Russo-Ukrainian war (2022–present)

• 1. Introduction

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  The Russo-Ukrainian war, in its current devastating phase, began before dawn on the 24th of February 2022, when Russian president Vladimir Putin announced what he called a "special military operation" against Ukraine. Within minutes, missiles struck targets across the country and ground troops poured in from three directions. It became the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II.

  Putin claimed, without evidence, that the Ukrainian government were neo-Nazis committing genocide against a Russian minority. He said Russia sought to "demilitarise and denazify" Ukraine, and denied that Ukraine had any legitimate claim to statehood. The world had heard denials from Moscow right up to the day before the attack.

  What followed was not the swift collapse Russian planners had envisioned. Ukrainian defenders held Kyiv. Evidence of mass killings emerged after Russian troops withdrew from the suburb of Bucha. A war that Moscow expected to last days stretched into years, grinding through hundreds of thousands of military casualties and tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian deaths. As of May 2026, Russian troops occupied roughly twenty percent of Ukrainian territory, and close to fourteen million Ukrainians had either fled the country or been driven from their homes inside it.

  How did the two countries reach that morning in February? What did Russia actually plan? And what has the fighting looked like on the ground, in the air, and at sea? Those are the threads this documentary will follow.

• 2. Roots of the Conflict

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  After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Russia and Ukraine maintained what observers described as cordial relations. Ukraine agreed in 1994 to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and give up its nuclear weapons. In return, Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom signed the Budapest Memorandum, pledging to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and its borders. Five years later, Russia signed the Charter for European Security, affirming that every country had the right to choose its own security arrangements and to join military alliances. As late as 2005, Putin himself said that if Ukraine wanted to join NATO, Russia would respect that choice.

  The rupture began in 2013. Ukraine's parliament moved to finalise an association agreement with the European Union. Russia pressed Kyiv hard to reject it, imposing economic sanctions. Kremlin adviser Sergei Glazyev warned that September that if Ukraine signed with the EU, Russia would no longer acknowledge Ukraine's borders. In November, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych abruptly withdrew from the agreement, pivoting toward Moscow instead. That reversal set off massive street protests, the Euromaidan movement, which culminated in the Revolution of Dignity in February 2014. Nearly one hundred protesters were shot and killed by police snipers. Yanukovych secretly fled the country despite having signed an agreement to remain, and Ukraine's parliament voted to remove him.

  On the 27th of February 2014, Russian soldiers without insignia began occupying the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, blockading Ukrainian military bases. Russia then annexed Crimea the following month after a referendum held under occupation, which the UN General Assembly rejected as illegitimate. Several scholars compared the annexation to Nazi Germany's annexation of Austria; it was the first time since World War II that a European state had annexed part of another. Armed Russian paramilitaries then seized Sloviansk and other settlements in eastern Ukraine in April 2014, proclaiming the independent Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic. Their commander, Igor Girkin, later acknowledged that this seizure sparked the war in the Donbas, as Ukraine moved to retake the territory.

  Putin began speaking publicly of "Novorossiya," a former Russian imperial territory covering much of southern Ukraine, and analyst Vladimir Socor described Putin's 2014 annexation speech as a "manifesto of Greater-Russia irredentism." Ukraine, which had been officially neutral, voted in December 2014 to revoke that status and seek NATO membership. The Minsk agreements of September 2014 and February 2015 tried to end the Donbas fighting, but ceasefires repeatedly failed, and several political scientists later concluded that the West's restrained response to the 2014 events led Putin to believe a larger invasion would meet little resistance.

• 3. The Road to February 2022

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  A Russian military buildup near Ukraine's borders began in March and April 2021, then resumed more intensively from October 2021 onward, involving forces in both Russia and Belarus. Moscow insisted these were only military exercises. Members of the Russian government, including Putin, denied plans to invade right up until the day before the attack began.

  Meanwhile, Russia's proxy forces in the Donbas launched thousands of attacks on Ukrainian troops throughout 2021. Observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe recorded more than ninety thousand ceasefire violations across that year, the majority in Russian-controlled territory. In July 2021, Putin published an essay titled "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians," arguing that Ukraine was "historically Russian lands" and that there was "no historical basis" for the idea of Ukrainians as a separate nation. Critics accused him of promoting imperialism, historical revisionism, and disinformation.

