about russia and ukraine war essay in english

On February 24, 2022, the world watched in horror as Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, inciting the largest war in Europe since World War II. In the months prior, Western intelligence had warned that the attack was imminent, amidst a concerning build-up of military force on Ukraine’s borders. The intelligence was correct: Putin initiated a so-called “special military operation” under the  pretense  of securing Ukraine’s eastern territories and “liberating” Ukraine from allegedly “Nazi” leadership (the Jewish identity of Ukraine’s president notwithstanding). 

Once the invasion started, Western analysts predicted Kyiv would fall in three days. This intelligence could not have been more wrong. Kyiv not only lasted those three days, but it also eventually gained an upper hand, liberating territories Russia had conquered and handing Russia humiliating defeats on the battlefield. Ukraine has endured unthinkable atrocities: mass civilian deaths, infrastructure destruction, torture, kidnapping of children, and relentless shelling of residential areas. But Ukraine persists.

With support from European and US allies, Ukrainians mobilized, self-organized, and responded with bravery and agility that evoked an almost unified global response to rally to their cause and admire their tenacity. Despite the David-vs-Goliath dynamic of this war, Ukraine had gained significant experience since  fighting broke out  in its eastern territories following the  Euromaidan Revolution in 2014 . In that year, Russian-backed separatists fought for control over the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the Donbas, the area of Ukraine that Russia later claimed was its priority when its attack on Kyiv failed. Also in 2014, Russia illegally annexed Crimea, the historical homeland of indigenous populations that became part of Ukraine in 1954. Ukraine was unprepared to resist, and international condemnation did little to affect Russia’s actions.

In the eight years between 2014 and 2022, Ukraine sustained heavy losses in the fight over eastern Ukraine: there were over  14,000 conflict-related casualties  and the fighting displaced  1.5 million people . Russia encountered a very different Ukraine in 2022, one that had developed its military capabilities and fine-tuned its extensive and powerful civil society networks after nearly a decade of conflict. Thus, Ukraine, although still dwarfed in  comparison  with  Russia’s GDP  ( $536 billion vs. $4.08 trillion ), population ( 43 million vs. 142 million ), and  military might  ( 500,000 vs. 1,330,900 personnel ;  312 vs. 4,182 aircraft ;  1,890 vs. 12,566 tanks ;  0 vs. 5,977 nuclear warheads ), was ready to fight for its freedom and its homeland.  Russia managed to control  up to  22% of Ukraine’s territory  at the peak of its invasion in March 2022 and still holds 17% (up from the 7% controlled by Russia and Russian-backed separatists  before the full-scale invasion ), but Kyiv still stands and Ukraine as a whole has never been more unified.

The Numbers

Source: OCHA & Humanitarian Partners

Civilians Killed

Source: Oct 20, 2023 | OHCHR

Ukrainian Refugees in Europe

Source: Jul 24, 2023 | UNHCR

Internally Displaced People

Source: May 25, 2023 | IOM

As It Happened

During the prelude to Russia’s full-scale invasion, HURI collated information answering key questions and tracing developments. A daily digest from the first few days of war documents reporting on the invasion as it unfolded.

Frequently Asked Questions

Russians and Ukrainians are not the same people. The territories that make up modern-day Russia and Ukraine have been contested throughout history, so in the past, parts of Ukraine were part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Other parts of Ukraine were once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Republic of Poland, among others. During the Russian imperial and Soviet periods, policies from Moscow pushed the Russian language and culture in Ukraine, resulting in a largely bilingual country in which nearly everyone in Ukraine speaks both Ukrainian and Russian. Ukraine was tightly connected to the Russian cultural, economic, and political spheres when it was part of the Soviet Union, but the Ukrainian language, cultural, and political structures always existed in spite of Soviet efforts to repress them. When Ukraine became independent in 1991, everyone living on the territory of what is now Ukraine became a citizen of the new country (this is why Ukraine is known as a civic nation instead of an ethnic one). This included a large number of people who came from Russian ethnic backgrounds, especially living in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, as well as Russian speakers living across the country. 

See also:  Timothy Snyder’s overview of Ukraine’s history.

Relevant Sources:

Plokhy, Serhii. “ Russia and Ukraine: Did They Reunite in 1654 ,” in  The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present  (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2021). (Open access online)

Plokhy, Serhii. “ The Russian Question ,” in  The Frontline: Essays on Ukraine’s Past and Present  (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 2021). (Open access online)

Ševčenko, Ihor.  Ukraine between East and West: Essays on Cultural History to the Early Eighteenth Century  (2nd, revised ed.) (Toronto: CIUS Press, 2009).

“ Ukraine w/ Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon  (#221).” Interview on  The Road to Now   with host Benjamin Sawyer. (Historian Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon joins Ben to talk about the key historical events that have shaped Ukraine and its place in the world today.) January 31, 2022.

Portnov, Andrii. “ Nothing New in the East? What the West Overlooked – Or Ignored ,” TRAFO Blog for Transregional Research. July 26, 2022. Note:  The German-language version of this text was published in:  Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte , 28–29/2022, 11 July 2022, pp. 16–20, and was republished by  TRAFO Blog . Translation into English was done by Natasha Klimenko.

Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for the protection of its territorial sovereignty in the Budapest Memorandum.

But in 2014, Russian troops occupied the peninsula of Crimea, held an illegal referendum, and claimed the territory for the Russian Federation. The muted international response to this clear violation of sovereignty helped motivate separatist groups in Donetsk and Luhansk regions—with Russian support—to declare secession from Ukraine, presumably with the hopes that a similar annexation and referendum would take place. Instead, this prompted a war that continues to this day—separatist paramilitaries are backed by Russian troops, equipment, and funding, fighting against an increasingly well-armed and experienced Ukrainian army. 

Ukrainian leaders (and many Ukrainian citizens) see membership in NATO as a way to protect their country’s sovereignty, continue building its democracy, and avoid another violation like the annexation of Crimea. With an aggressive, authoritarian neighbor to Ukraine’s east, and with these recurring threats of a new invasion, Ukraine does not have the choice of neutrality. Leaders have made clear that they do not want Ukraine to be subjected to Russian interference and dominance in any sphere, so they hope that entering into NATO’s protective sphere–either now or in the future–can counterbalance Russian threats.

“ Ukraine got a signed commitment in 1994 to ensure its security – but can the US and allies stop Putin’s aggression now? ” Lee Feinstein and Mariana Budjeryn.  The Conversation , January 21, 2022.

“ Ukraine Gave Up a Giant Nuclear Arsenal 30 Years Ago. Today There Are Regrets. ” William J. Broad.  The New York Times , February 5, 2022. Includes quotes from Mariana Budjeryn (Harvard) and Steven Pifer (former Ambassador, now Stanford)

What is the role of regionalism in Ukrainian politics? Can the conflict be boiled down to antagonism between an eastern part of the country that is pro-Russia and a western part that is pro-West?

Ukraine is often viewed as a dualistic country, divided down the middle by the Dnipro river. The western part of the country is often associated with the Ukrainian language and culture, and because of this, it is often considered the heart of its nationalist movement. The eastern part of Ukraine has historically been more Russian-speaking, and its industry-based economy has been entwined with Russia. While these features are not untrue, in reality,  regionalism is not definitive in predicting people’s attitudes toward Russia, Europe, and Ukraine’s future.  It’s important to remember that every  oblast  (region) in Ukraine voted for independence in 1991, including Crimea. 

Much of the current perception about eastern regions of Ukraine, including the territories of Donetsk and Luhansk that are occupied by separatists and Russian forces, is that they are pro-Russia and wish to be united with modern-day Russia. In the early post-independence period, these regions were the sites of the consolidation of power by oligarchs profiting from the privatization of Soviet industries–people like future president Viktor Yanukovych–who did see Ukraine’s future as integrated with Russia. However, the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests changed the role of people like Yanukovych. Protesters in Kyiv demanded the president’s resignation and, in February 2014, rose up against him and his Party of Regions, ultimately removing them from power. Importantly, pro-Euromaidan protests took place across Ukraine, including all over the eastern regions of the country and in Crimea. 

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Russia, One Year After the Invasion of Ukraine

By Keith Gessen

A year ago, in January, I went to Moscow to learn what I could about the coming war—chiefly, whether it would happen. I spoke with journalists and think tankers and people who seemed to know what the authorities were up to. I walked around Moscow and did some shopping. I stayed with my aunt near the botanical garden. Fresh white snow lay on the ground, and little kids walked with their moms to go sledding. Everyone was certain that there would be no war.

I had immigrated to the U.S. as a child, in the early eighties. Since the mid-nineties, I’d been coming back to Moscow about once a year. During that time, the city kept getting nicer, and the political situation kept getting worse. It was as if, in Russia, more prosperity meant less freedom. In the nineteen-nineties, Moscow was chaotic, crowded, dirty, and poor, but you could buy half a dozen newspapers on every corner that would denounce the war in Chechnya and call on Boris Yeltsin to resign. Nothing was holy, and everything was permitted. Twenty-five years later, Moscow was clean, tidy, and rich; you could get fresh pastries on every corner. You could also get prosecuted for something you said on Facebook. One of my friends had recently spent ten days in jail for protesting new construction in his neighborhood. He said that he met a lot of interesting people.

The material prosperity seemed to point away from war; the political repression, toward it. Outside of Moscow, things were less comfortable, and outside of Russia the Kremlin had in recent years become more aggressive. It had annexed Crimea , supported an insurgency in eastern Ukraine , propped up the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, interfered in the U.S. Presidential election. But internally the situation was stagnant: the same people in charge, the same rhetoric about the West, the same ideological mishmash of Soviet nostalgia , Russian Orthodoxy , and conspicuous consumption. In 2021, Vladimir Putin had changed the constitution so that he could stay in power, if he wanted, until 2036. The comparison people made most often was to the Brezhnev years—what Leonid Brezhnev himself had called the era of “developed socialism.” This was the era of developed Putinism. Most people did not expect any sudden moves.

My friends in Moscow were doing their best to wrap their minds around the contradictions. Alexander Baunov, a journalist and political analyst, was then at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank. We met in his cozy apartment, overlooking a typical Moscow courtyard—a small copse of trees and parked cars, all covered lovingly in a fresh layer of snow. Baunov thought that a war was possible. There was a growing sense among the Russian élite that the results of the Cold War needed to be revisited. The West continued to treat Russia as if it had lost—expanding NATO to its borders and dealing with Russia, in the context of things like E.U. expansion, as being no more important or powerful than the Baltic states or Ukraine—but it was the Soviet Union that had lost, not Russia. Putin, in particular, felt unfairly treated. “Gorbachev lost the Cold War,” Baunov said. “Maybe Yeltsin lost the Cold War. But not Putin. Putin has only ever won. He won in Chechnya, he won in Georgia, he won in Syria. So why does he continue to be treated like a loser?” Barack Obama referred to his country as a mere “regional power”; despite hosting a fabulous Olympics, Russia was sanctioned in 2014 for invading Ukraine, and sanctioned again, a few years later, for interfering in the U.S. Presidential elections. It was the sort of thing that the United States got away with all the time. But Russia got punished. It was insulting.

At the same time, Baunov thought that an actual war seemed unlikely. Ukraine was not only supposedly an organic part of Russia, it was also a key element of the Russian state’s mythology around the Second World War. The regime had invested so much energy into commemorating the victory over fascism; to turn around and then bomb Kyiv and Kharkiv, just as the fascists had once done, would stretch the borders of irony too far. And Putin, for all his bluster, was actually pretty cautious. He never started a fight he wasn’t sure he could win. Initiating a war with a NATO -backed Ukraine could be dangerous; it could lead to unpredictable consequences. It could lead to instability, and stability was the one thing that Putin had delivered to Russians over the past twenty years.

For liberals, it was increasingly a period of accommodation and consolidation. Another friend, whom I’ll call Kolya, had left his job writing life-style pieces for an independent Web site a few years earlier, as the Kremlin’s media policy grew increasingly meddlesome. Kolya accepted an offer to write pieces on social themes for a government outlet. This was far better, and clearer: he knew what topics to stay away from, and the pay was good.

I visited Kolya at his place near Patriarch’s Ponds. He had married into a family that had once been part of the Soviet nomenklatura, and he and his wife had inherited an apartment in a handsome nineteen-sixties Party building in the city center. From Kolya’s balcony you could see Brezhnev’s old apartment. You could tell it was Brezhnev’s because the windows were bigger than the surrounding ones. As for Kolya’s apartment, it was smaller than other apartments in his building. The reason was that the apartment next to his had once belonged to a Soviet war hero, and the war hero, of course, needed the building’s largest apartment, so his had been expanded, long ago, at the expense of Kolya’s. Still, it was a very nice apartment, with enormously high ceilings and lots of light.

Kolya was closely following the situation around Alexey Navalny , who had returned to Russia and been imprisoned a year before. Navalny was slowly being tortured to death in prison, and yet his team of investigators and activists continued to publish exposés of Russian officials’ corruption. There was still some real journalistic work being done in Russia, though a number of outlets, such as the news site Meduza, were primarily operating from abroad. Kolya said that he worried about outright censorship, but also about self-censorship. He told me about journalists who had left the field. One had gone to work in communications for a large bank. Another was now working on elections—“and not in a good way.” The noose was tightening, and yet no one thought there’d be a war.

What is one to make, in retrospect, of what happened to Russia between December, 1991, when its President, Boris Yeltsin, signed an agreement with the leaders of Ukraine and Belarus to disband the U.S.S.R., and February 24, 2022, when Yeltsin’s hand-picked successor, Vladimir Putin, ordered his troops, some of whom were stationed in Belarus, to invade Ukraine from the east, the south, and the north? There are many competing explanations. Some say that the economic and political reforms which were promised in the nineteen-nineties never actually happened; others that they happened too quickly. Some say that Russia was not prepared for democracy; others that the West was not prepared for a democratic Russia. Some say that it was all Putin’s fault, for destroying independent political life; others that it was Yeltsin’s, for failing to take advantage of Russia’s brief period of freedom; still others say that it was Mikhail Gorbachev’s, for so carelessly and naïvely destroying the U.S.S.R.

When Gorbachev began dismantling the empire, one of his most resonant phrases had been “We can’t go on living like this.” By “this” he meant poverty, and violence, and lies. Gorbachev also spoke of trying to build a “normal, modern country”—a country that did not invade its neighbors (as the U.S.S.R. had done to Afghanistan), or spend massive amounts of its budget on the military, but instead engaged in trade and tried to let people lead their lives. A few years later, Yeltsin used the same language of normality and meant, roughly, the same thing.

The question of whether Russia ever became a “normal” country has been hotly debated in political science. A famous 2004 article in Foreign Affairs , by the economist Andrei Shleifer and the political scientist Daniel Treisman, was called, simply, “A Normal Country.” Writing during an ebb in American interest in Russia, as Putin was consolidating his control of the country but before he started acting more aggressively toward his neighbors, Shleifer and Treisman argued that what looked like Russia’s poor performance as a democracy was just about average for a country with its level of income and development. For some time after 2004, there was reason to think that rising living standards, travel, and iPhones would do the work that lectures from Western politicians had failed to do—that modernity itself would make Russia a place where people went about their business and raised their families, and the government did not send them to die for no good reason on foreign soil.

That is not what happened. The oil and gas boom of the last two decades created for many Russians a level of prosperity that would have been unthinkable in Soviet times. Despite this, the violence and the lies persisted.

