In February 2023, Russia mobilised nearly 200,000 soldiers for a new offensive in Donbas. In November, Ukraine retook parts of Kherson Oblast. Soon after, Russia announced the illegal annexation of four partly-occupied oblasts. In late 2022, Ukraine launched counteroffensives in the south and east. Russian forces continued to bomb military and civilian targets far from the front line, including the energy grid through the winter. In April, Russia launched a renewed battle of Donbas. On the southern and south-eastern fronts, Russia captured Kherson in March and Mariupol in May after a destructive siege. Russian troops retreated from the northern front by April 2022. Ukraine enacted martial law and ordered a general mobilisation. Russian air strikes and a ground invasion launched at a northern front from Belarus towards Kyiv, a north-eastern front towards Kharkiv, a southern front from Crimea, and a south-eastern front from the Donbas. Putin espoused irredentist views, challenged Ukraine's right to exist, and falsely claimed that Ukraine was governed by neo-Nazis persecuting the ethnic Russian minority. Vladimir Putin announced a "special military operation" to support the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, whose military forces were fighting Ukraine in the Donbas conflict, claiming the goal was to " demilitarise" and " denazify" Ukraine. Prior to the invasion, Russian troops concentrated near Ukraine's borders, as Russian officials denied plans to attack. Extensive environmental damage, widely described as ecocide, contributed to food crises worldwide. More than 8.2 million had fled the country by May 2023, becoming Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II.
By June 2022, about 8 million Ukrainians had been internally displaced. Russian forces have been responsible for mass civilian casualties and for torturing captured Ukrainian soldiers. The invasion has killed tens of thousands on both sides. On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in an escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War which began in 2014.
0 kommentar(er)