  In December 2021, Russia delivered an ultimatum to NATO, demanding that the alliance end all activity in its Eastern European member states and permanently ban Ukraine and any former Soviet country from membership. NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg replied that Russia had no veto over whether Ukraine joined and no right to establish a sphere of influence over its neighbours. Several Western analysts suggested that Russia knew its demands would be rejected and was constructing a pretext to invade. Analysts Taras Kuzio and Vladimir Socor agreed that at the time Russia made its decision to invade, Ukraine was more remote from NATO membership than it had been in years, and political scientists Michael McFaul and Robert Person argued that Russia's own occupation of Crimea and the Donbas had already effectively blocked Ukrainian membership.

  French president Emmanuel Macron and German chancellor Olaf Scholz both met Putin in February 2022 to discourage an invasion. Putin told Scholz that Ukraine should not be an independent state. At the Munich Security Conference, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Western powers to end their "appeasement" of Putin and give Ukraine a timeline for NATO membership. On the 17th of February, Russian proxy forces shelled a kindergarten in Ukrainian-held territory and blamed Kyiv; Zelenskyy said his military would not respond to the provocations.

  Intelligence later revealed the scope of Russia's invasion plan. The Royal United Services Institute reported that the plan envisioned defeating Ukraine within ten days, capturing or killing its government, establishing filtration camps, setting up occupation regimes, executing people involved in the Revolution of Dignity, and annexing the country. The decision to invade was reportedly made by Putin and a small circle that included national security adviser Nikolai Patrushev and defence minister Sergei Shoigu.

• 4. The Opening Assault

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  Before five in the morning Kyiv time on the 24th of February 2022, Putin announced the "special military operation." Missiles struck targets across Ukraine within minutes, reaching as far west as Lviv. Russian troops advanced simultaneously from four directions: from Belarus toward western Kyiv, from the northeast toward eastern Kyiv, toward Kharkiv, and from occupied Crimea and Russia's Rostov Oblast toward Mariupol and Odesa. It was the biggest attack on a European country since World War II.

  Zelenskyy declared martial law by video speech the same day and ordered a general mobilisation of all Ukrainian males aged 18 to 60. When the United States contacted Zelenskyy offering to help him flee, lest Russian forces attempt to kidnap or kill him, his response was direct: "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride."

  Russian planners appear to have expected Kyiv to fall within days. It did not. Defenders under General Oleksandr Syrskyi used anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles to thin Russian supply lines and stall the offensive. A Russian convoy reportedly sixty-four kilometres long made little progress toward the capital by early March. Russian forces captured Bucha, Hostomel, and Vorzel by the 5th of March but could not encircle the city. By the 7th of April, Russian troops on the northern front had pulled back to resupply and redeploy to the Donbas, and the Pentagon confirmed their full withdrawal from Chernihiv Oblast shortly after.

  When Ukrainian forces entered Bucha on the 1st of April, they uncovered evidence of war crimes: civilians killed, bodies in the streets. The Bucha massacre, as it became known, drew international condemnation and intensified calls for accountability. On the southern front, Russian forces captured Kherson on the 1st of March, the first major Ukrainian city to fall. They surrounded Mariupol and by the 27th of March, Ukrainian deputy prime minister Olha Stefanishyna said that more than eighty-five percent of the entire city had been destroyed.

  The resistance at the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works became a symbol of the siege. Ukrainian soldiers barricaded inside communicated a plea for a military corridor, saying they expected execution if they surrendered. One deputy commander, Ilia Somolienko, said: "We are basically here dead men. Most of us know this and it's why we fight so fearlessly." After all civilians were evacuated on the 7th of May, two thousand Ukrainian soldiers remained inside, seven hundred of them injured. On the 16th of May, the Ukrainian General Staff announced the garrison had "fulfilled its combat mission." Russia's press secretary Dmitry Peskov said Putin had guaranteed the fighters would be treated in accordance with international standards.

• 5. Artillery, Attrition, and Counterattack

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  By June 2022, the deputy head of Ukraine's security service, Vadym Skibitsky, described the nature of the fight plainly: "This is an artillery war now, and we are losing in terms of artillery. Everything now depends on what the West gives us. Ukraine has one artillery piece to ten to fifteen Russian artillery pieces."

  Russia's summer offensive ground through the Donbas at enormous cost. Luhansk Oblast fell city by city: Lyman in late May, Sievierodonetsk by late June, Lysychansk by the 3rd of July. Russia launched what it called an "eastern assault" across a three-hundred-mile front in April. An anonymous US defence official described Russian progress as "minimal at best."