Alexander Baunov calls what happened in February of last year a putsch—the capture of the state by a clique bent on its own imperial projects and survival. “Just because the people carrying it out are the ones in power, does not make it less of a putsch,” Baunov told me recently. “There was no demand for this in Russian society.” Many Russians have, perhaps, accepted the war; they have sent their sons and husbands to die in it; but it was not anything that people were clamoring for. The capture of Crimea had been celebrated, but no one except the most marginal nationalists was calling for something similar to happen to Kherson or Zaporizhzhia, or even really the Donbas. As Volodymyr Zelensky said in his address to the Russian people on the eve of the war, Donetsk and Luhansk to most Russians were just words. Whereas for Ukrainians, he added, “this is our land. This is our history.” It was their home.

About half of the people I met with in Moscow last January are no longer there —one is in France, another in Latvia, my aunt is in Tel Aviv. My friend Kolya, whose apartment is across from Brezhnev’s, has remained in Moscow. He does not know English, he and his wife have a little kid and two elderly parents between them, and it’s just not clear what they would do abroad. Kolya says that, insofar as he’s able, he has stopped talking to people at work: “They are decent people on the whole but it’s not a situation anymore where it’s possible to talk in half-tones.” No one has asked him to write about or in support of the war, and his superiors have even said that if he gets mobilized they will try to get him out of it.

When we met last January, Alexander Baunov did not think that he would leave Russia, even if things got worse. “Social capital does not cross borders,” Baunov said. “And that’s the only capital we have.” But, just a few days after the war began, Baunov and his partner packed some bags and some books and flew to Dubai, then Belgrade, then Vienna, where Baunov had a fellowship. They have been flitting around the world, in a precarious visa situation, ever since. (A book that Baunov has been working on for several years, about twentieth-century dictatorships in Portugal, Spain, and Greece, came out last month; it is called “The End of the Regime.”)

I asked him why it was possible for him to live in Russia before the invasion, and why it was impossible to do so after it. He admitted that from afar it could look like a distinction without a difference. “If you’re in the Western information space and have been reading for twenty years about how Putin is a dictator, maybe it makes no sense,” Baunov said. “But from inside the difference was very clear.” Putin had been running a particular kind of dictatorship—a relatively restrained one. There were certain topics that you needed to stay away from and names you couldn’t mention, and, if you really threw down the gauntlet, the regime might well try to kill you. But for most people life was tolerable. You could color inside the lines, urge reforms and wiser governance, and hope for better days. After the invasion, that was no longer possible. The government passed laws threatening up to fifteen years’ imprisonment for speech that was deemed defamatory to the armed forces; the use of the word “war” instead of “special military operation” fell under this category. The remaining independent outlets—most notably the radio station Ekho Moskvy and the newspaper Novaya Gazeta —were forced to suspend operations. That happened quickly, in the first weeks of the war, and since then the restrictions have only increased; Carnegie Moscow Center, which had been operating in Russia since 1994, was forced to close in April.

I asked Baunov how long he thought it would be before he returned to Russia. He said that he didn’t know, but it was possible that he would never return. There was no going back to February 23rd—not for him, not for Russia, and especially not for the Putin regime. “The country has undergone a moral catastrophe,” Baunov said. “Going back, in the future, would mean living with people who supported this catastrophe; who think they had taken part in a great project; who are proud of their participation in it.”

If once, in the Kremlin, there had been an ongoing argument between mildly pro-Western liberals and resolutely anti-Western conservatives, that argument is over. The liberals have lost. According to Baunov, there remains a small group of technocrats who would prefer something short of all-out war. “It’s not a party of peace, but you could call it the Party of peaceful life,” he said. “It’s people who want to ride in electric buses and dress well.” But it is on its heels. And though it was hard for Baunov to imagine Russia going back to the Soviet era, and even the Stalinist era, the country was already some way there. There was the search for internal enemies, the drawing up of lists, the public calls for ever harsher measures. On the day that we spoke, in late January, the news site Meduza was branded an “undesirable organization.” This meant that anyone publicly sharing their work could, in theory, be subject to criminal prosecution.

Baunov fears that there is room for things to get much worse. He recalled how, on January 22, 1905—Bloody Sunday—the tsar’s forces fired on peaceful demonstrators in St. Petersburg, precipitating a revolutionary crisis. “A few tens of people were shot and it was a major event,” he said. “A few years later, thousands of people were being shot and it wasn’t even notable.” The intervening years had seen Russia engaged in a major European war, and society’s tolerance for violence had drastically increased. “The room for experimentation on a population is almost limitless,” Baunov went on. “China went through the Cultural Revolution, and survived. Russia went through the Gulags and survived. Repressions decrease society’s willingness to resist.” That’s why governments use them.

For years after the Soviet collapse, it had seemed, to some, as if the Soviet era had been a bad dream, a deviation. Economists wrote studies tracing the likely development of the Russian economy after 1913 if war and revolution had not intervened. Part of the post-Soviet project, including Putin’s, was to restore some of the cultural ties that had been severed by the Soviets—to resurrect churches that the Bolsheviks had turned into bus stations, to repair old buildings that the Soviets had neglected, to give respect to various political figures from the past (Tsar Alexander III, for example).

But what if it was the post-Soviet period that was the exception? “It’s been a long time since the Kingdom of Novgorod,” in the words of the historian Stephen Kotkin . Before the Revolution, the Russian Empire, too, had been one of the most repressive regimes in Europe. Jews were kept in the Pale of Settlement. You needed the tsar’s permission to travel abroad. Much of the population, just a couple of generations away from serfdom, lived in abject poverty. The Soviets cancelled some of these laws, but added others. Aside from short bursts of freedom here and there, the story of Russia was the story of unceasing government destruction of people’s lives.

So which was the illusion: the peaceful Russia or the violent one, the Russia that trades and slowly prospers, or the one that brings only lies and threats and death?

Russia has given us Putin, but it has also given us all the people who stood up to Putin. The Party of peaceful life, as Baunov called it, was not winning, but at least, so far, it has not lost; all the time, people continue to get imprisoned for speaking out against the war. I was reminded of my friend Kolya—in the weeks after the war began, as Western sanctions were announced and prices began rising, he was one of the thousands of Russians who rushed out to make last-minute purchases. It was a way of taking some control of his destiny at a moment when things seemed dangerously out of control. As the Russian Army attempted and failed to take Kyiv , Kolya and his wife bought some chairs. ♦

More on the War in Ukraine

How Ukrainians saved their capital .

A historian envisions a settlement among Russia, Ukraine, and the West .

How Russia’s latest commander in Ukraine could change the war .

The profound defiance of daily life in Kyiv .

The Ukraine crackup in the G.O.P.

A filmmaker’s journey to the heart of the war .

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A personal reflection on a nation's dream of independence and the nightmare Vladimir Putin has visited upon it.

Chrystia freeland.

May 12, 2015

O n March 24 last year, I was in my Toronto kitchen preparing school lunches for my kids when I learned from my Twitter feed that I had been put on the Kremlin's list of Westerners who were banned from Russia. This was part of Russia's retaliation for the sanctions the United States and its allies had slapped on Vladimir Putin's associates after his military intervention in Ukraine.

For the rest of my grandparents' lives, they saw themselves as political exiles with a responsibility to keep alive the idea of an independent Ukraine.

Four days earlier, nine people from the U.S. had been similarly blacklisted, including John Boehner, the speaker of the House of Representatives, Harry Reid, then the majority leader of the Senate, and three other senators: John McCain, a long-time critic of Putin, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, and Dan Coats of Indiana, a former U.S. ambassador to Germany. “While I'm disappointed that I won't be able to go on vacation with my family in Siberia this summer,” Coats wisecracked, “I am honored to be on this list.”

I, however, was genuinely sad to be barred from Russia. I think of myself as a Russophile. I speak the language and studied the nation's literature and history in college. I loved living in Moscow in the mid-nineties as bureau chief for the Financial Times and have made a point of returning regularly over the subsequent fifteen years.

Speaking in #Toronto today, we must continue to support the Maidan & a democratic #Ukraine . pic.twitter.com/c6r2K63GDO — Chrystia Freeland (@cafreeland) February 23, 2014

I'm also a proud member of the Ukrainian-Canadian community. My maternal grandparents fled western Ukraine after Hitler and Stalin signed their non-aggression pact in 1939. They never dared to go back, but they stayed in close touch with their brothers and sisters and their families, who remained behind. For the rest of my grandparents' lives, they saw themselves as political exiles with a responsibility to keep alive the idea of an independent Ukraine, which had last existed, briefly, during and after the chaos of the 1917 Russian Revolution. That dream persisted into the next generation, and in some cases the generation after that.

My late mother moved back to her parents' homeland in the 1990s when Ukraine and Russia, along with the thirteen other former Soviet republics, became independent states. Drawing on her experience as a lawyer in Canada, she served as executive officer of the Ukrainian Legal Foundation, an NGO she helped to found.

My mother was born in a refugee camp in Germany before the family immigrated to western Canada. They were able to get visas thanks to my grandfather's older sister, who had immigrated between the wars. Her generation, and an earlier wave of Ukrainian settlers, had been actively recruited by successive Canadian governments keen to populate the vast prairies of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta.

Today, Canada's Ukrainian community, which is 1.25 million-strong, is significantly larger as a percentage of total population than the one in the United States, which is why it is also a far more significant political force. And that in turn probably accounts for the fact that while there were no Ukrainian-Americans on the Kremlin's blacklist, four of the thirteen Canadians singled out were of Ukrainian extraction: in addition to myself, my fellow Member of Parliament James Bezan, Senator Raynell Andreychuk, and Paul Grod, who has no national elective role, but is head of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress.

Until March of last year, none of this prevented my getting a Russian visa. I was, on several occasions, invited to moderate panels at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, the Kremlin's version of the World Economic Forum in Davos. Then, in 2013, Medvedev agreed to let me interview him in an off-the-record briefing for media leaders at the real Davos annual meeting.

That turned out to be the last year when Russia, despite its leadership's increasingly despotic and xenophobic tendencies, was still, along with the major Western democracies and Japan, a member in good standing of the G-8. Russia in those days was also part of the elite global group Goldman Sachs had dubbed the BRICs — the acronym stands for Brazil, Russia, India, and China — the emerging market powerhouses that were expected to drive the world economy forward. Putin was counting on the $50 billion extravaganza of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics to further solidify Russia's position at the high table of the international community.

President Viktor Yanukovych's flight from Ukraine in the face of the Maidan uprising, which took place on the eve of the closing day of those Winter Games, astonished and enraged Putin. In his pique, as Putin proudly recalled in a March 2015 Russian government television film, he responded by ordering the takeover of Crimea after an all-night meeting. That occurred at dawn on the morning of February 23, 2014, the finale of the Sochi Olympics. The war of aggression, occupation, and annexation that followed turned out to be the grim beginning of a new era, and what might be the start of a new cold war, or worse.

Putin's Big Lie

Chapter 1: putin's big lie.

T he crisis that burst into the news a year-and-a-half ago has often been explained as Putin's exploitation of divisions between the mainly Russian-speaking majority of Ukrainians in the eastern and southern regions of the country, and the mainly Ukrainian-speaking majority in the west and center. Russian is roughly as different from Ukrainian as Spanish is from Italian.

Russian is roughly as different from Ukrainian as Spanish is from Italian.

While the linguistic factor is real, it is often oversimplified in several respects: Russian-speakers are by no means all pro-Putin or secessionist; Russian- and Ukrainian-speakers are geographically commingled; and virtually everyone in Ukraine has at least a passive understanding of both languages. To make matters more complicated, Russian is the first language of many ethnic Ukrainians, who are 78 percent of the population (but even that category is blurry, because many people in Ukraine have both Ukrainian and Russian roots). President Petro Poroshenko is an example — he always understood Ukrainian, but learned to speak it only in 1996, after being elected to Parliament; and Russian remains the domestic language of the Poroshenko family. The same is true in the home of Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Ukraine's prime minister. The best literary account of the Maidan uprising to date was written in Russian: Ukraine Diaries , by Andrey Kurkov, the Russian-born, ethnic Russian novelist, who lives in Kyiv .

Being a Russian-speaker in Ukraine does not automatically imply a yearning for subordination to the Kremlin any more than speaking English in Ireland or Scotland means support for a political union with England.

In this last respect, my own family is, once again, quite typical. My maternal grandmother, born into a family of Orthodox clerics in central Ukraine, grew up speaking Russian and Ukrainian. Ukrainian was the main language of the family refuge she eventually found in Canada, but she and my grandfather spoke Ukrainian and Russian as well as Polish interchangeably and with equal fluency. When they told stories, it was natural for them to quote each character in his or her original language. I do the same thing today with Ukrainian and English, my mother having raised me to speak both languages, as I in turn have done with my three children.

In short, being a Russian-speaker in Ukraine does not automatically imply a yearning for subordination to the Kremlin any more than speaking English in Ireland or Scotland means support for a political union with England. As Kurkov writes in his Diaries : “I am a Russian myself, after all, an ethnically Russian citizen of Ukraine. But I am not 'a Russian,' because I have nothing in common with Russia and its politics. I do not have Russian citizenship and I do not want it.”

That said, it's true that people on both sides of the political divide have tried to declare their allegiances through the vehicle of language. Immediately after the overthrow and self-exile of Yanukovych, radical nationalists in Parliament passed a law making Ukrainian the sole national language — a self-destructive political gesture and a gratuitous insult to a large body of the population.

However, the contentious language bill was never signed into law by the acting president. Many civic-minded citizens also resisted such polarizing moves. As though to make amends for Parliament's action, within 72 hours the people of Lviv, the capital of the Ukrainian-speaking west, held a Russian-speaking day, in which the whole city made a symbolic point of shifting to the country's other language.

Russians see Ukraine as the cradle of their civilization. Even the name came from there: the vast empire of the czars evolved from Kyivan Rus , a loose federation of Slavic tribes in the Middle Ages.

Less than two weeks after the language measure was enacted it was rescinded, though not before Putin had the chance to make considerable hay out of it.

The blurring of linguistic and ethnic identities reflects the geographic and historic ties between Ukraine and Russia. But that affinity has also bred, among many in Russia, a deep-seated antipathy to the very idea of a truly independent and sovereign Ukrainian state.

The ties that bind are also contemporary and personal. Two Soviet leaders — Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev — not only spent their early years in Ukraine but spoke Russian with a distinct Ukrainian accent. This historic connectedness is one reason why their post-Soviet successor, Vladimir Putin, has been able to build such wide popular support in Russia for championing — and, as he is now trying to do, recreating — “Novorossiya” (New Russia) in Ukraine.

Many Russians have themselves been duped into viewing Washington, London, and Berlin as puppet-masters attempting to destroy Russia.

In selling his revanchist policy to the Russian public, Putin has depicted Ukrainians who cherish their independence and want to join Europe and embrace the Western democratic values it represents as, at best, pawns and dupes of NATO — or, at worst, neo-Nazis. As a result, many Russians have themselves been duped into viewing Washington, London, and Berlin as puppet-masters attempting to destroy Russia.

Click here to learn more about the linguistic kinship

The linguistic kinship between Russian and Ukrainian has been an advantage to some, Freeland explains, but the familiarity has also caused problems.

