The Russian invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February 2022 when, after a decade of destabilizing Ukraine through the annexation of the Crimea, the creation of the Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic in the Donbas region, and the dispatching of "volunteers" to aid the separatists in the Donbas War, the Russian Federation launched an all-out invasion of Ukraine. The ensuing war killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions more.
In the years following the Euromaidan revolution of 2014, Ukraine fell out of the Russian orbit and became a pro-Western democracy. In December 2021, Russia demanded that Ukraine make a legally binding promise to never join NATO, threatening a military response if those demands were not met. NATO refused to guarantee that Ukraine would never become a member, and the United States promised swift and severe sanctions in the event of a Russian invasion. As the crisis escalated, Russia massed troops near Ukraine's borders and, on 21 February 2022, recognized the DPR and LPR puppet regimes in eastern Ukraine. Russian troops moved into the "people's republics" on 22 February as those regimes evacuated their civilians, accusing Ukraine of plotting to commit a genocide against Russian-speakers in the Donbas. On 24 February, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced the start of a "special military operation" to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine.
As the Russian Air Force struck major cities, a ground invasion from Belarus targeted Kyiv, a southern front from Crimea drove north, and an eastern front opened along the DPR and LPR borders. Ukraine enacted martial law, ordered a general mobilization, and severed diplomatic relations with Russia. Fierce Ukrainian resistance checked Russia's advance on Kyiv by April 2022, and Russian logistical challenges hampered their invasion. As the Russians withdrew, they left evidence of several atrocities in their wake. In the southeast, the Russians launched an offensive in the Donbas and captured Mariupol. As stalemate set in along the front lines, Russia bombed military and civilian targets far from the front and targeted Ukraine's energy grid with airstrikes during the winter months. In late 2022, Ukraine launched successful counteroffensives that liberated most of Kharkiv Oblast and the city of Kherson. On 30 September 2022, however, Russia announced the annexation of the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye Oblast, and Kherson Oblast and ordered a partial mobilization to defend these territories. A June 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive failed to break through the well-prepared Russian defensive lines, but, aiming to break the stalemate and divert Russia's attention from the Donbas, Ukraine gambled on an invasion of Russia's Kursk Oblast in the second half of 2024.
Russia was supported in its invasion by authoritarian regimes in Iran, Belarus, and North Korea, with Iran providing drones, Belarus hosting Russian military forces, and North Korea providing 11,000 troops to help defend Kursk Oblast. Terror groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis provided small contingents to aid the Russians, while 2,000 Syrian Arab Army soldiers were deployed to aid the Russian invaders. Ukraine received substantial material and financial support from NATO and other Western countries, and the Baltic states and Poland declared Russia a "terrorist state." By November 2024, Western nations' authorization of Ukraine's use of their missiles against Russia resulted in increased nuclear risk as Russia revised its nuclear code to authorize nuclear strikes on Western countries supporting the non-nuclear Ukraine.
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