The Russian proxy war and the Poroshenko administration

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While Russia solidified its hold on Crimea throughout the spring, small groups of armed men took over administrative buildings in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kharkiv. On May 11 separatists held referenda and declared the formation of autonomous “people’s republics” in Donetsk (DNR) and Luhansk (LNR), but the separatist movement in Kharkiv largely fizzled. In the Donets Basin (Donbas), skirmishes between Russian-backed militias and government forces intensified, and dozens of pro-Russian separatists were killed in a battle over Donetsk’s international airport.

On May 25 chocolate magnate Petro Poroshenko easily won the Ukrainian presidential election, which took place without the participation of Crimea and much of the Donbas. Poroshenko promised to step up an Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) to regain the occupied territories. In separatist regions the new governments were taken over by militants, including some from Russia. The most prominent among them was Strelkov, the nom de guerre of Igor Girkin, a former colonel with the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), who established his headquarters in Slov’yansk. Poroshenko was inaugurated on June 7, and he immediately introduced a proposal to restore peace in separatist-controlled regions. Fighting continued, however, and on June 13 government forces reclaimed the city of Mariupol.

ATO forces liberated Slov’yansk on July 5, but Strelkov and about 8,000 men established a new base in Donetsk. Units under Strelkov’s command were believed to have been responsible for the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 near Hrabove on July 17. All 298 people aboard, most of whom were citizens of the Netherlands, were killed. On August 14 Strelkov reportedly resigned his position and left Ukraine. A Dutch inquiry would later determine that the aircraft was shot down by a Russian-made Buk surface-to-air missile system, and four individuals—all of whom were associated with the Russian-backed military operation in eastern Ukraine—were identified as suspects. The most prominent among these was Strelkov; in November 2022 a Dutch court found Strelkov and two others guilty of murder.

By the end of July, the EU and the U.S. had increased sanctions on Russia, freezing bank accounts and banning travel by prominent officials. In late August regular Russian troops entered Ukraine and surrounded Ukrainian troops at Ilovaisk, where they killed hundreds. In spite of overwhelming evidence of direct Russian participation in the conflict, the Kremlin insisted that it was not intervening in Ukraine. After separatist forces opened a new front that once again threatened the key port city of Mariupol, Poroshenko decided to abandon the ATO operation. On September 5 representatives from Ukraine, Russia, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), and the two breakaway republics met in Minsk, Belarus, to conclude a cease-fire agreement.

Snap parliamentary elections held on October 26 bolstered the position of pro-European parties, with Yatsenyuk’s People’s Front and the Poroshenko Bloc winning the most votes. On November 2 the DNR and the LNR held elections for “People’s Councils,” and separatist leaders Aleksandr Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky claimed victory.

In spite of repeated violations by both sides, the Minsk protocol remained in place in mid-December. Poroshenko’s government faced the dual task of introducing radical reforms and ending corruption while dealing with an unpredictable adversary in Moscow. Right-wing militants, largely shut out in elections, were prominent in street fighting and in Ukrainian volunteer battalions. An estimated 700,000 refugees had fled from the Donbas to Russia, with thousands more displaced to other areas of Ukraine. By year’s end more than 4,700 people had been killed and more than 10,000 had been wounded in the fighting. As winter fell, indiscriminate artillery fire and limited access to basic services such as heat, water, and electricity led the UN to label the situation for civilians in the DNR and the LNR as “extremely dire.”

Minsk II and the election of Volodymyr Zelensky

On February 12, 2015, the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany agreed on a 12-point peace plan (dubbed Minsk II) that proposed, among other things, the cessation of fighting, the withdrawal of heavy weapons, the release of prisoners, and the removal of foreign troops from Ukrainian territory. The tenuous peace held, and heavy weapons were pulled back by both sides in early September 2015. Frequent violations of the truce left over 9,000 dead and more than 20,000 wounded by year’s end, however. Ukrainian authorities estimated that over 2,000 Russian troops had been killed since the beginning of fighting in April 2014, but Russian officials continued to deny any involvement in the conflict. In May 2015 Putin had signed a decree banning the release of information about the deaths of Russian soldiers during “special operations.” In December 2015 Russian hackers cut electricity to some 225,000 people in western Ukraine. Additional cyber attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure would follow as the war in the Donbas settled into a state of frozen conflict for the next six years.