For individual Ukrainians, though less often for the country as whole, this linguistic kinship has sometimes been an advantage. Nikolai Gogol, known to Ukrainians as Mykola Hohol, was the son of prosperous Ukrainian gentleman farmer. His first works were in Ukrainian, and he often wrote about Ukraine. But he entered the international literary canon as a Russian writer, a feat he is unlikely to have accomplished had Dead Souls been written in his native language. Many ethnic Ukrainians were likewise successful in the Soviet nomenklatura, where these so-called “younger brothers” of the ruling Russians had a trusted and privileged place, comparable to the role of Scots in the British Empire.

But familiarity can also breed contempt. Russia's perceived kinship with Ukrainians often slipped into an attempt to eradicate them. These have ranged from Tsar Alexander II's 1876 Ems Ukaz , which banned the use of Ukrainian in print, on the stage or in public lectures and the 1863 Valuev ukaz which asserted that “the Ukrainian language has never existed, does not exist, and cannot exist,” to Stalin's genocidal famine in the 1930s.

This subterfuge is, arguably, Putin's single most dramatic resort to the Soviet tactic of the Big Lie. Through his virtual monopoly of the Russian media, Putin has airbrushed away the truth of what happened a quarter of a century ago: the dissolution of the USSR was the result not of Western manipulation but of the failings of the Soviet state, combined with the initiatives of Soviet reformist leaders who had widespread backing from their citizens. Moreover, far from conspiring to tear the USSR apart, Western leaders in the late 1980s and early nineties used their influence to try to keep it together.

It all started with Mikhail Gorbachev, who, when he came to power in 1985, was determined to revitalize a sclerotic economy and political system with perestroika (literally, rebuilding), glasnost (openness), and a degree of democratization.

These policies, Gorbachev believed, would save the USSR. Instead, they triggered a chain reaction that led to its collapse. By softening the mailed-fist style of governing that traditionally accrued to his job, Gorbachev empowered other reformers — notably his protégé-turned-rival Boris Yeltsin — who wanted not to rebuild the USSR but to dismantle it.

Their actions radiated from Moscow to the capitals of the other Soviet republics — most dramatically Kyiv (then known to most of the world by its Russian name, Kiev). Ukrainian democratic reformers and dissidents seized the chance to advance their own agenda — political liberalization and Ukrainian statehood — so that their country could be free forever from the dictates of the Kremlin.

However, they were also pragmatists. Recognizing that after centuries of rule from Moscow, Ukraine's national consciousness was weak while its Communist Party was strong, they cut a tacit deal with the Ukrainian political leadership: in exchange for the Communists' support for independence, the democratic opposition would postpone its demands for political and economic reform.

By 1991, the centrifugal forces in the Soviet Union were coming to a head. Putin, in his rewrite of history, would have the world believe that the United States was cheering and covertly supporting secessionism. On the contrary, President George H.W. Bush was concerned that the breakup of the Soviet Union would be dangerously destabilizing. He had put his chips on Gorbachev and reform Communism and was skeptical about Yeltsin. In July of that year, Bush traveled first to Moscow to shore up Gorbachev, then to Ukraine, where, on August 1, he delivered a speech to the Ukrainian Parliament exhorting his audience to give Gorbachev a chance at keeping a reforming Soviet Union together: “Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.”

I was living in Kyiv at the time, working as a stringer for the FT , The Economist , and The Washington Post . Listening to Bush in the parliamentary press gallery, I felt he had misread the growing consensus in Ukraine. That became even clearer immediately afterward when I interviewed Ukrainian members of Parliament (MPs), all of whom expressed outrage and scorn at Bush for, as they saw it, taking Gorbachev's side. The address, which New York Times columnist William Safire memorably dubbed the “Chicken Kiev speech,” backfired in the United States as well, antagonizing Americans of Ukrainian descent and other East European diasporas, which may have hurt Bush's chances of reelection, costing him support in several key states.

But Bush was no apologist for Communism. His speech was heavily influenced by Condoleezza Rice, not a notable soft touch, and it echoed the United Kingdom's Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, who, a year earlier, had said she could no more imagine opening a British embassy in Kyiv than in San Francisco.

The magnitude of the West's miscalculation, and Gorbachev's, became clear less than a month later. On August 19, a feckless attempt by Russian hardliners to overthrow Gorbachev triggered a stampede to the exits by the non-Russian republics, especially in the Baltic States and Ukraine. On August 24, in Kyiv , the MPs Bush had lectured three weeks earlier voted for independence.

The world would almost certainly never have heard of Putin had it not been for the dissolution of the USSR, which Putin has called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.”

Three months after that, I sat in my Kyiv studio apartment — on a cobblestone street where the Russian-language writer Mikhail Bulgakov once lived — listening to Gorbachev's televised plea to the Ukrainian people not to secede. He invoked his maternal grandmother who (like mine) was Ukrainian; he rhapsodized about his happy childhood in the Kuban in southern Russia, where the local dialect is closer to Ukrainian than to Russian. He quoted — in passable Ukrainian — a verse from Taras Shevchenko, a serf freed in the 19th century who became Ukraine's national poet. Gorbachev was fighting back tears as he spoke.

What does "My Ukraine" mean to you?

Share a thought or photo using #MyUkraine.

That was November 30, 1991. The next day, 92 percent of Ukrainians who participated in a national referendum voted for independence. A majority in every region of the country including Crimea (where 56 percent voted to separate) supported breaking away.

Two weeks later, Ukraine's President Leonid Kravchuk met Yeltsin, who by then was the elected president of the Russian Federation. The two of them, along with the president of Belarus, signed an accord that formally dissolved the Soviet Union. Gorbachev, who'd set in motion a process that he could not control, had lost his job and his country. Down came the red stars on the spires, up went the Russian tricolor in place of the hammer-and-sickle. Yeltsin took his place in the Kremlin office and residence that Putin occupies today.

Therein lies a stunning double irony. First, Yeltsin — who plucked Putin from obscurity and hand-picked him as his successor — would not have been able to engineer Russia's own emergence as an independent state had it not been for Ukraine's eagerness to break free as well. Second, the world would almost certainly never have heard of Putin had it not been for the dissolution of the USSR, which Putin has called “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century.”

Little Reform, Big Corruption

Chapter 2: little reform, big corruption.

T hen came the hard part. Having broken up the Soviet Union, Moscow and Kyiv both faced three immediate, vast, and novel challenges: how to establish genuine statehood and independence for their brand new countries; create efficacious democracies with checks and balances and rule of law; and make the transition from the Communist command economy to capitalism. Accomplishing all three tasks at once was essential, but it proved impossible. As a result, like Tolstoy's unhappy families, Russia and Ukraine each failed in its own way.

Ukraine's path to failure started with the 1991 compromise between democratic reformers and the Ukrainian Communist establishment.

Post-Soviet Russia's wrong turn came in the form of the Faustian bargain its first group of leaders — the Yeltsin team of economists known as the young reformers — was willing to strike in order to achieve their overriding priority: wrenching Russia from central planning to a market economy. They accomplished a lot, laying the foundations for Russia's economic rebound in the new millennium. But along the way they struck deals, most stunningly the vast handover of state assets to the oligarchs in exchange for their political support, which eventually transformed Russia into a kleptocracy and discredited the very idea of democracy with the Russian people.

Ukraine's path to failure started with the 1991 compromise between democratic reformers and the Ukrainian Communist establishment. That tactical alliance proved to be both brilliant and doomed. Its value was immediate — Ukraine became, as long as Russia acquiesced, a sovereign state. The cost was revealed only gradually, but it was staggeringly high.

Like Russia's Yeltsin, a former candidate-member of the Politburo, Ukraine's new leadership was made up overwhelmingly of relics of the Soviet-era leadership: Leonid Kravchuk, Ukraine's first president, had been the ideology secretary of the Communist Party in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic; his successor, Leonid Kuchma, had been the director of a mega-factory in Dnipropetrovsk that built the SS-18 missiles, the ten-warhead behemoth of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces. Once the superpower they had thrived in disappeared, these men, and most of those around them, adopted Ukrainian patriotism, soon proving themselves to be enthusiastic, determined, and wily advocates of Ukrainian independence. Their conversion was intensely opportunistic — it allowed them to preserve, and even enhance, their political power and offered the added perk of huge personal wealth. But because many of the leaders of post-Soviet Ukraine had a genuine emotional connection to their country, they also took pride in building Ukrainian sovereignty, which put them at odds with some of their former colleagues in Russia, including, they would eventually discover, Vladimir Putin.

Russia's economic performance in the two decades following the collapse of communism was mixed at best; Ukraine's was absolutely dire.

Unfortunately, their commit­ment to statehood was not matched by any coherent vision of economic reform, and they followed the usual post-Soviet project of enriching themselves and their comrades. The result, in addition to massive corruption, was gross mismanagement of the economy. Russia's economic performance in the two decades following the collapse of communism was mixed at best; Ukraine's was absolutely dire.

But when it came to democracy, the tables were reversed. Even though the pact between Ukrainian reformers and the Communist Party left the nomenklatura, as the Soviet leadership class was known, essentially intact, it turned out to be remarkably — and mercifully — inept at authoritarian governance. The Ukrainian Communist Party and the KGB, with their formal ties to Moscow severed, were unprepared to act effectively on their own. Instead of closing ranks to rule the country, the power elites broke into competing clans associated with the major cities and regions. The result was a newborn country that was accidentally pluralistic, allowing democracy to spring up through the cracks in the regime's control. Proof of that came in 1994 when Kravchuk lost his reelection campaign. The very fact that he could be voted out of office was an early but important milestone for a fledgling democracy. It is one that Russia, with its more deeply rooted absolutist political system, has yet to reach.

That said, what followed was not exactly encouraging. Kravchuk's successor, Leonid Kuchma, began to turn back the clock, harassing the opposition and the media. After serving the constitutionally maximum two five-year terms, Kuchma was able to rig the 2004 election in favor of his dauphin, Viktor Yanukovych, who was prime minister.

But Kuchma and Yanukovych overestimated their power to manipulate the electorate — and they underestimated civil society. In what became known as the Orange Revolution, Ukrainians camped out in the Maidan — the central square in Kyiv — and demanded a new election. They got it.

Then came a truly tragic irony. Yanukovych's opponent and polar opposite was Viktor Yushchenko, a highly respected economist and former head of the central bank. He was the champion of Ukrainian democracy. Largely for that reason, he was hated and feared by many in Russia, notably in Putin's inner circle. Yushchenko was poisoned on the eve of the ballot. The attempt on his life left him seriously ill and permanently scarred, yet he triumphed in the election. However, Yushchenko then did such a poor job in office that Yanukovych, who had failed to become president by cheating in 2004, ended up being elected fair and square in 2010.

Over the next four years of Yanukovych's rule, the Ukrainian state became more corrupt and abusive of political rights than it had been even in the last years of Kuchma's presidency. Nonetheless, the legacy of the 1991 compromise between the democrats and the apparatchiks lived on through the success of at least two of its main goals: peace and survival. When, two years ago, Ukraine celebrated its twenty-second anniversary as an independent state, the longest period in modern history, it had — for all its troubles — at least avoided violent separatism within its own borders, not to mention a war with Russia.

Then, in November of that year, came the first tremors of the cataclysm.

Maidan and the Return of History

Chapter 3: maidan and the return of history.

A ccording to Putin's propaganda, the original fault line was within Ukraine, in the form of ethnic tension, and only later did the conflict take on a geopolitical dimension and disrupt relations with Russia.

A more objective and accurate version is that the unremitting and escalating crisis of the last year-and-a-half erupted in two stages: first, when Yanukovych reneged on a promised trade deal with Europe, part of a general turning away from the West, which set off a massive demonstration of people power; and then when, with Moscow's support, he unleashed bloody force on the demonstrators.

But that drama has its own origin in 1991. Back then, the leaders and many of the people of Ukraine and Russia shared the dream of joining the political West, a choice that was about much more than geopolitics — it meant choosing the rule of law, democracy, and individual rights over authoritarian kleptocracy. Now Russia, at least as represented by the most powerful Kremlin leader since Stalin, has turned its back on that dream, while Ukraine's leader, with the backing of most of his people, is determined to keep it alive.

Sitting on my uncle Bohdan's couch in central Kyiv , ten days after Viktor Yanukovych's flight from Ukraine, I began to grasp what was at stake. Bohdan is my mother's brother, an agronomist who was born in and grew up in Canada, but moved to Kyiv during the 1990s , around the same time my mother did. He married a bilingual Ukrainian and, after two decades living there, is comfortable in both Ukrainian and Russian.

The citizens of the capital had suffered the bloodiest conflict on their streets since World War II.

When I arrived at Bohdan's high-ceilinged, post-war apartment on March 4, 2014, he and his wife, Tanya, like so many Kyivites, were glued to their television and its coverage of the political tumult that followed Yanukovych's ouster. The previous three-and-a-half months had been an emotional whipsaw. In the past two weeks alone, the citizens of the capital had suffered the bloodiest conflict on their streets since World War II. They had also watched their reviled president, Yanukovych, flee to Russia, a provisional government take charge, Russian troops assert control over part of their country, and Putin insist on his right to take further military action. Ukrainians were simultaneously celebrating their eviction of Yanukovych, mourning the victims of the slaughter on the Maidan, horrified by the invasion of Crimea, and fearful of the possibility of a long, grinding war fanned and often directly waged by their giant neighbor to the north.

During my evenings on my uncle's couch, I watched a number of extraordinarily dramatic events playing out on the TV screen, including many profiles in heroism. Some dramatized the complexity of the ethnic and linguistic issue that Putin was exploiting to his own cynical advantage. In those first days of March, for example, Maksym Emelyanenko, captain of the corvette Ternopil in the Ukrainian navy, was ordered by the commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet to hand over control of his vessel. Captain Emelyanenko answered: “Russians do not surrender!” The surprised Russian vice-admiral asked the Ukrainian seaman what he meant. Captain Emelyanenko replied that, although he was ethnically Russian (his Ukrainian last name notwithstanding), he had given his oath of loyalty to the Ukrainian state and he would not betray it.

It quickly became apparent that peaceful tactics would not succeed against the near-term objectives of Putin.

My uncle and aunt, along with many Ukrainians, hoped that passive resistance would prevail as it had in the Maidan demonstrators' stand-off with Yanukovych. But, as the covert occupation of Crimea, ordered by Putin and spearheaded by “little green men” — as the Russian soldiers without insignia who took over the peninsula were called — inched toward outright annexation, it quickly became apparent that peaceful tactics would not succeed against the near-term objectives of Putin. That said, I could sense, even in those early days, that Putin's use of overwhelming Russian force to crush Ukrainian resistance was backfiring against his ultimate goal, which was to bring Ukraine back under Russian sway.

The day after I arrived in Kyiv , I met Yegor Sobolev, a 37-year-old activist, over cappuccinos at a cafe on the Khreshchatyk , Kyiv 's central boulevard. An ethnic Russian who was born and raised in Russia, Sobolev was one of a group of young, politically engaged Ukrainians who were the backbone of the Maidan movement starting back in November 2013. He was a confidant of Mustafa Nayyem, a Muslim refugee from Afghanistan who was celebrated for launching the protests through a Facebook call to action. Sobolev and Nayyem are both former journalists who had tried to uncover the skullduggery and looting of the Yanukovych regime, and then had been motivated to political action by their revulsion at Yanukovych's brutality. (Both men would be elected to Parliament several months later, as advocates of democratic and economic reform.)

Learn more about Putin

Mr. putin: operative in the kremlin.

