Russian invasion of Ukraine has effect reactions to the Russian invasion of Ukraine
Ukrainian unrest, Russian activity in Crimea and Donbas
In November 2013, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych suddenly cancelled the signing of an association agreement with the European Union (EU), overruling the Ukrainian parliament and instead choosing closer ties with the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union. Russia had put pressure on Ukraine to reject the agreement. This triggered a wave of protests known as Euromaidan, culminating in the removal of Yanukovych in February 2014 and subsequent pro-Russian unrest in eastern and southern parts of Ukraine. Russian soldiers without insignia took control of strategic positions and infrastructure in the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, and seized the Crimean Parliament. In March, Russia organised a controversial referendum and annexed Crimea. This was followed by the outbreak of the war in Donbas, which began in April 2014 when armed Russia-backed separatists seized Ukrainian government buildings, proclaiming the independent Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic. Russian troops were involved in the conflict. The Minsk agreements signed in September 2014 and February 2015 were a bid to stop the fighting, but ceasefires repeatedly failed. A dispute emerged over the role of Russia: Normandy Format members France, Germany, and Ukraine saw Minsk as an agreement between Russia and Ukraine, whereas Russia insisted Ukraine should negotiate directly with the two separatist republics. In 2021, Putin refused offers from Zelenskyy to hold high-level talks, and the Russian government endorsed an article by former president Dmitry Medvedev arguing that it was pointless to deal with Ukraine while it remained a "vassal" of the United States.The annexation of Crimea led to a new wave of Russian nationalism, with much of the Russian neo-imperial movement aspiring to annex more Ukrainian land to create Novorossiya (New Russia). Analyst Vladimir Socor argued that Putin's 2014 speech after the annexation was a "manifesto of Greater-Russia Irredentism". In July 2021, Putin published an essay titled "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians", stating that Russians and Ukrainians are "one people". In the build-up to the invasion, Putin claimed that Ukraine was created by the Russian Bolsheviks and that it "never had a tradition of genuine statehood". American historian Timothy Snyder described Putin's ideas as imperialism. British journalist Edward Lucas described it as historical revisionism. Other observers note that the Russian leadership holds a distorted view of modern Ukraine, as well as its history.Eastern front
In the east, Russian troops attempted to capture Kharkiv, less than 35 kilometres (22 mi) from the Russian border, and met strong Ukrainian resistance. On 25 February, the Millerovo air base was attacked by Ukrainian military forces with OTR-21 Tochka missiles, which according to Ukrainian officials, destroyed several Russian Air Force planes and started a fire. On 28 February, missile attacks killed several people in Kharkiv. On 1 March, Denis Pushilin, head of the DPR, announced that DPR forces had almost completely surrounded the city of Volnovakha. On 2 March, Russian forces were repelled from Sievierodonetsk during an attack against the city. Izium was reportedly captured by Russian forces on 17 March, although fighting continued.On 25 March, the Russian defence ministry said it would seek to occupy major cities in Eastern Ukraine. On 31 March, the Ukrainian military confirmed Izium was under Russian control, and PBS News reported renewed shelling and missile attacks in Kharkiv, as bad or worse than before, as peace talks with Russia were to resume in Istanbul.Amid the heightened Russian shelling of Kharkiv on 31 March, Russia reported a helicopter strike against an oil supply depot approximately 35 kilometres (22 mi) north of the border in Belgorod, and accused Ukraine of the attack. Ukraine denied responsibility. By 7 April, the renewed massing of Russian invasion troops and tank divisions around the towns of Izium, Sloviansk, and Kramatorsk prompted Ukrainian government officials to advise the remaining residents near the eastern border of Ukraine to evacuate to western Ukraine within 2–3 days, given the absence of arms and munitions previously promised to Ukraine by then.Ukrainian resistance