In 2019 Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president of Ukraine. In his hit television show Servant of the People, the actor and comedian had portrayed an everyman who followed an unlikely path to the presidency. Life would imitate art as Zelensky’s anti-corruption platform earned him widespread support, and he defeated Poroshenko in a landslide. Zelensky pledged to bring the conflict in the Donbas to a close, but his efforts were complicated when he was drawn into a political scandal in the United States. The U.S. Congress had authorized some $400 million in military aid for Ukraine, but U.S. Pres. Donald Trump held up the release of that security assistance. In a phone call with Zelensky on July 25, 2019, Trump implied that the aid would be released only if Zelensky “would do us a favor” by endorsing a pair of unsubstantiated claims about Trump’s political opponents. Zelensky never provided the “quid pro quo” that Trump had requested, and the funds were finally made available in September 2019. Trump’s attempt to pressure a foreign government for personal political gain led the U.S. House of Representatives to launch impeachment proceedings against him in December 2019.

In September 2020 Zelensky approved a new national security strategy that unambiguously labeled Russia as an aggressor and identified NATO membership as one of Ukraine’s key defense and foreign policy goals. Previous statements from Kyiv had left significant room for negotiation with Moscow, and Zelensky himself had harbored such hopes early in his term. In recognition of Russia’s continued hybrid warfare campaign against Ukraine, the framework called for mediated talks between the two governments rather than any attempts at bilateral engagement.

The Russian buildup and Putin’s “special military operation”

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Between October and November 2021, Russia began a massive buildup of troops and military equipment along its border with Ukraine. Over the following months, additional forces were dispatched to Belarus (ostensibly for joint exercises with Belarusian personnel), the Russian-backed separatist enclave of Transdniestria in Moldova, and Russian-occupied Crimea. By February 2022 Western defense analysts estimated that as many as 190,000 Russian troops were encircling Ukraine and warned that a Russian incursion was imminent. Putin dismissed these accusations and claimed that an accompanying Russian naval buildup in the Black Sea was a previously scheduled exercise. While Western leaders consulted with both Zelensky and Putin in an effort to stave off a Russian invasion that appeared inevitable, Putin issued demands that included de facto veto power over NATO expansion and the containment of NATO forces to countries that had been members prior to 1997. This would, in effect, remove the NATO security umbrella from eastern and southern Europe as well as the Baltic states. These proposals were flatly rejected. British and American intelligence services also took the unprecedented step of “pre-bunking” Russia’s manufactured casus belli by revealing classified information about Russia’s intentions.

On February 21, 2022, Putin responded by recognizing the independence of the self-proclaimed people’s republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. Putin ordered Russian troops into Ukrainian territory as “peacekeepers,” and Russian military activity in the Donbas—ongoing since 2014 but consistently disavowed by the Kremlin—at last became overt. Western leaders, pledging solidarity with Ukraine, responded by levying a raft of sanctions against Russian financial institutions. In the early hours of February 24, Zelensky, speaking in Russian, addressed the Russian people directly, delivering an impassioned plea for peace but vowing that Ukraine would defend itself.

Later that day, at about 6:00 am Moscow time, Putin took to the airwaves to announce the beginning of a “special military operation.” Within minutes explosions were heard in major cities across Ukraine, and air raid sirens began to sound in Kyiv. Around the world, leaders condemned the unprovoked attack and promised swift and severe sanctions against Russia. Zelensky declared martial law and called for a general mobilization of Ukraine’s military-age population.

The Battle of Kyiv and the initial Russian advance

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It seems clear that Putin’s plan had been to seize Kyiv in a matter of days and to install a pro-Moscow government. In the early hours of the invasion, an elite Russian paratrooper unit captured Hostomel Airport, just 6 miles (10 km) northwest of the Ukrainian capital, in an airborne assault. Teams of mercenary assassins from the Kremlin-backed Wagner Group were dispatched to Kyiv with orders to eliminate key figures in the Ukrainian government. Despite the obvious personal danger, Zelensky remained in the capital, even going as far as to film himself standing on the street in central Kyiv. When the United States offered to evacuate him from the combat zone, Zelensky reportedly said, “The fight is here. I need ammunition, not a ride.”