The great irony of Vladimir Putin's intervention in Ukraine, as Chrystia Freeland notes in this essay, is that the world may never have heard of him if not for Ukraine's separation from the USSR in 1991. In the new and expanded book, Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin , Brookings scholars Clifford Gaddy and Fiona Hill detail the origins of Putin's rise, his leadership styles, what drives him, and how far he is willing to go. Foreign Affairs has called Mr. Putin the “most useful” biography of Vladimir Putin.

Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War by Marvin Kalb

Russia and the New World Disorder by Bobo Lo

“For many years, a big social problem was the passivity of people in the building of the nation,” Sobolev told me. “Yanukovych forced us, not just during the Maidan but before, to get angry and finally to fight, even with weapons. People have learned that the country is them.”

I heard similar sentiments wherever I went in Kyiv that week. The capital was, almost literally, grievously wounded. The air was thick with smoke from bonfires, reeking with the stench of burning tires. The once-elegant Khreshchatyk was a grimy tent city, the avenue itself denuded of its cobblestones because protesters had pulled them up to throw at the armored special forces who were firing tear gas and live bullets at them.

A steady stream of Kyivites, many of them stylish matrons in long fur coats and high-heeled leather boots, made their way to Institytska, the steep street leading up from the Maidan. Their mission was to lay bouquets on the two-story-high mountain of flowers in tribute to the victims of police and snipers, known as the Heavenly Hundred (it sounds less mawkish in Ukrainian).

The city was experiencing the kind of we're-all-in-this-together feeling familiar to anyone who lived through the London Blitz, or 9/11, or other times of national crisis and tragedy.

But Kyiv also felt invigorated and united. The city was experiencing the kind of we're-all-in-this-together feeling familiar to anyone who lived through the London Blitz, or 9/11, or other times of national crisis and tragedy.

“Yanukovych freed Ukraine, and Putin is uniting it,” Sobolev told me. “Ukraine is functioning not through its government but through the self-organization of its people and their sense of human decency.”

What does "My Ukraine" mean to you? Share a thought or photo using #MyUkraine.

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I found myself harking back to 1991, when Ukrainian democrats I interviewed felt they had to choose between democracy and sovereignty. Now, in the wake of the Maidan and in the midst of the Russian land grab, Ukrainians had come to see that both are critical and that they are mutually reinforcing.

By early March of last year, as it became glaringly obvious that Ukraine was fighting not just for its political soul but for national survival, support for the agenda of the pro-Maidan provisional government and the sense of solidarity under pressure started to flow south and east — into the very regions that both Putin and simplistic international media coverage had characterized as pro-Russian.

A comprehensive poll done in April by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, one of the country's most respected polling firms, found, for instance, that in those regions of Ukraine 76.8 percent of respondents opposed the seizure of government buildings by separatist protesters; only 11.7 percent supported it. Nearly 70 percent were opposed to the unification of their region of Ukraine with Russia; only 15.4 percent were in favor. An overwhelming 87.7 percent said that Ukraine should make its own decisions about internal affairs, such as constitutional structure and official language, without any involvement from outside powers, specifically Russia. (Interestingly, 71.5 percent said the rights of Russian language speakers were not under any threat in Ukraine.) It is worth underscoring that these strong views are the opinions of the lands Putin has claimed as “ Novorossiya ,” the largely Russian-speaking southern and eastern regions of Ukraine.

“People in Odesa , Mykolaev , Donetsk , and Dnipropetrovsk [all cities with large Russian-speaking populations] are coming out to defend their country,” Sobolev said. “They have never liked the western Ukrainian, Galician point of view. But they are showing themselves to be equally patriotic. They are defending their country from foreign aggression. Fantastical things are happening.”

Learn about Ukraine's best-known poet, Serhiy Zhadan

Western Ukraine, known as Galicia , had long seen itself as the most nationally conscious region, the one that would lead a broader effort to knit the nation together and build a sovereign state.

Culturally, historically, linguistically, and even religiously southern and eastern Ukraine were quite different, and did not always appreciate the Galician assumption that the western Ukrainian version of Ukraine was the best and truest one. One of the paradoxical consequences of the Russian invasion was that southern and eastern Ukraine were proudly asserting their versions of Ukrainian identity as equally authentic and powerful.

Four days after I arrived in Kyiv , Serhiy Zhadan, described by The New Yorker as Ukraine's “best-known poet” and “most famous counter-culture writer” was beaten by pro-Russian agitators at a Maidan demonstration. But that protest didn't take place in Kyiv 's Maidan. It happened 500 kilometers east in Kharkiv , the capital of eastern Ukraine where Zhadan, who was born in the Donbass , now lives and works. His writing — think Trainspotting set against a grim post-Soviet backdrop — is very popular in Russia, but he writes in Ukrainian, partly, he says, as a political act. When his attackers asked him to kneel and kiss the Russian flag, Zhadan recalled on his Facebook page — “I told them to go fuck themselves.” (Zhadan's English-language translator happens to be another uncle of mine.)

Before I left Kyiv in March, I took a final walk along the Khreshchatyk . Two hand-written signs, taped to the walls of buildings, stood out. “Russian people, we love you,” one said, in Russian. “Putin, Ukraine will be your grave,” another, written in Ukrainian, warned.

Click here to learn about Ukraine's best-known poet, Serhiy Zhadan

Freeland describes how Zhadan represents a paradoxical consequence of the Russian invasion: an assertion of Ukrainian identity in the east and south.

Blue and Yellow vs. “Little Green Men”

Chapter 4: blue and yellow vs. “the little green men”.

I saw the transformation Sobolev had told me about first-hand ten weeks later, when I returned to Ukraine for the presidential election. I spent a day in Dnipropetrovsk , a city just 150 miles from the Russian border, whose citizens are largely Russian-speaking and whose industry was vital to the Soviet Union (to wit: those SS-18 missiles Kuchma built for a living). Leonid Brezhnev was born and educated there, and it remained his lifelong political powerbase.

Gr8 mtng MP Petro Poroshenko today, overlooking #Maidan ; Rus-speaker from south, says Rus invasion has united country pic.twitter.com/gihcnuoZ89 — Chrystia Freeland (@cafreeland) March 5, 2014

But on election day, Dnipropetrovsk was wreathed in symbols of Ukrainian statehood. Apartment buildings were draped in blue and yellow, the colors of the national flag; every second car sported the same colors; many election officials wore shirts worked with traditional Ukrainian embroidery. Dnipropetrovsk had resisted the little green men — the governor had offered a $10,000 bounty for any captured Russian soldier — and was scornful of the “Soviet” mentality of neighboring Donetsk, which was suffering from a so-called hybrid war (waged by Russian-backed locals armed with Russian equipment and artillery and supported by undercover Russian officers, advisors, and soldiers who were, according to the Russian government, “volunteering while on holiday”).

This political shift provoked another twist of Ukraine's linguistic kaleidoscope. Now that civil society's common enemy was Yanukovych and the Kremlin political values he represented, speaking Ukrainian in public came to symbolize the fight for democracy, notably including in the east. For his part, Sobolev told me he had overcome his “psychological barrier” to speaking Ukrainian by reading For Whom the Bell Tolls in Ukrainian translation out loud to himself.

The Threat and Promise of Ukrainian Democracy

Chapter 5: the threat and promise of ukrainian democracy.

It is an entirely good thing that Ukraine's new leaders are defining their national identity as inherently democratic and freedom-loving. But there have been times when Russia might have laid claim to such an identity, too. To take just one example: on August 19, 1991, when Boris Yeltsin climbed on top of a tank in Moscow in front of the White House to defy a hardline coup and assert that “the democratic process in the country is acquiring an increasingly broad sweep and an irreversible character, the peoples of Russia are becoming masters of their destiny.”

Putin today is master of Crimea, but Russia is more isolated, less respected, and surrounded by more suspicious neighbors than was the proud host of the Sochi Olympics just a year ago.

A quarter century later, no one would make that assertion in Moscow. But it is the sort of thing said every day in Kyiv . And that is why Putin is determined to subdue Ukraine. He doesn't need Ukraine for economic gain — indeed, his aggression has come at a great, and mounting, economic cost. He doesn't need Ukraine for strategic reasons — Putin today is master of Crimea, but Russia is more isolated, less respected, and surrounded by more suspicious neighbors than was the proud host of the Sochi Olympics just a year ago. He doesn't even need the immediate popularity bump leaders always get at the beginning of a foreign war, especially one promised to be short and victorious. What he does need is to show that a democratic, rule-of-law Ukraine can't work.

As Mikhail Kasyanov, who served as Putin's prime minister and once shared a sauna with his boss before joining the political opposition, told me in November: “We are similar people. As soon as Russians understand that Ukrainians can be free, why shouldn't we be, too? That is why Mr. Putin hates what is happening so much, and doesn't want Ukraine to escape his grip.”

Putin “submitted to paranoia” and decided it was essential to crush the new Ukraine.

Leonid Bershidsky, a distinguished Russian journalist who was so appalled by what happened in his country in 2014 that he left, thinks that for Putin, February 22, 2014 was the tipping point. That was the day the police melted away from Mezhyhirya , Yanukovych's grotesquely palatial estate outside Kyiv , and the public flooded in. They discovered a lavish complex including grand, manicured parks, a zoo, and a restaurant shaped like a pirate ship. Inside the main residence, a solid gold loaf of rye bread — a tribute to Yanukovych from a petitioner — was found. That absurd sculpture quickly became the symbol of Yanukovych's criminal excess. (You can follow it on Twitter at the Russian-language parody account @zolotoybaton .) That was the moment, Bershidsky believes, when Putin “submitted to paranoia” and decided it was essential to crush the new Ukraine. After all, he and his cronies have palaces, too.

Author Biography

Chrystia Freeland is a journalist, author, and politician. She was a stringer in Ukraine, deputy editor of The Globe and Mail , and has held positions at the Financial Times ranging from Moscow bureau chief to U.S. managing editor. As an activist Ukrainian-Canadian, she has written several articles criticizing Russia's interventionism and supporting Ukrainian independence. Freeland is author of Sale of the Century a book about Russia's transition from communism to capitalism, and the award-winning book Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else . Since 2013, Freeland has been a member of Canada's Parliament, representing Toronto Centre in the House of Commons.

Bershidsky is right. There were many bloodier and more dramatic episodes over the past year. But the opening of the gates of Mezhyhirya gets to the essence of what is at stake. The uprising in Ukraine and the fight between Ukraine and Russia is about many things — Ukraine's consolidation as a nation, a wounded Russia's rising nationalism, the uncertainty of a world in which the Cold War is over — but we haven't quite figured out what will replace it. At its heart, however, the conflicts within Ukraine, and the fight Putin has picked with Ukraine, are about post-Soviet kleptocracy, and where and whether there is a popular will to resist it.

Last September, I drove out to Mezhyhirya . It had become a much-visited public park. The grassy shoulders of the surrounding country roads were crowded with parked cars. A few couples were having their wedding pictures taken beside the ornate fountains. Two entrepreneurs were renting bicycles at the entrance to make it easier to tour the vast grounds. Others were doing a brisk business selling toilet paper and doormats with Yanukovych's image on them. Even more popular were the ones depicting Putin.

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History | March 4, 2022

The 20th-Century History Behind Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

During WWII, Ukrainian nationalists saw the Nazis as liberators from Soviet oppression. Now, Russia is using that chapter to paint Ukraine as a Nazi nation

Katya Cengel

Before Russian forces fired rockets at the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv; seized Chernobyl, site of the world’s worst nuclear accident; and attacked Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, Russian President Vladimir Putin shared some choice words.

In an essay published on the Kremlin’s website in Russian, Ukrainian and English last July, Putin credited Soviet leaders with inventing a Ukrainian republic within the Soviet Union in 1922, forging a fictitious state unworthy of sovereignty out of historically Russian territory . After Ukraine declared its independence in 1991, the president argued, Ukrainian leaders “began to mythologize and rewrite history, edit out everything that united [Russia and Ukraine], and refer to the period when Ukraine was part of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as an occupation.”

The “historical reality” of modern-day Ukraine is more complex than Putin’s version of events, encompassing “a thousand-year history of changing religions, borders and peoples,” according to the New York Times . “[M]any conquests by warring factions and Ukraine’s diverse geography … created a complex fabric of multiethnic states.”

Over the centuries , the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, Poland, and Lithuania have all wielded jurisdiction over Ukraine, which first asserted its modern independence in 1917, with the formation of the Ukrainian People’s Republic . Russia soon wrested back control of Ukraine, making it part of the newly established Soviet Union and retaining power in the region until World War II, when Germany invaded. The debate over how to remember this wartime history, as well as its implications for Ukrainian nationalism and independence, are key to understanding the current conflict.

In Putin’s telling, the modern Ukrainian independence movement began not in 1917 but during World War II. Under the German occupation of Ukraine, between 1941 and 1944, some Ukrainian independence fighters aligned themselves with the Nazis, whom they viewed as saviors from Soviet oppression. Putin has drawn on this period in history to portray any Ukrainian push for sovereignty as a Nazi endeavor, says Markian Dobczansky , a historian at Harvard University’s Ukrainian Research Institute . “It’s really just a stunningly cynical attempt to fight an information war and influence people's opinions,” he adds.

Dobczansky is among a group of scholars who have publicly challenged Putin’s version of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine and the years of Soviet rule it’s sandwiched between. Almost all of these experts begin their accounts with the fall of the Russian Empire, when tens of thousands of Ukrainians fought against the Bolshevik Red Army to establish the Ukrainian People’s Republic. Ukrainians continued to fight for independence until 1922, when they were defeated by the Soviets and became the Ukrainian Soviet Republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.). By leaving out Ukraine’s short-lived but hard-fought period of independence in the early 20th century, Putin overlooks the country’s sovereignty, says Dobczansky.

Also omitted from this version of events are the genocide and suppression that took place under Soviet rule—most famously the Great Famine. Holodomor , which fuses the Ukrainian words for starvation and inflicting death, claimed the lives of around 3.9 million people, or approximately 13 percent of the Ukrainian population, in the early 1930s. A human-made famine, it was the direct result of Soviet policies aimed at punishing Ukrainian farmers who fought Soviet mandates to collectivize. The Soviets also waged an intense “ Russification ” campaign, persecuting Ukraine’s cultural elite and elevating Russian language and culture above all others.

When Germany invaded in 1941, some Ukrainians, especially those in western Ukraine, saw them as liberators, says Oxana Shevel , a political scientist at Tufts University. The Ukrainians didn’t particularly want to live under the Germans so much as escape the Soviets, adds Shevel, who is the president of the nonprofit educational organization American Association for Ukrainian Studies .

“The broader objective was to establish an independent state, but in the process, [Ukrainians] also engaged in participation in the Holocaust ,” she says.

The question for Shevel is how to treat this history. From the Soviet point of view that Putin still embraces, it’s simple, she says: The Holocaust aside, Ukrainian nationalists were “bad guys” because “they fought the Soviet state.” Putin and other critics often draw on Ukrainians’ wartime collaboration with the Nazis to baselessly characterize the modern country as a Nazi nation ; in a February 24 speech, the Russian president deemed the “demilitarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine” key goals of the invasion.

From the Ukrainian side of the debate, the country’s wartime history is more complex. Are the nationalists “bad guys” because they participated in the Holocaust, Shevel asks, or “good guys” because they fought for independence?

For Putin, even raising this question is inflammatory. “Any kind of reevaluation of the Soviet treatment of history is what Putin would consider [a] Nazi approach or Nazification,” says Shevel.

