthrow the Western government and bring Ukraine back to the extent of Russian influence.
Putin failed, but for more than three years in the fifth year of Ukrainian territory, the US has recently denounced Ukraine for suspending aid under President Donald Trump, starting a war.
Why did Putin invade Ukraine?
Marcus Yum/Los Angeles Times
The Ukrainians searched for shelter in underground shelters after Russian forces attacked on February 24, 2022
When Putin launched the biggest European invasion since the end of World War II, he gave a fiery speech on television, with his goal being to “denounce and deny” Ukraine.
Russia repeatedly portrays modern-day Ukraine as a Nazi nation, depicting it in the crude distortions of history.
Putin had already seized Ukraine’s Crimea eight years ago after the revolution that expelled Ukrainian pro-Russia and replaced him with a more Western government.
Putin then urged lower-level wars in the Eastern Donbas region of Ukraine, with Russian pro-committees occupying the territory and establishing rebels supported by Moscow.
However, the invasion in 2022 was on a different scale.
Putin had just admitted that the rebellious state was independence. Then, when the invasion began, he said that the people there were (many of them Russian speakers) needed protection from the “regulation” of Kiev.
A day later, Putin called on Ukrainian military to “take power in their own hands” and targeted the government-run “drug addicts and neo-Nazi gangs.”
Putin then added another purpose – ensuring that Ukraine remains neutral. He accused NATO, the Western defence alliance, of trying to gain foothold in Ukraine to get closer to the Russian border.
The Russian leader has long questioned the right to Ukraine’s existence, claiming that “modern Ukraine was created entirely by Russia” after the Communist Revolution in 1917.
In a long-standing 2021 essay, he proposed that “there are only one Russian and one Ukrainian,” dating back to the late 9th century. Last year he told TV talk show host Tucker Carlsson that Ukraine is an “artificial nation.”
These comments have led many to believe that the goal of invasion is effective in eliminating the Ukraine’s condition.
Russia’s state-run RIA News Agency explained that “Denazization is inevitable as a escapism.”
Ukrainian culture and identity have actually existed for centuries independent of Russia.
Fact checks on President Putin’s “nonsense” history
Zelensky – From comedians to wartime leaders
Does Putin want to get rid of Zelensky?
Getty Images
Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president in Ukraine in 2019
Putin has long tried to eliminate Ukraine’s elected pro-Western president, but Zelensky has clearly been a target since the start of the war.
According to Zelensky’s advisor, Russian troops tried to raid the president’s complex shortly after the invasion, and the elected leader of Ukraine said they wanted to die.
“The enemy has designated me as the number one target. My family is number two target.
“They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state.”
Zelensky later said Putin initially tried to replace him with Victor Medveddik, the wealthy head of the Russian pro-party.
Even now, three years later, Putin refuses to negotiate a direct peace deal with Zelensky “due to his illegality.” This is a false story repeated by President Trump.
As evidence, President Putin cites Ukraine’s postponement of the presidential election in March 2024, which is when Russia’s war takes place under martial law and elections are prohibited under the constitution.
Putin’s own reelection in 2024 is highly doubtful as Russian opposition leaders are in exile or in death.
Has NATO spread out due to the war?
For years, Putin has been unhappy with NATO’s Eastern expansion as a security threat, and believes there is no chance that Ukraine will join the alliance as a major redline.
Before Russia’s 2022 invasion, he requested that the multinational deployment be removed from central and eastern European states where NATO joined the Western Alliance since 1997.
However, when they invaded Georgia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014, it was Russia that began military operations in Eastern Europe.
After the Crimean invasion, NATO established a continuous presence on the eastern flank that is closest to Russia.
NATO always emphasizes that the entire alliance purpose is to protect its territory “without aggressive intentions.” Sweden and Finland have joined NATO over the past two years due to the perceived threat of Russia.
Participating in the European Union and NATO is part of the Ukrainian constitution, but there was no real prospect of this when the full-scale war began.
Zelensky said two weeks after the invasion, “NATO is not ready to accept Ukraine.”
He has since said he will consider resigning in exchange for his NATO membership, but Trump says Kiev should “forget” joining the Western Alliance.
Putin accused NATO of participating in the war. This is because its member states are increasingly sending Ukrainian military hardware, including tanks, fighter jets, air defense systems, missile systems, artillery and drones.
NATO provides security assistance and training to Ukraine, but it claims it will not be a party to the war.
Putin’s complaints about NATO date back to 1990 and claims that the West has promised not to expand “a inch to the east.”
But that was before the Soviet Union collapsed, and it was based on the Soviet President’s limited commitment to Mikhail Gorbachev.
Gorbachev said at the time that “the topic of the NATO expansion was never discussed.”
Read more: What is NATO?