Ukrainian civilians resisted the Russian invasion, volunteering for territorial defence units, making Molotov cocktails, donating food, building barriers such as Czech hedgehogs, and helping to transport refugees. Responding to a call from Ukraine's transportation agency, Ukravtodor, civilians dismantled or altered road signs, constructed makeshift barriers, and blocked roadways. Social media reports showed spontaneous street protests against Russian forces in occupied settlements, often evolving into verbal altercations and physical standoffs with Russian troops. By the beginning of April, Ukrainian civilians began to organise as guerrillas, mostly in the wooded north and east of the country. The Ukrainian military announced plans to launch a large-scale guerrilla campaign to complement its conventional defence against the Russian invasion.People physically blocked Russian military vehicles, sometimes forcing them to retreat. The Russian soldiers' response to unarmed civilian resistance varied from reluctance to engage the protesters to firing into the air or directly into crowds. There have been mass detentions of Ukrainian protesters, and Ukrainian media has reported forced disappearances, mock executions, hostage-taking, extrajudicial killings, and sexual violence perpetrated by the Russian military. To facilitate Ukrainian attacks, civilians reported Russian military positions via a Telegram chatbot and Diia, a Ukrainian government app previously used by citizens to upload official identity and medical documents. In response, Russian forces began destroying mobile phone network equipment, searching door-to-door for smartphones and computers, and in at least one case killing a civilian found with pictures of Russian tanks.As of 21 May 2022, Zelenskyy indicated that Ukraine had 700,000 servicemembers on active duty combating the Russian invasion. Throughout 2022, Ukraine withdrew soldiers and military equipment deployed to United Nations peacekeeping missions, such as MONUSCO in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, back to Ukraine.Refugee crisis
The war caused the largest refugee and humanitarian crisis within Europe since the Yugoslav Wars in the 1990s; the UN described it as the fastest-growing such crisis since World War II. As Russia built up military forces along the Ukrainian border, many neighbouring governments and aid organisations prepared for a mass displacement event in the weeks before the invasion. In December 2021, the Ukrainian defence minister estimated that an invasion could force three to five million people to flee their homes.In the first week of the invasion, the UN reported over a million refugees had fled Ukraine; this subsequently rose to over eight million by 31 January 2023. On 20 May, NPR reported that, following a significant influx of foreign military equipment into Ukraine, a significant number of refugees are seeking to return to regions of Ukraine which are relatively isolated from the invasion front in south-eastern Ukraine. However, by 3 May, another 8 million people were displaced inside Ukraine.Most refugees were women, children, the elderly, or people with disabilities. Most male Ukrainian nationals aged 18 to 60 were denied exit from Ukraine as part of mandatory conscription, unless they were responsible for the financial support of three or more children, single fathers, or were the parent/guardian of children with disabilities. Many Ukrainian men, including teenagers, opted to remain in Ukraine voluntarily in order to join the resistance.Regarding destinations, according to the UN High Commission for Refugees, as of 13 May, there were 3,315,711 refugees in Poland, 901,696 in Romania, 594,664 in Hungary, 461,742 in Moldova, 415,402 in Slovakia, and 27,308 in Belarus, while Russia reported it had received over 800,104 refugees. As of 23 March, over 300,000 refugees had arrived in the Czech Republic. Turkey has been another significant destination, registering more than 58,000 Ukrainian refugees as of 22 March, and more than 58,000 as of 25 April. The EU invoked the Temporary Protection Directive for the first time in its history, granting Ukrainian refugees the right to live and work in the EU for up to three years. Britain has accepted 146,379 refugees, as well as extending the ability to remain in the UK for 3 years with broadly similar entitlements as the EU, three years residency and access to state welfare and services.According to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), Russia has engaged in "massive deportation" of over 1.3 million Ukrainian civilians, potentially constituting crimes against humanity. The OSCE and Ukraine have accused Russia of forcibly moving civilians to filtration camps in Russian-held territory, and then into Russia. Ukrainian sources have compared this policy to Soviet-era population transfers and Russian actions in the Chechen War of Independence. For instance, as of 8 April, Russia claimed to have evacuated about 121,000 Mariupol residents to Russia. Also, on 19 October, Russia announced the forced deportation of 60,000 civilians from areas around the line of contact in Kherson oblast. RIA Novosti and Ukrainian officials said that thousands were dispatched to various centers in cities in Russia and Russian-occupied Ukraine, from which people were sent to economically depressed regions of Russia. In April, Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council secretary Oleksiy Danilov said Russia planned to build "concentration camps" for Ukrainians in western Siberia, and that it likely planned to force prisoners to build new cities in Siberia.
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