To deny the claim that Ukraine is a Nazi state isn’t to downplay the Nazis’ wartime actions in Ukraine. Natalie Belsky , a historian at the University of Minnesota Duluth, points out that one of the biggest massacres of the Holocaust took place just outside of Kyiv. Between 1941 and 1943, the Nazis—aided by local collaborators —shot around 70,000 to 100,000 people, many of them Jews, at Babyn Yar , a ravine on the outskirts of Kyiv. According to the National WWII Museum , one in every four Jewish victims of the Holocaust was murdered in Ukraine.

While Germans often think of World War II as a fight against the Russians, the majority of the fighting actually took place in modern-day Ukraine and Belarus , as well as large parts of western Russia, says Dobczansky. Under the German occupation, several million Ukrainians were sent to Germany to work on farms and in factories. Still, because the Nazi racial hierarchy placed Ukrainians above Russians, the Nazis made a limited attempt to promote Ukrainian national culture in occupied territories—a move that, in turn, helped bring some of the Ukrainian nationalist movement to the German side.

“Those [nationalist] groups certainly had anti-Semitic elements,” says Belsky. “But [they] essentially felt that, or judged that, they were more likely to get Ukrainian independence under Nazi occupation than under Soviet occupation.”

The Nazis, she says, promised Ukrainian nationalists as much—at least after the war. But even before their defeat by the Allies in 1945, the Germans turned on some of their Ukrainian allies, including one of the country’s most famous independence fighters, Stepan Bandera . In his fight against the Soviets, Bandera aligned himself with the Germans, only to end up in a concentration camp after he refused to rescind a proclamation of Ukrainian statehood in 1941. Released in 1944 to help the Nazis battle the Soviets again, Bandera survived the war, only to be poisoned by the KGB in 1959. In 2010, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko awarded Bandera the title of “ Hero of Ukraine ,” but the honor was annulled a year later.

“This [re-examination of Ukrainian participation in wartime atrocities] has prompted a relatively difficult dialogue in Ukraine about the issue of complicity,” says Belsky.

Putin has referenced Ukrainian nationalists in service of his own political agenda of portraying modern Ukrainians as Nazis. Prior to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea , many Ukrainians viewed Bandera and other freedom fighters in a less favorable light, says Shevel. After, however, she noticed a shift, with these individuals, some of whom fought alongside the Nazis, being called heroes. The Soviets, once held up as liberators from the Nazis, were now the bad guys again.

Bandera may no longer be an official hero of Ukraine, but his memory and those of other 20th-century independence fighters endure. In 2015, Ukraine passed a series of decommunization laws calling for the removal of communist monuments and the renaming of public spaces in honor of Ukrainian nationalists and nationalist organizations, including those known to have participated in the Holocaust. The legislation has received pushback from scholars who see it as whitewashing, or ignoring the dark sides of these movements and their activities.

Shevel agrees that a complete reversal in framing is “probably not the best outcome.” Although the previous Soviet narrative was very one-sided, she cautions against replacing it with an equally one-sided narrative that labels Ukrainian nationalists unconditional good guys. Either way, Shevel says, the issue is one that should be debated internally, not by a foreign invader: “It’s problematic, but it’s a domestic debate.”

Dobczansky, for his part, believes Ukraine is entitled to its own version of history and that Ukrainians should be allowed to choose how to present their own experiences. He praises local researchers’ efforts to study the Holocaust and open their archives and notes that Ukraine’s current president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy , is Jewish.

“Ukraine has begun the process of confronting the darkest pages of its past,” he says.

In today’s charged atmosphere, saying anything critical about Ukrainian nationalism or calling attention to Ukrainian nationalists’ involvement with the Nazis can be seen as supporting Russia’s depiction of Ukraine as a Nazi nation, Belsky notes.

This Russian narrative is nothing new. Instead, says Dobczansky, it’s part of a long-term Russian information war on Ukraine. Putin’s ahistorical justifications of the invasion doesn’t surprise the scholar. What does surprise him is the outpouring of support he’s seen for Ukraine, with even “ Saturday Night Live ” paying tribute to the beleaguered nation.

Dobczansky theorizes that the outraged response to the invasion is tied to society’s relatively recent reexamination of colonialism. Because Ukraine was successfully integrated into the Soviet Union after World War II, Dobczansky doesn’t see the period leading up to Ukrainian independence in 1991 as an occupation so much as a relationship between a colony and a colonizer. By waging war on Ukraine, Putin is, in essence, trying to hold onto a colony.

“[Russian leaders] basically don’t recognize any Ukrainian historical agency except the agency that they imagined for them,” says Dobczansky.

Ukraine—and the world—seem to be imagining something different.

Katya Cengel writes about her time reporting from Ukraine earlier this century in her award-winning 2019 memoir , From Chernobyl with Love .

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Katya Cengel is a freelance writer and author based in California. Her work has appeared in New York Times Magazine , Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post among other publications.

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Russia - Ukraine Conflict [UPSC Notes]

Latest Developments in Russia – Ukraine Conflict

On Feb 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine . Know more about this in the link given. This page gives a background of the issue with an analysis of the developments before the invasion.

The tensions on Ukraine’s border with Russia are at their highest in years. Fearing a potential invasion by Russia, the US and NATO are stepping up support for Ukraine. In this article, we explain the reason for tensions between Russia and Ukraine, the latest developments, the stand of various stakeholders in the region, and the way forward for the UPSC exam IR segment.

Russia – Ukraine Conflict Background

Post the disintegration of the Soviet Union , Ukraine gained independence in 1991.

• Ukraine was a member of the Soviet Union until 1991 when it disintegrated, and Russia has tried to maintain the country in its orbit since then.
• In 2014, a separatist insurgency started in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland, Donetsk Basin, also known as,
• Russia further gained a maritime advantage in the region due to its invasion and annexation of Crimea.
• As a result, both the US and the EU have pledged to safeguard the integrity of Ukraine’s borders.

Image Source: Al Jazeera

Importance of Ukraine to Russia

• Ukraine and Russia have shared cultural and linguistic ties for hundreds of years.
• Ukraine was the most powerful country in the Soviet Union after Russia.
• Ukraine has been a hub for commercial industries, factories and defence manufacturing.
• Ukraine also provides Russia with access to the Black Sea and crucial connectivity to the Mediterranean Sea.

Reasons for Russian Aggression

The chief reasons for Russian aggression are discussed below.

• Russia, considering the economic significance of Ukraine, sought Ukraine’s membership in the Eurasian Economic Community (EAEC), which is a free trade agreement that came into being in 2015.
• With its huge market and advanced agriculture and industrial output, Ukraine was supposed to play an important role. But Ukraine refused to join the agreement.
• Russia claims that the eastward expansion by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which they call “ enlargement ”, has threatened Russia’s interests and has asked for written security guarantees from NATO.
• NATO, led by the U.S., has planned to install missile defence systems in eastern Europe in countries like Poland and the Czech Republic to counter Russia’s intercontinental-range missiles.

Russia – Ukraine Latest Developments

Russia has been indulging in military build-up along its border with Ukraine, an aspiring NATO member. Russia has stated that its troop deployment is in response to NATO’s steady eastward expansion. Russia argues that its moves are aimed at protecting its own security considerations.

• Russia has mobilised around 1,00,000 troops on its border with Ukraine.
• Russia seeks assurance from the US that Ukraine shall not be inducted into NATO.
• This has resulted in tensions between Russia and the West which have been supportive of Ukraine. The U.S. has assured Ukraine that it will “respond decisively” in case of an invasion by Russia.

Image Source: The Hindu

Russia’s demands

• Russia has demanded a ban on further expansion of NATO that includes countries like Ukraine and Georgia that share Russia’s borders.
• Russia asked NATO to pull back its military deployments to the 1990s level and prohibit the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in the bordering areas.
• Further, Russia asked NATO to curb its military cooperation with Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.

The response from the West

• The U.S. has ruled out changing NATO’s “open-door policy” which means, NATO would continue to induct more members.
• The U.S. also says it would continue to offer training and weapons to Ukraine.
• The U.S. is said to be open to a discussion regarding missile deployment and a mutual reduction in military exercises in Eastern Europe.
• Germany has also warned Russia that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline would be stopped if Russia were to invade Ukraine.
• The U.S. threatens Russia by imposing new economic sanctions in case of attempts of invasion against Ukraine.

Russia – Ukraine Crisis: Implications on India

What implications does the Russia – Ukraine crisis have on India? This is discussed in this section.

• Maintaining strong relations with Russia serves India’s national interests. India has to retain a strong strategic alliance with Russia as a result, India cannot join any Western strategy aimed at isolating Russia.
• There is a possibility of CAATSA sanctions on India by the U.S. as a result of the S-400
• A pact between the US and Russia might affect Russia’s relations with China. This might allow India to expand on its efforts to re-establish ties with Russia.
• The issue with Ukraine is that the world is becoming increasingly economically and geopolitically interconnected. Any improvement in Russia-China ties has ramifications for India.
• There is also an impact on the strong Indian diaspora present in the region, threatening the lives of thousands of Indian students.

Also read: India – Russia relations

India’s stand

• India called for “a peaceful resolution of the situation through sustained diplomatic efforts for long-term peace and stability in the region and beyond”.
• Immediately after the annexation, India abstained from voting in the UN General Assembly on a resolution that sought to condemn Russia.
• In 2020, India voted against a Ukraine-sponsored resolution in the UN General Assembly that sought to condemn alleged human rights violations in Crimea.
• India’s position is largely rooted in neutrality and has adapted itself to the post-2014 status quo on Ukraine.

Way forward

• The US along with other western countries is expected to revive the peace process through diplomatic channels in mitigating the tensions between Ukraine and Russia which would be a time-consuming process.
• Experts recommend more dialogues between the west and Russia that exert emphasis on the issue surrounding Ukraine.
• Ukraine should approach and focus on working with its Normandy Format allies, France and Germany, to persuade the Russian government to withdraw assistance for its proxies and allow for the region’s gradual safe reintegration into Ukraine.
• The Russian military expansion in Ukraine can be prevented on the geoeconomic grounds that will hamper its trade in the region especially with the Nord Stream pipeline that can carve out a way of resolving the ongoing crisis as pointed out by an expert.
• Ukraine’s internal disturbances need to be addressed to revive the Minsk II agreement for the development of peace in the region and dissolve the ongoing tensions.

UPSC Questions related to Russia – Ukraine Conflict

What is the relation between russia and ukraine.

Ukraine was a member of the Soviet Union until its disintegration in 1991. Post the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Ukraine gained independence in 1991 and Russia has tried to maintain its influence on the country in its orbit since then.

Why did Ukraine not join NATO?

Although Ukraine has no membership offer from NATO, it has been closer to the alliance since its establishment in 1997. Plans for NATO membership were dropped by Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych, who preferred to keep the country non-aligned.

Is Crimea a part of Russia?

The majority of the world considers Crimea to be a part of Ukraine. Geographically, it is a peninsula in the Black Sea that has been battled over for ages due to its strategic importance. In 2014, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea which was a part of Ukraine due to its declining influence over the region and emerging insecurities.

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Russia-Ukraine Conflict

Last updated on December 29, 2023 by ClearIAS Team

Russia amassed a large number of troops near the Russia-Ukraine border sparking apprehensions on an impending war between the two countries and possible annexation of Ukraine.

Table of Contents

What led to the Russia-Ukraine Conflict?

In December 2021, Russia published an 8-point draft security agreement for the West. The draft was aimed at resolving tensions in Europe including the Ukrainian crisis.

But it had controversial provisions including banning Ukraine from joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) , curtailing the further expansion of NATO, blocking drills in the region, etc.

Talks on the draft failed continuously and tensions escalated with the  Russian troop buildup in the Russia-Ukraine border.

The crisis has grabbed global headlines and has been dubbed to be capable of triggering a new “cold war” or even a “third world war”.

History of Russia-Ukraine relations

With over 6 lakh sq. km area and more than 40 million populations, Ukraine is the second-largest country by area and the 8 th populous in Europe.

Ukraine is bordered by Russia in the East, Belarus in the North, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova in the West. It also has a maritime boundary with the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov.

Ukraine was under different rulers including the Ottoman Empire, Russian Empire, and the Soviet Union.

It gained independence in 1991 following the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Orange Revolution of 2004-05

Following the 2004 Presidential election in Ukraine, a series of protests and civil unrest occurred in the country, dubbed the Orange Revolution.

The corruption and malpractice charges in voting alleged by the protestors were upheld by the Supreme Court and the court annulled the election results. Viktor Yushchenko was declared the winner following the re-election. His campaign colour theme was orange, hence the name.

Euromaidan movement

In 2014, the country grabbed attention for the Euromaidan movement or the Revolution of dignity. The civil unrests were based on goals including the removal of then-President Viktor Yanukovych and the restoration of 2004 constitutional amendments.

Also read: India-Egypt Relations

Annexation of Crimea

Crimea is a peninsula on the Northern coast of the Black Sea in Eastern Europe. The population includes mostly ethnic Russians but has Ukrainians and Crimeans as well.

In the 18 th century, Crimea was annexed by the Russian empire. Following the Russian Revolution , Crimea became an autonomous region in the Soviet Union.

In 1954, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian by birth, transferred Crimea to Ukraine.  But the status of Crimea remained disputed since then.

In February 2014, post-Ukrainian Revolution, Russian troops were deployed in Crimea. A referendum on reunification with Russia was held in March in which 90% population favoured joining Russia. Despite opposition from Ukraine, Russia formally annexed Crimea in March 2014.

Read here for in-depth details of the Euromaidan, Ukrainian revolution, and Crimean annexation.

The Minsk agreements between Russia-Ukraine

Following the 2014 Ukraine revolution and the Euromaidan movement, civil unrest erupted in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions (together called the Donbas region) in Eastern Ukraine which borders Russia.

The majority population in these regions are Russians and it has been alleged that Russia fuelled anti-government campaigns there. Russia-backed insurgents and the Ukrainian military engaged in armed confrontations in the region.

In September 2014, talks led to the signing of the Minsk protocol (Minsk I) by the Trilateral Contact Group involving Ukraine, Russia, and the Organisation for the Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). It is a 12 point ceasefire deal involving provisions like weapon removal, prisoner exchanges, humanitarian aid, etc. But the deal broke following violations by both sides.

In 2015, yet another protocol termed Minsk II was signed by the parties. It included provisions to delegate more power to the rebel-controlled regions. But the clauses remain un-implemented due to differences between Ukraine and Russia.

Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE)

The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) is the world’s largest security-oriented intergovernmental organization with observer status at the United Nations. It is based in Vienna, Austria. It has 57 members spanning across Europe, Asia, and North America. India is not a member. Decisions are made by consensus.

Its mandate includes issues such as arms control, promotion of human rights, freedom of the press, and fair elections. It has its origins in the mid-1975 Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) held in Helsinki, Finland. In 1994, CSCE was renamed the OSCE. It was created during the Cold War era as an East-West forum.

Russia-Ukraine conflict: Present Day

The latest episode of the Russian troop display near the Ukraine border is linked to all the previous issues. Not just Russia, but the United States and the European Union have stakes in Ukraine.

While Russia shares centuries-old cultural ties with Ukraine, the US and the European Union see Ukraine as a buffer between Russia and the West.

Russia seeks assurance from the West that Ukraine would not be made part of NATO which has anti-Russian ambitions. But the US is not ready to budge on Russia’s demands.