Russian troops in Belarus crossed the Ukrainian border and occupied the Chernobyl nuclear plant as part of a general advance on Kyiv along the west bank of the Dnipro (Dnieper) River. Russian forces in Crimea pushed north and captured Kherson on March 2; it would be the only regional capital taken by the Russians in the initial offensive. Elsewhere, the Russian advance stalled in the face of a determined Ukrainian defense. An attempted Russian encirclement of Kharkiv failed, despite that city’s close proximity (20 miles [32 km]) to the Russian border, and the thrust toward Kyiv collapsed due to stiff Ukrainian resistance and obvious shortcomings in Russia’s logistics capabilities.

The refugee crisis and evidence of Russian war crimes

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Millions of Ukrainians fled the country as Russia indiscriminately targeted civilian populations with rockets and artillery strikes. On March 16 as many as 600 people were killed in the besieged city of Mariupol when a Russian air strike leveled the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater. It was widely known that the building was being used as the city’s main bomb shelter, and the theater’s set designer had painted the word “CHILDREN” on the pavement outside in massive Cyrillic letters that were visible even in satellite imagery. By late March some four million Ukrainians had fled the fighting; this represented Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II. The overwhelming majority would find safety in Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic.

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As the war entered its second month, it was clear that the offensive against Kyiv had grossly miscarried. The Russian paratroopers at Hostomel had been isolated and subjected to furious Ukrainian artillery bombardment, and the Russian troops occupying the Kyiv suburbs of Irpin and Bucha were conducting a horrifying campaign of violence against the civilian populations of those cities. After the Russians were forced to withdraw from Irpin and Bucha, Ukrainian forces uncovered mass graves, bodies that showed clear signs of torture, and other evidence of war crimes. Elsewhere along the front, the Russians targeted cultural sites, hospitals, water treatment plants, and other civilian infrastructure in a brazen violation of the Geneva Conventions. Looting of civilian homes and businesses was also widespread in areas under Russian occupation.

Zelensky appeals to the West, the sinking of the Moskva, and the fall of Mariupol

On paper the Russian military appeared to have an overwhelming advantage in both personnel and matériel, but the West quickly responded to provide Ukraine with billions of dollars in military aid. Zelensky, often appearing in an olive drab T-shirt, appealed to governments and intergovernmental organizations around the world through video calls as he warned that a “new Iron Curtain” was descending on Europe. Ukraine’s military performance was not solely dependent on foreign assistance, however. Many of those defending Ukraine had earned valuable combat experience while serving in the Donbas, where fighting against Russian proxies was ongoing since 2014. In addition, Ukraine’s military underwent extensive reforms in the years since Russia illegally annexed Crimea, and defense spending increased sharply during that time. When he took office, Zelensky had ordered an overhaul of Ukroboronprom, the scandal-plagued state-owned concern that controlled Ukraine’s defense industry, and that restructuring led to renewed confidence in Ukroboronprom and ultimately resulted in strategic partnerships with international firms such as Lockheed Martin.

The rapid advances made by Ukraine’s military-industrial complex were perhaps most dramatically displayed on April 13 when the Moskva, a Russian guided missile cruiser and the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, was struck by a pair of Ukrainian-produced Neptune anti-ship missiles off the coast of Odesa. Russian authorities claimed that the ship had suffered an ammunition fire but that it was being towed to port for repairs. When the Moskva sank the following day, it provided an enormous morale boost for Ukraine and further undermined the perception of Russia as a “near-peer” adversary of the United States. The loss of the Moskva also degraded Russia’s ability to project force in the western Black Sea, as it was the only vessel in the Black Sea Fleet with long-range anti-air defenses.

In May fighting intensified in the Donbas, and Ukraine launched a counteroffensive that pushed back the Russian troops that had been threatening Kharkiv. In the south, however, Mariupol finally surrendered to the Russians after a nearly three-month siege that had reduced the once vibrant port city to ruins. The final holdouts—a mixed force of Ukrainian national guard units and marines—had occupied the massive Azovstal steel plant for more than a month, and the brutal fighting there led observers to recall the Battle of Stalingrad. Ukrainian officials estimated that at least 20,000 civilians had been killed in the city and more than 90 percent of Mariupol’s structures had been damaged or destroyed during the siege.

