Second Winter War (Frozen War)

The Second Winter War was a regional war between Russia and the Nordic and Baltic states of the European Union and NATO beginning on 31 December–1 January 2021–2022 and lasting until the Russian surrender of Finnmark and the Åland Islands in exchange for the re-annexation of Estonia and Latvia and the Belarusian invasion of Lithuania on 1 March 2027. Despite the engagement of Article 5 in response to the attacks on Estonia and Norway, the bulk of NATO in the U.S. would not become involved in war against Russia until they are attacked by Russia on 14 November 2028, by which point Russia had already taken Estonia and Latvia and the Nordic Battlegroup had already pushed the Russians out of Norway. It is one of the original and initiating reasons for suspending Russia from the UN P5, with a nigh-unanimous vote by permanent and impermanent Security Councilors alike to appoint India - which had suffered a devastating conflict with Turkish-allied Pakistan a year before - to serve on the Security Council in Russia's stead until democracy returned to the massive nation.
==Background==
===Ukrainian War===
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Ukraine endured years of corruption, mismanagement, lack of economic growth, currency devaluation, and problems in securing funding from public markets. Successive Ukrainian governments in the 2000s sought a closer relationship with the European Union (EU). One of the measures meant to achieve this was an association agreement with the European Union, which would have provided Ukraine with funds in return for liberalising reforms.[41] President Yanukovych announced his intention to sign the agreement, but ultimately refused to do so at the last minute. This sparked a wave of protests called the "Euromaidan" movement. During these protests Yanukovych signed a treaty and multibillion-dollar loan with Russia.The Ukrainian security forces cracked down on the protesters, further inflaming the situation and resulting in a series of violent clashes in the streets of Kiev. As tensions rose, Yanukovych fled to Russia and did not return.
Russia refused to recognize the new interim government, calling the overthrow of Yanukovych a coup d'état, and began a military intervention in Ukraine supporting pro-Russian separatists. The newly appointed interim government of Ukraine signed the EU association agreement and agreed to reform the country's judiciary and political systems, as well as its financial and economic policies. The International Monetary Fund pledged more than $18 billion in loans contingent on Ukraine's adopting those reforms. The revolution was followed by pro-Russian unrest in some south-eastern regions, a standoff with Russia regarding the annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol, and a war between the Ukrainian government and Russia-backed separatists in the Donbass.
A period of relative calm in the anti-government demonstrations in Kiev ended abruptly on 18 February 2014, when protesters and police clashed. At least 82 people were killed over the next few days, including 13 policemen, with one report by the Ukraine Health Ministry claiming as many as 100 were killed.
Over half of these were the work of the Russian-trained Ukrainian Security Service, who deployed snipers against the Euromaidan. Hours later, the head of the SBU resigned and was arrested after taking responsibility for the mass-killings.
On 20 February 2014, Lviv Oblast declared independence, bringing Ukraine to the brink of civil war. 
"The regime has begun active military action against people. Dozens of people have been killed in Kiev and hundreds have been wounded. Fulfilling the will of society, the executive committee of the Lviv region's council, the People's Rada, is assuming full responsibility for the fate of the region and its citizens," read a statement.
This was in reference to a 20 February 2014 decree authorizing the Ukrainian police to use live ammo on the pro-EU Maidan.
The executive committee was led by Petro Kolodiy, chairman of the Lviv region's council.
From the end of February 2014, demonstrations by pro-Russian and anti-government groups took place in major cities across the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, in the aftermath of the Euromaidan movement and the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. During the first stage of the unrest, Crimea was annexed by the Russian Federation after a Russian military intervention, and an internationally criticized (based on UN resolution 68/262) Crimean referendum. Protests in Donetsk and Luhansk regions (oblasts) escalated into an armed pro-Russian separatist insurgency.
From late 2014, cities outside of the Donbass combat zone, such as Kharkiv, Odessa, Kiev and Mariupol, were struck by bombings that targeted pro-Ukrainian unity organizations. To maintain control over southeastern territories Ukraine's government started "antiterrorist operation" (ATO) sending armed forces to suppress separatists. Armed conflict between Ukraine's government forces and pro-Russian rebels is known as War in Donbass.
