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The Russian buildup and the Battle of Kyiv
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.
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 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.
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 paratroop unit captured Hostomel Airport, just 6 miles (10 km) northwest of the Ukrainian capital, in an airborne assault. 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 Dnieper River. Russian forces in Crimea pushed north and captured Kherson on March 2. Elsewhere, however, 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 Ukrainian refugee crisis and Russian war crimes
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 Theatre. It was widely known that the building was being used as the city’s main bomb shelter, and the theatre’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.
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.
Western aid, 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 dramatically 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 Odessa. 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.
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 armoured 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 anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) teams. Despite an overwhelming numerical advantage in aircraft, the Russian air force failed to establish air superiority in any major combat theatre. This meant that Russian armour 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.
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 neighbour. 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.