  Then, on the 6th of September 2022, Ukrainian forces launched a surprise counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast near Balakliia, led by General Syrskyi. Within days, Ukrainian forces had advanced twenty kilometres into Russian-held territory and recaptured approximately four hundred square kilometres. By the 10th of September, photos showed Ukrainian troops raising their flag in Kupiansk, a major railway hub whose capture cut off Russian forces at Izium. The Institute for the Study of War estimated Ukrainian forces had taken approximately two thousand five hundred square kilometres. Reuters reported that Russian positions in northeast Ukraine had "collapsed." By the 15th of September, the UK Ministry of Defence confirmed Russia had lost or withdrawn from almost all positions west of the Oskil river, abandoning high-value military assets.

  In late September 2022, Putin announced a partial mobilisation of three hundred thousand reservists and said Russia would use "all means" to defend itself. Russian-installed officials staged referendums in four partly occupied provinces; on the 30th of September, Putin announced the annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. Ukraine, the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations all denounced the move as illegal. Even as Putin signed the annexation decrees, Ukrainian forces were pushing toward Kherson. On the 9th of November, defence minister Shoigu ordered Russian troops to withdraw from the western bank of the Dnieper. On the 11th of November, Ukrainian troops entered Kherson.

  Through the winter, Russia launched a sustained air campaign against Ukraine's energy grid. On the 15th of November 2022, Russia fired eighty-five missiles at the Ukrainian power grid, causing outages in Kyiv and surrounding regions. Rolling blackouts left millions without power. Iran supplied Russia with Shahed-series drones for these strikes; by October 2022, Ukraine reported that eighty-six Shahed-136 kamikaze drones had been launched in a single period. The Wagner Group's prison battalions, recruited from Russian prisons, were sent in "near suicidal" assaults in Bakhmut. Wagner claimed full control of Bakhmut on the 20th of May 2023, after months of grinding fighting.

• 6. Naval War and Drone Strikes

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  On the 24th of February 2022, Russian Navy ships attacked Snake Island. The guided missile cruiser and flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, along with a patrol boat, bombarded the Ukrainian garrison and ordered it to surrender. The Ukrainians' response became famous: "Russian warship, go fuck yourself!" Russian soldiers landed and took control of the island. Within days, Turkey invoked the 1936 Montreux Convention and sealed off the Bosphorus and Dardanelles straits to Russian warships.

  The most significant naval loss for Russia came on the 13th of April 2022. The cruiser Moskva, flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, was struck by two Ukrainian Neptune anti-ship missiles according to Ukrainian sources and a US senior official. The Russian Defence Ministry acknowledged serious damage, claiming a fire had caused a munition explosion. By the 14th of April, the Moskva had sunk. A US official later confirmed on the 5th of May that American intelligence had assisted in the strike. Russia retaliated by launching missiles at the Luch Design Bureau in Kyiv, the factory where the Neptune missiles were produced.

  Ukraine's attacks on Crimea escalated throughout the war. On the 8th of October 2022, an explosion partially collapsed the Kerch Bridge linking occupied Crimea to Russia. A second explosion struck the bridge on the 17th of July 2023. On the 31st of January 2024, Ukrainian sea drones sank the Russian Tarantul-class corvette Ivanovets in the Black Sea. Two weeks later, sea drones sank the Russian landing ship Tsezar Kunikov. By the 26th of December 2023, Ukraine's air force had destroyed the Russian landing ship Novocherkassk in Feodosia.

  On the 1st of June 2025, Ukraine carried out "Operation Spiderweb," using smuggled drones to strike several Russian air bases deep inside Russian territory. Ukraine said it had damaged or destroyed forty-one high-value aircraft, including strategic bombers. US officials assessed a lower number, saying Ukraine hit twenty planes and destroyed ten. The operation was estimated to have caused billions of dollars in damage to Russian aircraft.

  At sea and against Russian oil production, Ukraine's campaign continued to expand. By late October 2025, an estimated fifty percent of Russia's thirty-eight major refineries had been hit more than once. Ukraine's strikes were estimated to have cut Russian oil production by between ten and fifteen percent, raising domestic fuel prices and creating shortages in some regions. The International Energy Agency stated in September 2025 that Russia's revenues from oil product exports had in August dropped to five-year lows.