A number of factors would dictate Russia’s reliance on attrition warfare in the Donbas. As demonstrated in the failed Kyiv offensive, Russia could not count on its armored units to successfully execute even the basic elements of a maneuver warfare campaign. They were overly reliant on roads, they were dependent on Russia’s fragile logistics and supply system for fuel and ammunition, and even Russia’s most advanced tanks proved vulnerable to Ukrainian antitank guided missile (ATGM) teams. Despite an overwhelming numerical advantage in aircraft, the Russian air force failed to establish air superiority in any major combat theater. This meant that Russian armor was left vulnerable to Ukraine’s formidable armada of unmanned aerial vehicles; these ran the gamut from consumer drones that had been modified to drop small aerial bombs to the formidable Turkish-made Bayraktar TB2. The near-total global embargo on advanced processors that was leveled on Russia also ensured that any computerized equipment lost could scarcely be replaced.

The isolation of Russia and the expansion of NATO

Putin’s “special military operation” against Ukraine had seen the failure of Russia’s main thrust toward Kyiv, the deaths of at least a dozen Russian generals, and the sinking of the Moskva, the largest ship to be lost to enemy action since the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano was torpedoed during the Falkland Islands War in 1982. Russia had become the most heavily sanctioned country in history; it was isolated from the international banking system, and the EU, the U.S., the U.K., and Canada had all closed their airspace to Russian traffic. Ukraine, conversely, was embraced by the West as a developing democracy defending itself against the depredations of an autocratic neighbor. Western leaders flocked to Kyiv to demonstrate solidarity with Ukraine and to pledge their continued support.

In June the U.S. stepped up its military aid by sending an initial shipment of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to Ukraine. The HIMARS platform offered greater accuracy and longer range than any comparable weapon in the Russian arsenal, and Ukrainian troops were soon using the systems to strike supply depots and command-and-control centers far behind the front lines. A dozen HIMARS were operational in Ukraine by July, and they would prove crucial in the Ukrainian summer offensive that was to come.

On June 23 Ukraine was granted candidate status, an important first step on the path to membership in the EU. NATO, decried by some as irrelevant in the 21st century, found a renewed purpose and sense of solidarity in the wake of the Russian invasion. Finland and Sweden, two countries with a long history of neutrality, each signaled their intention to join the alliance shortly after the war began. On July 5 both countries signed accession protocols. Instead of shattering the alliance’s will, Putin had, in effect, turned the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake.

Russian disinformation and the meme war

Russia’s information warfare capability had been established long before the initiation of open hostilities in Ukraine. Moscow’s efforts to interfere in the Brexit referendum, the 2016 U.S. presidential election, and the 2017 French presidential election were well documented. The Russian disinformation campaign against Ukraine was farcical on its face, however, and it gained little traction outside Russian state media. Putin attempted to portray Russia’s aggression as an effort to “de-Nazify” a country whose democratically elected leader was Jewish and had lost relatives in the Holocaust. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sparked a diplomatic row with Israel when he tried to support Putin’s assertion. After repeating a discredited claim that “Hitler also had Jewish blood,” Lavrov said, “Wise Jewish people say that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews.”

The Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-backed “troll farm” that was linked to oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, struggled to spread Moscow’s narrative more broadly. Pro-Russian messages—even those from official Russian government accounts—were met with a torrent of derisive replies from the North Atlantic Fellas Association (NAFO), a loosely organized collective of pro-Ukrainian posters with cartoon Shiba Inu avatars. “Fellas” were ubiquitous on Twitter, and their meme campaign against Russian disinformation was startlingly successful. Government and military officials in Ukraine and the United States were among those who voiced their support for the group by adopting “fella” avatars, as did Kaja Kallas, the prime minister of Estonia. NAFO members also donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Ukrainian defense forces and charities.

These charitable efforts led NAFO to partner with Saint Javelin, a meme-based fundraising operation launched by Canadian journalist Christian Borys. Borys created Saint Javelin—a stylized Orthodox Madonna holding a Javelin antitank guided missile—and printed them on stickers in an effort to raise $500 for humanitarian aid in Ukraine. In what was perhaps the first military conflict to weaponize memes, Saint Javelin represented a powerful asset for the Ukrainian side. Borys’s operation dramatically expanded to a full clothing shop, with items depicting “saints” wielding a variety of Western weapons, and his contribution to Ukraine soon topped $1 million.