But the Russian invasion of Ukraine was also accelerated by years of mounting tensions. Below are six maps that illustrate the events that led up to this moment.
Since the end of the Cold War, more countries have joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO, pushing the bloc east.
This map shows NATO’s eastward expansion into Europe. Many countries in Western Europe joined before 1991 and the end of the Cold War, while those in the east – including the former Baltic Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – joined in the years that followed.
Putin has indicated that he sees NATO expansion as an existential threat, and the prospect of Ukraine joining the Western military alliance as a “hostile act.” He has stressed that Ukraine believes Ukraine is part of Russia culturally, linguistically and politically, and Russia asked amid recent tensions for guarantees that the European and North American defense alliance would not expand further east.
The United States and NATO have resisted. The alliance’s “open door policy” states that any European country that is willing and willing to honor its membership commitments and obligations is welcome to apply for membership. And since the end of the Cold War, more than a dozen countries from the former Eastern Bloc have joined.
annexing part of Ukraine
In early 2014, massive protests in the Ukrainian capital forced a Russian-backed president out of the country after he refused to sign a landmark political and trade deal with the European Union.
Russia responded by annexing the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, marked in red along the northern Black Sea coast in the map below, and fomenting a separatist insurgency that would take control of part of the Donbas region along Ukraine’s southeastern border with Russia. Russia took over.
Despite a ceasefire agreement in 2015, the two sides have not had a stable peace, and the front line has barely moved since.
Ignited tensions
In the eight years since, Moscow has been accused of waging hybrid warfare against Ukraine, using cyber-attacks, economic pressure and propaganda to cause discord. Those tactics have escalated in recent months, and in early February the US State Department claimed that Putin was preparing a false flag operation to create “a pretext for invasion.”
Those efforts have also manifested themselves on the ground, as can be seen from this map, which illustrates the build-up of the Russian military presence around Ukraine over the past year. Russia has amassed more than 150,000 troops, as well as equipment and artillery, on its doorstep.
As the situation on the border with Ukraine has worsened, NATO has increased the preparedness of its rapid reaction force, while member states put troops on standby and deploy battalions, aircraft and ships to defend member states in the region. The build-up of these assets, seen on this map, includes thousands of US troops deployed to Poland.
Russian invasion
On Feb. 21, Putin said he officially recognized the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DNR and LNR), marked in red on the map below, in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, and ordered the deployment of Russian troops there. the pretense of protection. the locals.
The territory recognized by Putin extended beyond areas controlled by pro-Russian separatists, raising red flags over Russia’s intentions to enter Ukraine.
Hours before dawn on Thursday, February 24, the Russian attack on Ukraine finally began with a series of rocket attacks and the use of long-range artillery. This map shows the locations of reported attacks and explosions as of Thursday evening, including in and around major cities such as the Ukrainian capital Kiev, Kharkiv to the east and Odessa to the south.
Go here for the latest updates on the Russian invasion of Ukraine.