• 7. Foreign Forces and International Stakes

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  From January 2022 to January 2024, the Kiel Institute tracked three hundred and eighty billion dollars in aid to Ukraine. The United States provided the most military assistance of any single country and set aside one hundred and seventy-five billion dollars to help Ukraine. Most of that US military aid came from existing reserve stockpiles, and most of the US funding earmarked for Ukraine stayed in the US economy, supporting American defence industries. Estonia and Denmark provided the most military aid measured as a share of their own GDP. Bulgaria supplied Ukraine with over one third of the ammunition it needed in the early phase of the invasion.

  Russia was not fighting alone either. Belarus permitted Russia to stage part of the invasion from its territory and launch missiles into Ukraine; political scientist Matthew Frear considered Belarus a co-combatant. Iran supplied Shahed-series combat drones and, according to a February 2024 Reuters report, ballistic missiles. US and Ukrainian officials said Iranian troops were stationed in Crimea to assist drone operations against Ukrainian civilians and infrastructure. Iran denied sending arms.

  Perhaps the most striking foreign intervention was North Korea's. North Korea supplied Russia with ballistic missiles and launchers. In October 2024, Ukraine and South Korea reported that North Korean engineers had been deployed to the battlefield to help launch these missiles and had suffered casualties. Zelenskyy announced that Ukrainian intelligence believed ten thousand North Korean troops were preparing to join Russian forces.

  The human cost spread far beyond the battlefield. From a pre-war Ukrainian population of about forty-one million, roughly eight million people were internally displaced and six to seven million fled the country entirely, creating Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. Russia's attacks on agriculture and shipping worsened a global food crisis. The International Criminal Court opened an investigation into crimes against humanity, war crimes, abduction of Ukrainian children, and genocide, and issued arrest warrants for Putin and five other Russian officials. The direct cost of the war for Russia was estimated at over four hundred and fifty billion US dollars, while the World Bank Group put the cost of rebuilding Ukraine at five hundred and eighty-eight billion dollars.

  By January 2026, French president Macron said the coalition of willing nations was providing all international military support to Ukraine, with France alone supplying two-thirds of military intelligence. In April 2026, reports emerged that Ukrainian F-16 pilots had trained through a Royal Air Force-led program in the United Kingdom and were being instructed to fly in GPS-denied environments due to Russian electronic warfare.

• 8. The War in 2025 and 2026

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  On the 6th of August 2024, Ukraine launched its first direct offensive into Russian territory since the invasion began, crossing into Kursk Oblast. The main thrust aimed at Sudzha, ten kilometres from the border, which Zelenskyy reported captured on the 15th of August. Ukraine quickly seized territory in the opening days, taking advantage of thin Russian defences along the border. The incursion forced Russia to divert thousands of troops away from occupied Ukrainian territory. Despite repeated deadlines Putin set to expel Ukrainian forces, they had not been pushed out by the end of January 2025. However, by the summer of 2025, Ukrainian forces had been mostly repelled from the area.

  On the Ukrainian front, Russian advances through late 2024 and into 2025 were slow but persistent. Vuhledar, with a pre-war population of about fourteen thousand, fell on the 1st of October 2024 and was described as a "sprawling ruin." Ukrainian Major General Dmytro Marchenko was reported in late October 2024 to have said "our front has crumbled," citing a dwindling ammunition supply, recruitment problems, and poor leadership. More than one hundred thousand criminal cases for desertion were initiated by the end of November 2024, according to the Prosecutor General's Office. Russia captured the city of Kurakhove in late December 2024, and by early 2026 reportedly captured Pokrovsk, Myrnohrad, and Huliaipole.

  June 2025 saw the highest civilian casualty count in Ukraine in a single month since the invasion began: two hundred and thirty-two killed and one thousand three hundred and forty-three injured. Russia killed at least twenty-one civilians, including children, in a single overnight strike on the 27th and the 28th of August 2025, damaging European diplomatic facilities alongside civilian infrastructure.

  Early 2026 brought Ukraine its largest battlefield gains in over two and a half years, excluding the Kursk offensive. According to data from the Institute for the Study of War, Ukraine retook over two hundred square kilometres between the 11th and the 15th of February 2026. The advance coincided with Russian forces losing access to Starlink, causing communication failures compounded by the Russian government cutting access to Telegram. Western officials said that for the first time since the invasion, Russia was suffering more casualties than it could replace with new recruits. In mid-May 2026, Russia launched one of the largest combined aerial assaults of the war against Kyiv and other cities; in Kyiv a residential building was destroyed, killing twenty-four people. Despite these setbacks on both sides, peace negotiations remained stalled, and Russia continued to refuse all calls for a ceasefire.