2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

On 6 August 2024, Ukrainian forces launched a surprise offensive into Russia’s Kursk region, opening a new and unexpected phase of the war by carrying significant ground combat onto recognized Russian territory. The incursion challenged assumptions about the conflict’s geographic limits and forced Moscow to respond on home soil while still sustaining operations in Ukraine. Politically, the move aimed to unsettle Russia, draw forces away from key fronts, and demonstrate Ukrainian initiative after a difficult period on the battlefield. It also underscored how the war had evolved into a broader, more unpredictable regional confrontation.

In February 2024, Ukraine withdrew from Avdiivka after months of intense Russian assaults, allowing Moscow to seize a heavily fortified city long associated with the front line in Donetsk Oblast. The battle reflected Russia’s willingness to incur heavy losses for incremental territorial gains and highlighted Ukraine’s growing shortages of ammunition and air defense under delayed Western support. Avdiivka’s fall did not transform the entire war, but it was one of Russia’s most important battlefield advances since 2023 and illustrated a shift toward renewed Russian offensive momentum in parts of the east.

On 6 June 2023, the Kakhovka Dam on the Dnipro River was breached, unleashing major flooding across downstream areas of Kherson Oblast. The destruction caused a humanitarian and environmental disaster, displaced residents, damaged farmland, and raised concerns about water supplies for southern Ukraine and cooling systems linked to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant. Because the dam was under Russian control at the time, the event immediately became a major international controversy and another potential war-crimes issue. It broadened the war’s impact beyond battlefield lines to long-term ecological and civilian harm on a vast scale.

On 20 May 2023, the head of the Wagner Group announced the capture of Bakhmut after months of brutal combat that had turned the city into ruins. Although the battle’s immediate strategic value was debated, Bakhmut became a central symbol of the war’s attritional phase, with exceptionally heavy casualties on both sides. The fighting consumed enormous resources and highlighted the role of irregular Russian formations alongside the regular army. Whether viewed as a tactical gain or a costly pyrrhic victory, the end of the battle illustrated the grinding character of the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

On 11 November 2022, Ukrainian forces entered Kherson after Russia withdrew from the city and the west bank of the Dnipro River. Kherson had been the only regional capital seized by Russia in the first phase of the invasion, so its liberation carried major strategic and symbolic weight. The retreat showed the vulnerability of Russian positions west of the river under sustained Ukrainian pressure, including strikes on supply routes and bridges. For Ukraine, the recapture reinforced the success of its autumn offensives and demonstrated that Moscow could be forced to abandon even politically important territorial gains.

On 8 October 2022, a powerful explosion and fire damaged the Kerch Bridge, a critical road and rail link between Russia and occupied Crimea. The bridge had immense military and symbolic importance because it helped sustain Russian forces in southern Ukraine and embodied Moscow’s post-2014 control over Crimea. The blast disrupted supply lines and prompted heightened Russian retaliation, including a broader wave of strikes against Ukrainian infrastructure. As a result, the incident became significant not only as an attack on a strategic asset but also as a marker of widening escalation and vulnerability behind the front lines.

On 30 September 2022, President Vladimir Putin announced the annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia regions following internationally rejected occupation referendums. The move sought to present contested battlefield zones as sovereign Russian territory, even though Russia did not fully control any of the regions it claimed. The annexation was widely condemned as illegal and represented a major escalation because it attempted to change borders by force while the war was still ongoing. It also deepened the conflict’s political stakes by tying Russian prestige and war aims more openly to permanent territorial seizure.

In September 2022, Ukraine launched a rapid counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast that shattered Russian positions across the northeast and led to the recapture of Izium, a crucial logistics hub. The operation demonstrated Ukrainian ability to combine deception, speed, and local force concentration, overturning assumptions that the front had become static. Russia’s abrupt retreat left behind equipment and exposed weaknesses in its manpower and command structure. The liberation of Izium and surrounding territory changed the military narrative of the war, boosted Ukrainian morale, and convinced many foreign partners that Ukraine could retake significant occupied areas.