The sudden rise in tensions can be attributed to the following factors:

• The newly elected President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, has been harsh on Russian supporters in Ukraine and has been going against Moscow’s interests.
• Perceivably undecisive administration in the US under the new President Joe Biden and Washington’s chaotic exit from Afghanistan.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin’s immense interest in Ukraine. Putin maintains that Ukraine is the “red line” the West must not cross.

India’s stand on Russia- Ukraine conflict

India has long maintained a cautious silence on the Russia-Ukraine conflict issue. But recently India has spoken in the matter and called for peaceful resolution of the issue through sustained diplomatic efforts for long-time peace and stability.

New Delhi and Moscow have a time-tested and reliable relationship especially with Russia being a major arms supplier to India.

India has risked US sanctions under Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) by the buying S-400 missile defence system from Russia.

On the other hand, India also needs the support of the US and EU in balancing its strategic calculus.

It is also worthwhile to note that India had abstained from voting in a United Nations resolution upholding Ukraine’s territorial integrity following Russia’s Crimean annexation in 2014.

Even this time, India is maintaining a patient approach by hoping that the situation will be handled peacefully by skilful negotiators.

Way forward

The Russia-Ukraine conflict is threatening the delicate balance the world is in right now and escalation can have manifold impacts on a global scale.  There is a strong case for de-escalation, as a peaceful culmination of severed relations is for the good of everyone in the region and the world over.

The US can play a central role in the management of the Russia- Ukraine conflict with support from the other European allies like the UK, Germany, and France.

Negotiations and strategic investments should be aimed at creating sustainable resolution of the conflict.

It will not be enough to just smooth over the difficulties, but major attention to be given to structure the military disengagement to minimize the chances of backsliding.

Also read:  Butterfly mines

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clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

Opinion 7 opinions on the war in Ukraine after one year

One year after Russia invaded Ukraine , Post Opinions is looking back at what has transpired and forward to what is to come.

The selection of opinions below forms a snapshot of that coverage, intended to help you understand the war.

These charts suggest peace isn’t coming anytime soon

By Michael O’Hanlon, Constanze Stelzenmüller and David Wessel of the Brookings Institution

After gathering data on territory, economics, refugees and more, O’Hanlon, Stelzenmüller and Wessel came to the same conclusion : The war could last for quite some time.

“Pressure to make peace could rise within and outside Ukraine and Russia in 2023 (or thereafter),” they write . “But the data doesn’t suggest that will happen right now.”

How to break the stalemate in Ukraine

By the Editorial Board

The Post’s Editorial Board reviewed the year of war and looked for solutions .

“To thwart Russia and safeguard Ukraine’s sovereignty, the United States and its European allies have little choice but to intensify their military, economic and diplomatic support for Kyiv,” the Editorial Board concluded .

Why Ukraine will win the war

By Mark Hertling, retired Army lieutenant general

Hertling examined five phases of the war and says Ukraine’s forces significantly outperformed Russia’s in each one.

“Ukraine’s armed forces have admirably adapted in each phase of this fight, learning lessons from training they received over the past decade, and from the scars earned on the battlefield itself,” he writes . “And Russia has repeatedly demonstrated an inability to do the same.”

How the war will enrich Ukraine when it’s over

By Iuliia Mendel, journalist and former press secretary for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky

Sharing a story of a New Year’s Eve delivery she received while hiding in her bathroom from Russian strikes, Mendel shows how she believes the war will make Ukraine stronger when it’s over .

“Today’s war heroes, organizers and businesspeople will be the leaders of tomorrow,” she writes . “The energies unleashed by this war will enrich the country that comes after it.”

What a year of war has revealed of three leaders

By David Ignatius , Post Opinions columnist

Three figures have largely defined the war so far: Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Biden. Ignatius looks at what we’ve learned about each leader over the last year.

“Putin was convinced that his cold-eyed, brutal resolve would outlast everyone else’s,” Ignatius writes . “But a year on, Putin’s staying power begins to look questionable, while Zelensky and Biden have never looked stronger.”

You can’t understand the war without knowing history

By Timothy Snyder, the Levin professor of history at Yale University

Snyder dives into the contrast between the historical importance of this war and the lack of coursework in history.

“Ukrainian history makes today’s world make more sense,” he writes .

Putin can win only if Hawley-esque isolationists multiply

By George F. Will , Post Opinions columnist

Will homes in on how American politics could affect the war’s result .

“Putin can win only by Ukraine’s allies choosing to lose by not maximizing their moral and material advantages,” he writes . “He is counting on Western publics’ support for Ukraine being brittle, and especially on the multiplication of Josh Hawleys.”

What to know about Ukraine’s counteroffensive

The latest: The Ukrainian military has launched a long-anticipated counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces , opening a crucial phase in the war aimed at restoring Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty and preserving Western support in its fight against Moscow.

The fight: Ukrainian troops have intensified their attacks on the front line in the southeast region, according to multiple individuals in the country’s armed forces, in a significant push toward Russian-occupied territory.

The front line: The Washington Post has mapped out the 600-mile front line between Ukrainian and Russian forces .

How you can help: Here are ways those in the United States can support the Ukrainian people as well as what people around the world have been donating.

Read our full coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war . Are you on Telegram? Subscribe to our channel for updates and exclusive video .

Filed under:

• The dangerous new phase of Russia’s war in Ukraine, explained

Vladimir Putin’s war is still raging, signaling a frightening escalation on the ground.

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Russia’s war in Ukraine has stretched on for more than three weeks, a relentless bombardment of the country’s cities and towns that has led to more than 800 civilian deaths , destroyed civilian infrastructure , and forced more than 3.3 million people to flee Ukraine, creating a new humanitarian crisis in Europe.

The devastation is far from over.

Get in-depth coverage about Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Why Ukraine? 

Learn the history behind the conflict and what Russian President Vladimir Putin has said about his war aims .

The stakes of Putin’s war

Russia’s invasion has the potential to set up a clash of nuclear world powers . It’s destabilizing the region and terrorizing Ukrainian citizens . It could also impact inflation , gas prices , and the global economy. 

How other countries are responding

The US and its European allies have responded to Putin’s aggression with unprecedented sanctions , but have no plans to send troops to Ukraine , for good reason . 

How to help

Where to donate if you want to assist refugees and people in Ukraine.

The scale of the Russian invasion — the shelling of major cities like Kyiv, the capital, and Kharkiv, in the east — hinted at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s larger aims: Seizing control of Ukraine, with the goal of regime change. Though its military is far bigger than Ukraine’s, Russia’s apparently confounding strategic decisions and logistical setbacks , combined with the ferocity of Ukraine’s resistance , have stymied its advance.

That has not stopped a catastrophe from unfolding within Ukraine, even as it has prompted Western allies to effectively wage economic warfare against Moscow with unprecedented sanctions .

It will only get worse as this war grinds on, experts said. “Despite the surprisingly poor military performance of the Russian military to date, we’re still in the early opening phase of this conflict,” said Sara Bjerg Moller, an assistant professor of international security at Seton Hall University.

This toll is expected to climb, especially as the Russian offensive intensifies around Ukrainian cities, where shelling and strikes have hit civilian targets , and as efforts at high-level Ukraine-Russia negotiations have so far failed . All of this is happening as Russian forces appear to be preparing to lay siege to Kyiv .

“This war is about the battle of Kyiv,” said John Spencer, a retired Army officer and chair of urban warfare studies at the Madison Policy Forum.

Taking Kyiv would mean taking control of Ukraine — or at least deposing the government of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president whose defiance has galvanized the Ukrainian resistance. Most experts believe Russia will prevail, especially if it can cut off Kyiv, and the Ukrainian resistance, from supplies.

Just because Russia may ultimately succeed militarily does not mean it will win this war. A Ukrainian insurgency could take root. The political, domestic, and international costs to Russia could challenge Putin’s regime. The West’s sanctions are throttling Russia’s economy, and they could do lasting damage. Russia’s war has strengthened the Western alliance in the immediate term, but that political will could be tested as energy prices spike and as the war and refugee crisis wear on.

“War is never isolated,” Zelenskyy said in a video address Thursday. “It always beats both the victim and the aggressor. The aggressor just realizes it later. But it always realizes and always suffers.”

The war in Ukraine is likely going to become more violent

Russia’s strategic setbacks have undermined its mission to take Ukraine, but it has only exacerbated the brutal and indiscriminate war, not even a month old.

The longer and harder the Ukrainian resistance fights, the more likely Russia may deploy more aggressive tactics to try to achieve their aims. “This is what we would call a war of attrition. They are trying to grind down the Ukrainian people’s morale, and unfortunately, that includes the bodies of Ukrainians,” Moller said.

Urban warfare is particularly calamitous, as civilians who have not evacuated are often caught in the middle of battles that happen block-by-block. Russia’s military tactics in cities — witnessed in places like Syria and Grozny in Chechnya in 1999 — have shown little regard for civilian protection. Spencer, the urban warfare specialist, said even Putin is limited, to a degree, by the rules of war, and so he is likely to claim that civilian infrastructure — like hospitals — are also military targets.

NEW campaign update from @TheStudyofWar and @criticalthreats : #Russian operations to continue the encirclement of and assault on #Kyiv have likely begun, although on a smaller scale and in a more ad hoc manner than we expected. https://t.co/tt5uYJacyg pic.twitter.com/ZoQRaOwNHF — ISW (@TheStudyofWar) March 9, 2022

But urban warfare is, by nature, murky and complex and often far more deadly. Even if Russia attempts precision attacks, it can have a cascading effect — Russia bombs alleged military targets, those operations move, Russia bombs again. “You’re going to use so many of them, the end result is the same as if you just used indiscriminate, mass artillery barrage,” said Lance Davies, a senior lecturer in defense and international affairs at the UK’s Royal Military Academy.

Even in the early days of this war, Russia’s efforts are already having this effect. “They’re causing tremendous damage to civilian infrastructure,” said Rachel Denber, the deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division at Human Rights Watch. “They’re taking many, many civilian lives.” Denber pointed to the use of weapons in heavily populated areas, including those that are explicitly banned, like cluster munitions. Human Rights Watch documented their use in three residential areas in Kharkiv on February 28. “You put that in a city like Kharkiv, and if it’s a populated area, no matter what you were aiming at, no matter what the target, it’s going to hurt civilians,” she said.

The United Nations has confirmed at least 2,149 civilian casualties, including 816 killed as of March 17, though these numbers are likely undercounts, as intense fighting in some areas has made it difficult to verify statistics.

All of this is exacerbating the humanitarian catastrophe on the ground in Ukraine, as shelling cuts off power stations and other supply lines, effectively trapping people within war zones in subzero temperatures without electricity or water, and with dwindling food, fuel, and medical supplies. In Mariupol, a city of 400,000 that has been under Russian siege for days, people were reportedly melting snow for drinking water . Humanitarian groups say the fighting is making it difficult to deliver aid or to reach those civilians left behind — often elderly or disabled people, or other vulnerable populations that didn’t have the ability to flee.

Ukrainian and Russian officials agreed to a temporary ceasefire to establish humanitarian corridors out of six cities on March 9, but the enforcement of those safe passages has been spotty, at best. According to the United Nations, on March 9, evacuations did happen in some places, but there was “limited movement” in the vulnerable areas, like Mariupol and the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of shelling some of those routes , and have rejected Russia’s calls for refugees to be evacuated to Russia or Belarus. Russian officials have blamed disruption on Ukrainian forces .

The fighting across Ukraine has forced about 9.8 million people to flee so far, according to the United Nations . Nearly 6.5 million people are internally displaced within Ukraine, although tens of thousands of Ukrainians were already forcibly displaced before Russia’s invasion because of the eight-year war in the Donbas region. Many have taken refugee in oblasts (basically, administrative regions) in western and northwestern Ukraine.

Another 3.3 million Ukrainians have escaped, mostly to neighboring countries like Poland, Romania, and Moldova. It is Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II, and host countries and aid agencies are trying to meet the astounding needs of these refugees, most of whom are women and children.

“They need warmth, they need shelter, they need transportation to accommodations,” said Becky Bakr Abdulla, an adviser to the Norwegian Refugee Council who is currently based in Poland. “They need food, they need water. Many need legal aid — their passports have been stolen, they’ve forgotten their birth certificates.”

How the war in Ukraine began, and what’s happened so far

For months, Russia built up troops along the Ukrainian border , reaching around 190,000 on the eve of the invasion. At the same time, Russia issued a series of maximalist demands to the United States and NATO allies, including an end to NATO’s eastward expansion and a ban on Ukraine entering NATO, among other “security guarantees.” All were nonstarters for the West.

But the short answer to why Russia decided to follow through with an invasion: Vladimir Putin.

From Putin’s perspective, many historians of Europe have said, the enlargement of NATO , which has moved steadily closer to Russia’s borders, was certainly a factor. But Putin’s speech on the eve of his invasion offers another clue: the Russian president basically denied Ukrainian statehood , and said the country rightfully belongs to Russia.

But Russia’s history of incursions, invasions, and occupations under Putin — including Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea — have foreshadowed a new, even more brutal war. Seen through this lens, he is not a madman, but a leader who came to power with the lethal siege of Grozny in Chechnya in 1999, who has pursued increasingly violent policy, and who has been willing to inflict civilian casualties to achieve his foreign policy goals.

In 2014 , Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine that culminated in the occupation of the Crimea peninsula in the south. Later that year, Russia deployed hybrid tactics, such as proxy militias and soldiers without insignia, to attack the Donbas region, where 14,000 people have died since 2014. On February 22, in the days before Putin launched a full-fledged war on Ukraine, he sent Russian troops into Donbas and declared two provinces there independent.

This time, according to former State Department Russia specialist Michael Kimmage, Putin miscalculated the difficulty of taking over Ukraine. Still, as the days go on, this war could escalate to unimaginable levels of violence. “If Putin really is feeling very threatened, it’s possible that he will dig in his heels, double down and take a lot of risks in order to prevent any potential loss of power,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former intelligence officer who’s now a senior fellow and director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.

Russia is committing possible war crimes in Ukraine, and Ukrainians are responding with their full military force. They have also developed a strong civil resistance enabled by volunteers of all stripes. “All the nation is involved, not only the army,” said a Ukrainian person who has been supplying medicines.

According to a conservative estimate by US intelligence , around 7,000 Russian personnel have died so far — more troops than the US lost over two decades of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But Russia’s initial setback could lead to increasingly brutal tactics. “We’re looking at World War II kinds of atrocities. Bombing of civilians, rocket fire and artillery, smashing cities, a million refugees; that what looked impossible before now looks within the realm,” said Daniel Fried, a former ambassador to Poland and current fellow at the Atlantic Council.

How the West has responded so far

In the aftermath of Russia’s Ukrainian invasion, the United States and its allies imposed unprecedented sanctions and other penalties on Russia, acting with a swiftness and cohesion that surprised some observers, including, most likely, Putin himself .

“The US and the Western reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is essentially blowing the lid off of sanctions,” said Julia Friedlander, director of the Economic Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council. “Never in the past have we accelerated to such strong sanctions and economic restrictions in such a quick period of time — and also considered doing it on one of the largest economies in the world.”

There’s a lot of sanctions, and the US and its partners have only increased the pressure since. President Joe Biden announced on March 8 that the US would place extreme limits on energy imports from Russia — the kind of last-resort option that few experts thought might happen because of the shock to energy prices and the global economy. (Europe, far more dependent on Russian energy imports, has not joined these sanctions.) On March 11, Biden pushed Congress to strip Russia of its “most favored nation” status, which would put tariffs on Russian goods, though it’s likely to have limited impact compared to the slew of sanctions that already exist.