Can Putin’s claims about the Nazis and genocide be stacked?
Reuters
Vladimir Putin has repeated false and false allegations of genocide and Nazi provocation against Ukraine
At the start of the 2022 invasion, Putin vowed to protect the people of the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine from the eight years of Ukraine’s “bullying and massacre” during the war in the East.
Over 14,000 people died on both sides of the frontline between 2014 and 2022, but the claims of the Ukrainian Nazi Russia, committing genocide in the occupied territories, have never been added, and international organizations have not spoken about genocide. The German Prime Minister called the allegations “silly.”
The Nazi Russia provocation, which is in charge of Kiev, is also incorrect.
Modern Ukraine does not have far-right parties in parliament – they did not get enough votes in the 2019 election. Additionally, Zelensky was Jewish, and many of his relatives were murdered by the Nazis in World War II.
Putin accussssssssssssssssssssss, but the US Holocaust Memorial Museum of the United States rejects his claims entirely, saying it “misreported and misappropriated Holocaust history.”
Putin himself was charged with war crimes by the International Criminal Court in 2024, which was rejected by the Kremlin.
When did Russia invade Ukraine?
Russia’s attempts to stop Ukraine from leaving its influence date back several years ago, and its first invasion began when Russian Russian President Viktor Janukovich was expelled after months of massive demonstrations.
Janukovic abandoned EU deals under the pressure of President Putin, urging the protest that ended when snipers shot dozens of protesters. Yanukovich quickly fled to Russia.
Putin quickly seized Ukraine’s Crimea, and Russian proxies took arms against the government, occupying parts of eastern Luhansk and the Donetsk region.
Two attempts to stop the war did nothing.
They are known as the Minsk Agreement and were mediated by France, Germany and Russia itself. They reduced the scale of the violence, but Zelensky called them traps that created conflicts that frozen on Russian terms.
Both sides condemned each other’s violations, and the Kremlin said the ultimately failed agreement was the precursor to Moscow’s full-scale invasion.
The Ukrainian leader has warned the Trump administration not to trust Putin. “He broke the ceasefire, he killed our people.”
Who is winning the war?
After three years of attack and counterargument, the Russian and Ukrainian forces fall into a war of attrition at an active frontline of over 1,000 km (629 miles).
Neither side has a realistic prospect of winning this war.
Russia annexed four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine after a fake referendum in 2022, but in fact, it can be argued that it has full control over one of them, Luhansk.
The Ukrainian forces were able to free most of the north and most of the south in 2022, but recent rebuttals have not achieved the same success. They still control parts of Russia’s Kursk region after launching the attack in August 2024, but have lost the ground to the east.
Much of the Russian firepower is heading towards the Donetsk region as towns and villages are being destroyed by slow, crushed advances.
The war has been sacrificed to Russia’s economy, with high interest rates and inflation and defense spending this year at least 33% of the federal budget.
Ukraine lost most of its economic wealth against Russian occupation and destruction in the eastern industrial area. Growth is hit by attacks on its energy infrastructure.
Although inflation and interest rates are high, Ukraine is securing future aid to cover the fiscal deficit.
How many people died in the Ukrainian War?
Tens of thousands of people have died since Putin sent his troops in 2022.
The Ukrainian president has spoken about the deaths of 43,000 Ukrainian forces, but the open source site ualosses.org suggests that the number is above 70,000.
According to the United Nations, more than 12,000 civilians have lost their lives in Ukraine.
Although Russia rarely admits military losses, BBC analysis estimates that Russia’s deaths range from 146,194 to 211,169.
The war led to Ukrainians calling for 6.9 million people to evacuate overseas, and another 3.7 million people fled their homes in Ukraine.
At first, Putin called it “a special military operation” rather than even calling it a war. Eventually in 2024 he accepted it, but claimed it was instigated by Kiev or its “western handlers.”
What is the historical relationship between Ukraine and Russia?
Putin appears to believe that Ukraine should remain within the scope of Russian influence due to historic ties between the two countries.
From 1922 to 91, Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, and many Ukrainians spoke Russian in the eastern part, particularly in the eastern part, including the native speaker Volodymyr Zelensky.
Many Russians consider Crimea to be theirs. It was annexed by Catherine the Great in 1783 and handed over to Ukraine in 1954 by Soviet leader Krushchev. Ten years ago, his predecessor Stalin deported the Crimean Tatar population, so the majority of the population was Russian.
Since 1991, Ukraine has been an independent nation. They abandoned nuclear weapons in 1994 in exchange for guaranteed security from Russia, Britain and the United States, which Moscow didn’t respect.
Since the war, many Ukrainians have turned their backs on the Russians, and Zelensky himself has eschewed the use of language in public.