In late June 2022, Ukrainian forces withdrew from Sievierodonetsk after weeks of intense fighting, allowing Russia to claim one of its most significant gains of the summer campaign in the Donbas. The battle reflected the war’s shift from the failed lightning strike on Kyiv to a grinding artillery-heavy contest in eastern Ukraine. The city’s fall, followed by Russian advances toward Lysychansk, showed how attritional tactics and concentrated firepower could still produce Russian gains, even as they came at high cost. It also underscored the strategic importance of Luhansk Oblast in Moscow’s revised campaign goals.

On 14 April 2022, the guided missile cruiser Moskva, flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, sank after being struck in a major naval loss for Moscow. Ukrainian officials said the vessel had been hit by Neptune anti-ship missiles, while Russia initially acknowledged only a fire and ammunition explosion. The sinking was militarily and symbolically important: it weakened Russian prestige, complicated naval operations in the northwestern Black Sea, and demonstrated that Ukraine could inflict serious losses on high-value Russian assets even without a large traditional navy. The event quickly became one of the war’s most memorable early turning points.

After Ukrainian forces re-entered Bucha in early April 2022, bodies of civilians were found in streets, yards, and mass burial sites, prompting international outrage and investigations into war crimes. Evidence gathered by journalists, human rights groups, and later official inquiries pointed to killings, torture, and other abuses committed during the Russian occupation. Bucha became a defining symbol of the human cost of the invasion and influenced diplomatic pressure, sanctions, and debates over accountability. The revelations also hardened Ukrainian and Western views that the conflict was not merely territorial but deeply bound up with crimes against civilians.

By early April 2022, Russian troops had retreated from Kyiv Oblast after failing to encircle and seize the Ukrainian capital. Their withdrawal marked the collapse of the invasion’s opening objective of rapidly overthrowing Ukraine’s government. The failed offensive exposed major Russian problems in logistics, planning, and force protection, while Ukrainian resistance around Kyiv, Hostomel, Irpin, and Bucha demonstrated the state’s ability to survive the initial shock. The end of the battle for Kyiv was a major turning point because it shifted the war toward a longer conflict focused more heavily on the east and south.

On 16 March 2022, the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, where many civilians were sheltering, was destroyed by an airstrike during the Russian siege of the city. Satellite imagery had shown large markings reading 'children' outside the building, underscoring its civilian use. The strike became one of the most notorious episodes of the siege because it symbolized the extreme vulnerability of trapped civilians amid sustained bombardment, deprivation, and the breakdown of humanitarian corridors. Mariupol itself became a defining case of urban destruction in the invasion’s opening phase.

On 24 February 2022, Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine with missile strikes, air attacks, and ground offensives from multiple directions, including from Belarus toward Kyiv, from Russia toward Kharkiv and the Donbas, and from Crimea into southern Ukraine. The attack transformed the long-running Russo-Ukrainian conflict into Europe’s largest war since World War II. The opening assaults targeted military installations and cities at once, indicating an attempt to overwhelm Ukraine quickly, topple its government, and force a strategic realignment of the country by military means.

Also on the first day of the invasion, Russian airborne troops and helicopters attacked Antonov Airport at Hostomel, northwest of Kyiv. Securing the airfield was central to a plan to create an airbridge for reinforcements close to the capital and accelerate a decapitation strike against the Ukrainian government. Ukrainian forces contested the landing and repeatedly struck the airfield, preventing Russia from converting the airport into a stable hub for rapid seizure of Kyiv. The battle became one of the earliest signs that Ukraine could disrupt Russia’s initial war plan.

By December 2021, Russia had massed large numbers of troops, armor, artillery, and logistical support around Ukraine’s borders, including in Belarus and near occupied Crimea. The concentration followed years of war in the Donbas after 2014, but the scale of the deployment signaled preparation for a much wider campaign. Moscow publicly denied plans for invasion while issuing sweeping security demands to NATO and the United States. This buildup formed the immediate prelude to the full-scale assault launched in February 2022 and shaped international expectations of a major European war.