Ukraine’s resistance in the face of Russian aggression helped push Western leaders to take more robust action, as this fight became framed in Washington and in European capitals as a fight between autocracy and democracy. A lot of credit goes to Zelenskyy himself, whose impassioned pleas to Western leaders motivated them to deliver more lethal aid to Ukraine and implement tougher sanctions.

Among the toughest sanctions are those against Russia’s central bank. The US and European Union did this in an effort to block Russia from using its considerable foreign reserves to prop up its currency, the ruble, and to undermine its ability to pay for its Ukraine war. Russia had tried to sanction-proof its economy after 2014, shifting away from US dollars, but the EU’s decision to join in undermined Russia’s so-called “ fortress economy .”

The US and the EU also cut several Russian banks off from SWIFT, the global messaging system that facilitates foreign transactions. As Ben Walsh wrote for Vox , more than 11,000 different banks use SWIFT for cross-border transactions, and it was used in about 70 percent of transfers in Russia . Even here, though, certain banks were excluded from these measures to allow energy transactions, and EU countries, like Germany, are so far blocking efforts to expand these penalties .

The US has targeted numerous Russian banks, including two of Russia’s biggest, Sberbank and VTB . The US, along with other partners, have put bans on technology and other exports to Russia, and they’ve placed financial sanctions on oligarchs and other Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Putin himself . Russian oligarchs have had their yachts seized in European vacation towns because of these sanctions, and the US has launched — and, yes, this is real — Task Force Kleptocapture to help enforce sanctions, although oligarchs’ actual influence on Putin’s war is limited .

These penalties are widespread — besides Europe, partners like South Korea and Japan have joined in. Even neutral countries like Switzerland have imposed sanctions ( though there are loopholes .) Big Tech companies, cultural institutions , and international corporations , from Mastercard to McDonald’s , are pulling out of the country.

Experts said there are still some economic penalties left in the toolbox, but what’s already in place is massively damaging to the Russian economy. Russia’s economy is expected to dramatically shrink; its stock market remains closed . And even if these sanctions are targeted toward Russia’s ability to make war, the damage done to the Russian economic system will inevitably trickle down to ordinary Russians.

The fallout will not be limited to Russia. Biden’s announcement of an oil embargo against Russia has increased energy prices ; what Biden, at least, is calling “Putin’s price hike.” And Russia may still engage in some sort of countermeasures, including cyberattacks or other meddling activity in the West.

How we get out of this

The US is doing almost everything it can without officially being a party to the conflict. The US has funneled 17,000 anti-tank missiles so far, including Javelins missiles , to Ukraine. On March 16, the US announced $800 million in additional military aid , including thousands of anti-armor weapons and small arms, 800 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, and millions of rounds of ammunition.

Biden rejected the US enforcement of a no-fly zone in Ukraine , a military policy that polls surprisingly well among Americans but essentially means attacking any Russian aircraft that enters Ukrainian airspace. Seventy-eight national security scholars came out against a no-fly zone, saying that scenario would edge the US too close to a direct conflict with Russia.

So far, negotiations between Russia and Ukraine have faltered . Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, has said that the fighting could stop if Ukrainians agreed to neutrality (and no NATO membership), and agreed to recognize Crimea as Russian and the Donbas region as independent. “Is this a serious offer?” said Fried, the former ambassador who had experience working with Peskov. “It could be posturing. The Russians are liars.”

Zelenskyy has signaled some openness to neutrality , but Ukraine is going to want some serious security guarantees that it’s not clear Russia is willing to give.

The US’s absolutist rhetoric has complicated those efforts. Biden, in his State of the Union address , framed this conflict as a battle between democracy and tyranny. Even if a strong argument can be made in favor of that, given Putin’s actions, such language poses challenges for Western diplomats who must forge an off-ramp for Putin to end this war.

“If it’s good against evil, how do you compromise with evil?” said Thomas Graham, a Russia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Putin does need a face-saving way to back down from some of his demands. But if we have a compromise solution to this conflict, we’re going to need off-ramps as well, to explain why we accept that less than a total defeat for Putin.”

In a Politico essay , Graham and scholar Rajan Menon proposed a framework for a negotiated outcome that begins with confidence-building measures between the US and Russia, rebuilding arms control treaties. The US and NATO would pledge that neither Ukraine nor Georgia will join NATO in the next several years or decades, though the possibility may be open someday. This would culminate in a “new security order for Russia,” they write . Russian academic Alexander Dynkin circulated a similar idea in the lead-up to the war.

Gavin Wilde, a former director for the National Security Council who focused on Russia during the Trump administration, says the opportunities for a diplomatic resolution have not yet been exhausted. “The conundrum we found ourselves in quite a lot with Russia is, you have to talk to them. Because lives are at stake. These are two nuclear powers, and you have to keep talking,” he said.

What a Russian victory would mean for the world

The world has been galvanized by Ukraine’s small victories in this conflict.

Still, Ukraine faces long odds. By the numbers , the Russian military budget is about ten times that of Ukraine. The Russian military has 900,000 active troops, and the Ukrainian military has 196,000. Ukrainians may have the tactical advantage and the spirit to persevere, but structural factors weigh in Russia’s favor.

This all presages what could be a long, drawn-out war, all documented on iPhones. “It’s not going to be pretty,” says Samuel Charap, who studies the Russian military at RAND. A siege of major Ukrainian cities means “cutting off supply lines to a city and making it intolerable for people to resist — to engender surrender by inflicting pain.”

Still, Russia’s performance so far has been so poor that the scales may ultimately tip toward Ukraine. Mark Hertling, who was the top commander of the US Army’s European forces before retiring in 2013, says that the corruption within the Russian military has slowed down the advance.

“Unless it’s just a continuous shelling — but I don’t think Russia can even sustain that with their logistics support. They have already blown their wad quite a bit in terms of missiles and rockets,” Hertling said. “They’re having trouble moving, they’re having trouble resupplying. And when you have those two things combined, you’re going to have some big problems.”

However this plays out, the cruel effects of this war won’t just be felt in Ukraine. It’s truly a global crisis . The comprehensive sanctions on Russia will have massive implications for the Russian economy, hurting citizens and residents who have nothing to do with their autocratic leader. There will also be vast knock-on effects on the world economy, with particularly frightening implications for food security in the poorest countries. Those effects may be most visceral for stomachs in the Middle East; Egypt and Yemen depend on Russian and Ukrainian wheat.

The unprecedented sanctions may have unprecedented impact. “We don’t know what the full consequences of this will be, because we’ve never raised this type of economic warfare,” Graham said. “It’s hard to overestimate the shock that the Russian military operation has caused around the world and the fears that it has stoked about wider warfare in Europe.”

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Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 803

As the war enters its 803rd day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Tuesday, May 7, 2024.

• Russia claimed to have taken control of two more Ukrainian settlements – Soloviove in the eastern Donetsk region and Kotliarivka further north in the Kharkiv region. Ukraine’s military made no mention of either area in its evening report.
• About 400,000 households in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region were left without power after Russian drones struck high-voltage distribution lines. Officials said power was later restored to most homes but warned of “urgent challenges” in maintaining the grid.
• Vyacheslav Gladkov, the governor of Russia’s Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, said six people were killed and 35 injured after Ukrainian drones struck two buses taking people to work at a meat factory.
• The Ukrainian Weightlifting Federation (UWF) announced Olympian and two-time European champion Oleksandr Pielieshenko had been killed on the front lines of the war in Ukraine at the age of 30. The Ukrainian Olympic Committee said Pielieshenko had signed up in the early days of the war.

Politics and diplomacy

• Russia said it would hold tactical nuclear weapons drills after some Western European countries voiced stronger military support for Ukraine. Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than two years ago.
• Russia warned the United Kingdom that if UK weapons were used by Ukraine to attack Russian territory, then Moscow could hit back at UK military installations and equipment inside Ukraine and elsewhere. UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron said last week that Ukraine had the right to strike Russia with UK weapons.
• Chinese President Xi Jinping began his tour of Europe meeting French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Paris. Von der Leyen said the EU hoped Xi would help persuade Russia to end its “ war of aggression against Ukraine ”.
• Following the talks, Xi said he backed Macron’s proposal for a truce during the Olympics, which are scheduled to start in Paris on July 26. He said China had been working “vigorously” to facilitate peace talks for Ukraine.
• Germany recalled its ambassador to Russia over alleged cyberattacks linked to Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency on its defence and aerospace firms. The ambassador, (Otto) Graf Lambsdorff will remain in Berlin for a week before returning to Moscow.
• Russia’s FSB security services said it had charged a Russian man in his mid-40s with terrorism. The man was detained near a railway station in the central city of Tambov and accused of attempting to blow up two court buildings on behalf of Ukraine.
• Poland said it was financing the operation of 20,000 Starlink internet devices in Ukraine, an essential network for the country’s military communications.
• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz backed a proposal for about 90 percent of the revenues generated from frozen Russian assets to be channelled into arms purchases for Ukraine.

The families risking everything to keep Ukraine’s trains running – photo essay

Dutch photographer Jelle Krings has been documenting the workers of the Ukrainian railway since the war began. Here, he revisits the families that have kept a war-torn country moving, often to great personal sacrifice

• Words and pictures by Jelle Krings

I n the early hours of 24 February 2022, when Russian bombs and rockets struck Ukrainian cities and infrastructure throughout the country, railway workers boarded trains heading east. Determined to get as many people as possible to safety , they would end up evacuating millions to Ukraine’s borders in the west.

Ukraine’s new railway chief Yevhen Liashchenko was in the team that guided the network through the first stages of the war. He says his people acted not because they were instructed to but because “they didn’t know any other way”. There was no time for bureaucracy, “decisions were made by the people on the ground, and they love the railway, not as a business but as a family”.

It takes more than 230,000 people to keep the trains running in Ukraine.

The railway station in Lyman, Donbas, destroyed by shelling

Yevhen Liashchenko, chief executive of Ukrainian railways, has been leading Ukraine’s 230,000 railway workers through the war

Together they run a vast railway network of more than 15,000 miles (24,000km) of track, one that has been invaluable for Ukraine’s ability to withstand the invasion. Despite continual bombing, the network has largely remained operational. Damage to the tracks is swiftly repaired, and shell-hit critical infrastructure is promptly restored.

Over two years, we followed families and workers living by the tracks near the frontlines to find out how the war and the struggle to keep the trains running is shaping their lives.

The Neschcheryakovas

Nadiya Neschcheryakova works as an attendant at a railway crossing in Bucha, about 10 miles from Kyiv. She works in shifts, sharing her post with her mother and two other women. On the morning of the invasion, the sound of explosions pierced the sky above the thick pine forests surrounding her home. She went to work anyway. A few days later, her post at the railway crossing was occupied by Russian troops. Her home in the next village along the track was now at the frontline of the war.

Nadiya Neschcheryakova operates her railway crossing in Bucha, near Kyiv . A freight train passes transporting materials such as wood for possible use in Ukraine’s defensive efforts along the frontline

Remnants of the Neschcheryakovas’ family house, destroyed by shelling, lie in the yard at Spartak, Kyiv oblast

Nadiya Neschcheryakova with her husband, Yuriy, their daughter Kateryna and grandson Andriy. Yuriy built a new house after their home was destroyed by shelling early in the war

With her husband, daughter and grandson, Nadiya managed to flee to the west where they stayed for a month waiting for the Russian withdrawal from Kyiv. When they returned home, they found their home had been reduced to rubble.

The Petrovs

When the city of Kherson was liberated after nine months of Russian occupation in November 2022, Oleksandr Petrov was sent on a mission to repair the tracks leading to the city. When he set out in a van with a team of repairmen in the morning, he knew the risks: the fields along the tracks were heavily mined in an attempt to slow the Ukrainian advance.

Railway workers wash their wounds after driving over a mine in the Kherson region, 13 November 2022. They were carrying out repair works just days after Kherson was liberated. Oleksandr Petrov lost a leg in the incident

Oleksandr shows his prosthetic leg to workers in a railway repair team in Voznesensk, Mykolaiv oblast. Since his injury, Oleksandr has been given a desk job

Oleksandr Petrov at his parents’ house in Voznesensk. Family members spend a day at the cemetery to maintain their relatives’ graves and pay their respects

Russian troops were expected to start shelling the city once they’d had a chance to regroup on the other side of the Dnipro River. The civilians left in the city would have to be evacuated by train, so Oleksandr went anyway. Later that day, Oleksandr lost his leg after they drove over a Russian anti-vehicle mine.

The Lyman community

When Ukrainian troops recaptured the railway hub of Lyman from Russian troops in November 2022, it had been under Russian occupation for six months. Since then, it has been on the frontline of the war in Ukraine’s Donbas region. Yet, a small community of railway families continues to live in the basements of their battered apartment buildings on the outskirts of the city.

The Rosokha family mourn the death of Nina Rosokha, who was killed by a Russian artillery strike on Lyman. Nina had worked in a railway service department, her husband was a train driver for 36 years. During the funeral, sounds of fighting could be heard in the nearby Kreminna forest

A forest on the outskirts of Lyman smoulders after shelling. Firefighters do not go into the forests for fear of mines

Fedya, 13, plays his accordion outside the apartment building where he lives with his mother and grandmother, both of whom work for the railway. Evelyna, 12, with one of her cats

The families in the community stay underground most of the time. The frontline is too close for the air raid alert system to be effective, and artillery and missiles can strike at any moment. The community have paid a heavy price in the war . Railway worker Nina Rosokha was killed on her way to the post office in a Russian artillery strike on a market. During another attack, Lyubov Surzhan’s top-floor apartment was obliterated. A piece of shrapnel skimmed Fedya’s head during a strike on a nearby railway depot. Yet the railway is their home and, despite the danger, they don’t want to leave.

The Mykolaychuks

The Mykolaychuk brothers live in an apartment building in the centre of Podilsk. Both are fifth generation locomotive drivers. Before the invasion, their jobs were mostly local, transporting grain from the region to the port of Odesa. Now, they go farther east towards the frontlines of the war, driving evacuation trains and weapons transports.

Alla Valeriyivna Mykolaychuk in Podilsk with her daughter and niece, both aged one

They don’t get paid if they don’t work, and jobs have become less frequent since the war. With money hard to come by, they have had to sell their family car to make ends meet.

The Tereshchenkos

Olha Tereshchenko survived a Russian attack on a convoy of civilians fleeing the then occupied city of Kupiansk. Her husband and five-year-old son were killed. Consumed with grief, she now works at a railway office in Kharkiv and gets support from her fellow workers there. Urns containing the ashes of her husband and son still sit on a shelf in a nearby crematorium. She hopes to bury them near their home in Kupiansk one day, when the frontline is further away.

Olha Tereshchenko in Saltivka, the area of Kharkiv where she now lives

Olha’s husband and son, photographed as a baby, were killed in a Russian attack on a civilian convoy. Olha is overcome when she visits their remains in a nearby crematorium: she hopes one day to bury her husband and son near their home in Kupiansk

• Rights and freedom
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May 15, 2024 - Russia's war in Ukraine

By Heather Chen, Sana Noor Haq, Adrienne Vogt and Maureen Chowdhury, CNN

Our live coverage of  Russia's war in Ukraine has moved here .

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrives in Beijing at the start of a 2-day state visit to China

From CNN's Abel Alvarado

Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived in Beijing early Thursday morning local time to begin a two-day state visit to China, according to TASS and Chinese state media CCTV.

Russia is stepping up disinformation campaign against Zelensky, US intelligence shows

From CNN's Alex Marquardt

Russia has stepped up its disinformation efforts to discredit Ukraine’s  President Volodymyr Zelensky  and raise questions about his legitimacy in recent months, US intelligence agencies have observed.

A recently downgraded intelligence assessment shared with CNN says that Russia has seized on various recent events to fuel criticism about Zelensky’s abilities and place as Ukraine’s leader, a senior Biden administration official said in an interview.

Russia has spread disinformation about Zelensky since before the war started but recent intelligence shows “it’s definitely increasing,” the official said.

Russia has highlighted two main areas in this recent disinformation push, the intelligence indicates: Ukraine’s  painful withdrawal  from the eastern city of Avdiivka and the fact that Ukraine postponed its presidential election scheduled for this Spring due to the war.

Wider impacts: The US is more concerned about the impact of the disinformation on countries abroad than on Ukrainians’ confidence in Zelensky, the official said.

“That’s why we’re briefing our allies and partners about this,” the official said. “We want to make sure that this type of Russian disinformation doesn’t take hold and other countries that might not realize, ‘Oh, of course, they can’t hold elections because they’re in a state of martial law as a consequence of Russia’s war.’”

Dive deeper into Russia's disinformation campaign and what it could mean.

Blinken visits Kyiv and reaffirms US support for Ukraine as fighting in Kharkiv intensifies. Here's the latest

From CNN staff

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken concluded his trip to Kyiv on Wednesday, where he reaffirmed the Biden administration's support for Ukraine as Russia's advances continue in the Kharkiv region of the country.

Earlier Wednesday, Blinken announced $2 billion in foreign military financing for Ukraine and said much-needed ammunition and weapons are being rushed to the front lines. The US State Department acknowledged that the $2 billion in foreign military financing is coming primarily from the recently passed Ukraine Security supplemental and $400 million of it is coming from existing Foreign Military Financing (FMF) that had not previously been allocated to Ukraine.

Blinken also said that the US remains "committed" to helping Ukraine win the war against Russia, but it is not encouraging strikes on Russian territory. Blinken added that Washington strongly supports a Ukrainian peace summit set to take place next month in Switzerland. 

Here are more of the latest headlines:

• Kharkiv and Russian gains: Ukrainian officials suggested further gains by Russian forces on Wednesday in the Kharkiv region, as Moscow continues its push into northeastern Ukraine. The town of Vovchansk, located about 60 kilometers (or about 37 miles) northeast of Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv, is seeing some of the most intense battles in areas near the border, with one police official saying Russian forces are already in the town.
• Zelensky: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will halt all international events scheduled for the coming days, his office announced, as Russian troops push into the northeastern Kharkiv region .
• UNICEF report: At least 1,993 children in Ukraine have been killed or wounded since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to the UN's children's agency (UNICEF), reiterating calls for a ceasefire. On average, at least two children lose their lives in Ukraine every day, UNICEF reported on Tuesday.

US not encouraging Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory, Blinken says 

From CNN's Radina Gigova in London 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US remains "committed" to helping Ukraine win the war against Russia, but it is not encouraging strikes on Russian territory. 

“We’ve not encouraged or enabled strikes outside Ukraine but ultimately Ukraine has to make decisions for itself about how it's going to conduct this war, a war it's conducting in defense of its freedom, of its sovereignty, of its territorial integrity and we’ll continue to back Ukraine with the equipment it needs to succeed," Blinken said on Wednesday during a joint news conference with Ukrainian Foreign Minster Dmytro Kuleba in Kyiv. 

Blinken also announced that the US will provide an additional $2 billion in foreign military financing for Ukraine, adding "we put this together in a first-of-its-kind defense enterprise fund."

The fund will have three components, Blinken said, including:

• Providing weapons for Ukraine now
• Investing in Ukraine's defense industrial base
• Financing military equipment purchases from other countries

"Of course, everyone's eyes are focused on the situation in the east and northeast, Kharkiv in particular. And so the newest support that I just announced, but particularly the $60 billion supplemental, we know is coming at a critical time," Blinken said. 

Zelensky condemns shooting of Slovakia's pro-Russian prime minister

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called a shooting attack on Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico "appalling."

"We strongly condemn this act of violence against our neighboring partner state's head of government. Every effort should be made to ensure that violence does not become the norm in any country, form, or sphere," Zelensky wrote in a post on X Wednesday.

Fico was shot multiple times, according to a statement on his official Facebook page, adding he is currently in a life-threatening condition.

"We sincerely hope Robert Fico recovers soon and express our solidarity with the people of Slovakia," Zelensky continued.

For context: Fico won a third term as Slovakian prime minister last October after running a campaign that criticized Western support for Ukraine. Ahead of the election, Fico made no secret of his sympathies toward the Kremlin and blamed “Ukrainian Nazis and fascists” for provoking Vladimir Putin into launching the invasion, repeating the false narrative Russia’s president has used to justify his invasion.

Fico, who began his fourth term last October, has shifted Slovakia’s foreign policy toward pro-Russian positions and initiated reforms in criminal law and media regulations, raising concerns about the erosion of the rule of law.

Fico also had pledged an immediate end to Slovak military support for Ukraine and promised to block Ukraine’s NATO ambitions in what would upend Slovakia’s staunch backing for Ukraine.

Ukrainian officials suggest there are more Russian gains amid ongoing push in Kharkiv region 

From CNN's Radina Gigova and Maria Kostenko 

Ukrainian officials suggested further gains by Russian forces on Wednesday in the Kharkiv region, as Moscow continues its push into northeastern Ukraine.

The town of Vovchansk, located about 60 kilometers (or about 37 miles) northeast of Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv, is seeing some of the most intense battles in areas near the border, with one police official saying Russian forces are already in the town. 

"The situation in Vovchansk is extremely difficult. The enemy is taking positions on the streets of Vovchansk," said Oleksii Kharkivskyi, chief patrol officer of the Vovchansk Police Department, urging residents to evacuate. 

Gen. Serhii "Marcel" Melnyk, the commander of the Kharkiv city defense forces, also suggested there have been changes in Ukrainian positions in Vovchansk and a possible tactical withdrawal. 

"Heavy fighting is ongoing. In some areas, near Vovchansk and Lukiantsi, Ukrainian defenders were forced to move to more favorable positions to more effectively use their forces and defend the region from the offensive," Melnyk said Wednesday. 

At least 24 people, including four children, were injured as a result of Russian shelling in various parts of the Kharkiv region on Wednesday, Melnyk said.

The Ukrainian monitoring group DeepStateMap indicated on Wednesday that Russian forces have reached northeastern parts of Vovchansk as they continue to push further south into Ukrainian territory. Russian forces have taken control of more than nine villages near the border in recent days. 

Mandatory evacuations continue from all northern border settlements, according to Roman Semenukha, deputy head of Kharkiv Regional Military Administration. Nearly 8,000 people have been evacuated from these areas since May 10, when Russia launched its push. 

Nearly 2,000 children have been killed or injured since Russia invaded Ukraine, says UNICEF

From CNN's Sana Noor Haq

At least 1,993 children in Ukraine have been killed or wounded since Moscow launched a full-scale invasion in February 2022, according to the UN's children's agency (UNICEF), reiterating calls for a ceasefire.

On average, at least two children lose their lives in Ukraine every day, UNICEF reported on Tuesday.

“Ukraine’s children urgently need safety, stability, access to safe learning, child protection services, and psychosocial support," the agency said in a statement. "More than anything, Ukraine's children need peace."

Mental health impact: The war in Ukraine has "harmfully affected" the mental health and wellbeing of children , UNICEF said, adding that half of teenagers report trouble sleeping. At least one in five suffer intrusive thoughts and flashbacks.

Loss of education: Almost half of children enrolled in school in Ukraine have been robbed of in-person education, according to the report. Nearly one million children across the country cannot access any in-person learning "due to insecurity," UNICEF added.

Earlier this year, CNN reported on Ukrainian children attending newly built bunker schools in the northern city of Kharkiv, as daily Russian strikes rained down overhead.

US secretary of state announces $2 billion in foreign military financing for Ukraine

From CNN's Radina Gigova in London

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Wednesday the provision of additional $2 billion in foreign military financing for Ukraine and said much-needed weapons and ammunition are being rushed to the front lines. 

"Ukraine is facing this renewed brutal Russian onslaught," Blinken said during a news conference in Kyiv, speaking alongside Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, adding he discussed weapons deliveries with Kuleba and President Volodymyr Zelensky. 

"We are rushing ammunition, armored vehicles, missiles, air defenses. Rushing them to get to the front lines to protect soldiers, to protect civilians," Blinken said, pointing out that air defenses are "a top priority."

Blinken also said Washington strongly supports a Ukrainian peace summit set to take place next month in Switzerland. 

This post has been updated with the latest comments from Blinken.

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Ukraine Fights to Hold Off Fierce Russian Assaults in Northeast

While Ukrainian officials and analysts said that a Russian advance across the border appeared to be slowing, President Volodymyr Zelensky canceled his participation in international events.

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By Constant Méheut

Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine

Ukrainian forces on Wednesday were putting up a fierce defense in Vovchansk, a village in northeastern Ukraine about five miles from the Russian border, engaging in what appeared to be street fighting as they tried to contain the Russian advance in the area.

In a sign of heightened concern over Ukraine’s deteriorating military situation, President Volodymyr Zelensky canceled his participation in all international events for the coming days, including a visit on Friday to Spain where he was expected to sign a bilateral security agreement.

Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement that its forces had “partially pushed the enemy” out of Vovchansk. A few hours earlier, it had acknowledged that its troops had withdrawn from positions in two villages, including Vovchansk, allowing Russian forces to gain a foothold.

“Active fighting is ongoing,” Oleksiy Kharkivskiy, the police chief in Vovchansk, said on Wednesday in a video published on Facebook from the village, in which heavy gunfire could be heard in the background. He added that Russian troops had taken positions in several streets in the village and that the situation “is extremely difficult.”

Ukrainian officials and military analysts said Ukraine’s position on the battlefield in recent days has seriously worsened, as the government in Kyiv tries to repel a new Russian offensive push in the northeast that is stretching its already outnumbered and outgunned forces.

Russia has timed its new offensive, which started on Friday, at an opportune moment. Ukraine is short of manpower and is struggling to recruit more soldiers. It is also running out of ammunition because of delays in Western military aid, in particular America’s $60.8 billion package which was passed in Congress three weeks ago, after months of political wrangling.

Wrapping up a two-day visit to Kyiv, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said at a news conference on Wednesday that the U.S. was “rushing ammunition, armored vehicles, missiles, air defenses” to the front lines.

Mr. Blinken added that the Biden administration had allocated $2 billion for Ukraine’s military, much of it to be invested in the country’s defense-industrial base to help Ukraine produce its own weapons over the long term.

Ukrainian officials and military analysts say that Russia’s Army now appears to be advancing more slowly in the northeast, six days into its offensive, partly because they have reached more urbanized areas, like Vovchansk, which makes rapid progress more difficult.

Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency, told Ukrainian television on Tuesday that conditions in the area under attack were moving “toward stabilization,” with additional Ukrainian units being rushed in to repel Russian advances. But he added that “the situation is quite tense and is changing very quickly.”

The assessments by the Ukrainian officials and analysts appeared to be supported by open-source maps of the battlefield compiled by independent groups analyzing combat footage. Those maps showed that Russian troops had gained footholds in two settlements in the past day, a slower rate of advance than before, when they were capturing up to five settlements a day.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said on Wednesday that it had captured two settlements in the northeast, a claim that could not be independently confirmed and did not match what the open-source maps showed.

Russia also said it had seized the village of Robotyne in the south. The claim could also not been independently verified and Ukrainian officials denied it . “They are only on the outskirts, our positions are still in the village,” Lt. Serhii Skibchyk, the spokesperson for the 65th Brigade, said in a comment to Ukrainian Pravda. “Both Ukrainian and Russian troops have fire advantage over the village simultaneously. But the majority of the village is still our position.”

Robotyne was recaptured by Ukrainian troops last summer, in one of the few gains of Ukraine’s unsuccessful counteroffensive at the time. Should it fall back into Russian hands, it could deal a blow to the morale of the Ukrainian Army.

Vovchansk has been heavily bombed since the start of Russia’s offensive operations on Friday, including with powerful guided weapons known as glide bombs that deliver hundreds of pounds of explosives in a single blast. Almost all the residents of the village, which had a prewar population of 17,000, have fled, local authorities said.

Oleh Syniehubov, the head of the Kharkiv region’s military administration, said on Wednesday that nearly 8,000 civilians had been evacuated from villages and settlements in the region. These include residents of villages on the immediate outskirts of Kharkiv that have come under increasing shelling in recent days.

Krystyna Havran, a member of the village council of Lyptsi, about 10 miles north of Kharkiv’s outer ring, said she had been scrambling to evacuate residents in recent days as the fighting got closer. “No one imagined that there would be an offensive,” she said.

Most of the evacuees have streamed into Kharkiv, hoping that the city, Ukraine’s second largest after the capital, Kyiv, would provide them with more security. But Kharkiv has been the target of numerous Russian airstrikes for several weeks , making life for its residents increasingly difficult.

Mr. Syniehubov said that Kharkiv had been targeted six times on Tuesday, including with glide bombs that hit the northern part of the city, causing heavy damage to a 12-story apartment building and injuring 22 people. A video released by the national police shows officers walking on piles of rubble inside a building and firefighters putting out a blaze.

Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst at the government-run National Institute for Strategic Studies in Ukraine, said the strikes were designed “to instill fear and make people flee from frontline urban areas.” But to force Kharkiv’s 1.2 million residents to flee, he added, Russia would have “to systematically target the city — weeks of strikes.”

Analysts say this could explain why Russia is pushing north of Kharkiv. If Russian troops secured positions in a village like Lyptsi, they would be within artillery range of the city, allowing them to pound it with shells.

Russia has also targeted power plants and substations in the Kharkiv region and other areas of Ukraine since March, part of a campaign to cut off electricity to large areas of the country and make life miserable for civilians.

The strikes have severely limited Ukraine’s available generating capacity. As a consequence, Ukrenergo, the country’s national transmission system operator, introduced emergency blackouts for households and businesses in several regions on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, in an effort to save energy.

Power outages were limited in Kyiv, affecting only 10 percent of the consumers, according to local authorities . But Ukrenergo warned that new blackouts were likely to be introduced again on Wednesday night.

Ukrainian officials have urged their Western allies to provide them with more air defense weapons and ammunition to shoot down Russian missiles and drones. Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine’s foreign minister, reiterated this demand during a meeting with Mr. Blinken on Wednesday, asking him to help Ukraine obtain more U.S.-made Patriot air defense systems.

Mr. Blinken also said that the U.S. and Ukraine were close to completing a security agreement, one of dozens that Kyiv is negotiating with NATO members as it lobbies for admission into the alliance. He said it could be signed “in a matter of weeks.” Such an agreement would not guarantee significant funding but would include things like intelligence sharing and military interoperability.

Michael Crowley and Daria Mitiuk contributed reporting from Kyiv.

Constant Méheut reports on the war in Ukraine, including battlefield developments, attacks on civilian centers and how the war is affecting its people. More about Constant Méheut

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