From the beginning of March 2014, protests by pro-Russian and anti-government groups took place in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts of Ukraine, commonly collectively called the "Donbass", in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and the Euromaidan movement. These demonstrations, which followed the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation (February to March 2014), and which were part of a wider group of concurrent pro-Russian protests across southern and eastern Ukraine, escalated into an armed conflict between the separatist forces of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR respectively), and the Ukrainian government. In the Donetsk People's Republic, from May 2014 until a change of the top leadership in August 2014, some of the top leaders were Russian citizens. According to the Ukrainian government, at the height of the conflict in mid-2014, Russian paramilitaries were reported to make up between 15% to 80% of the combatants.
Between 22 and 25 August 2014, Russian artillery, personnel, and what Russia called a "humanitarian convoy" crossed the border into Ukrainian territory without the permission of the Ukrainian government. Crossings occurred both in areas under the control of pro-Russian forces and in areas that were not under their control, such as the south-eastern part of Donetsk Oblast, near Novoazovsk. These events followed the reported shelling of Ukrainian positions from the Russian side of the border over the course of the preceding month. Head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko characterised the events of 22 August as a "direct invasion by Russia of Ukraine", while other western and Ukrainian officials described the events as a "stealth invasion" of Ukraine by Russia. Russia's official position on the presence of Russian forces in Donbass has been vague: while official bodies have denied presence of "regular armed forces" in Ukraine, it has on numerous occasions confirmed presence of "military specialists", along with other euphemisms, usually accompanied by an argument that Russia "was forced" to deploy them to "defend the Russian-speaking population".
==War in Scandinavia==
[[File:Eastern Europe-Russia.png|thumb|400px|center|Aside from Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk and Transnistria; Budzhak, the Baltics and Finland would also fall into Moscow's crosshairs in the next decade.]]
From 2014 to 2020, the Russian Federation actively aided and abetted separatist terror groups in the form of the People's Republic of Budjak, the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics in Eastern Ukraine following the February 2014 Russian occupation of Crimea. But it would not stop there. 
Throughout the latter-half of the 2010's, Russia ratchets up tensions with NATO over sanctions and other actions taken by the bloc against Russia over its militarism in Ukraine, Georgia and elsewhere. Finland, Sweden and Estonia bear the brunt of this, and the wider Baltic-Nordic region as a whole, with pro-Russian Finns maintaining a presence in government at least until 2024. By 2016, the U.S. was pushing hard for increased Nordic Defense cohesion, with the Baltic states integrating their military with those of the Nordics and NBG15 successfully orienting themselves to high veneration as a spearhead formation to a potential future EU-wide army. As tensions between Estonia and Russia reach fever pitch over unresolved 2000's controversies relating to language, national identity - sometimes crossing over into accusations of Neo-Nazism in the Baltic states and neo-imperialism in Russia - and kidnapping, and the E.U.-NATO-aligned National Coalition Party on the verge of winning the 2022 Finnish congressional election, Russia had all the boogeymen it needed for its next act.
On 18 December 2021, Russia invades the Åland and Moonsund islands after masked militants begin attacks in the largest cities later revealed to be ChVK Wagner. Two weeks later, on New Years' 2022, militants attack Vadsø, and Russia responds with an invasion and occupation of Finnmark two days later. The NBG and Polish Army react with mobilization on the northern Finnish–Russian border and Polish–Belarusian border, with the U.S. mobilizing in Poland after the involvement of Russian oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin is revealed in 2023, but largely constrained by its own domestic issues. The Nordic-Polish build-up is cut off from Lithuania and Latvia by a Russian–Belarusian response in kind in Russia's Kaliningrad exclave and the Belarusian borders with Lithuania and Poland. Skirmishes and border clashes abound from 2022 to 2026, but Russia maintains a constant presence in Finnmark and Northern Norway, at one point occupying the islands of Ringvassøya, Kvaløya, Senja and Hinnøya at various points in 2022, 2023 and 2024. In this way, Russia is simultaneously able to project its Northern Fleet into the Atlantic year-round, and at the same time keep NATO Europe engaged on multiple fronts simultaneously. Expanding from the frozen conflicts in Georgia, Crimea, the Donbass, Transnistria and Budzhak, to occupying islands in the Baltic and Sub-Arctic regions and arming Romanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Yugoslav separatists (a total of four additional fronts). 
By April 2025, Russia had utterly rolled the Estonian economy, military and society; and in August a Russian–Belarusian invasion of Latvia finishes them off within a week. Although Lithuania would hold out for another 11 months due to a steady supply of air drops and artillery shelling from Poland and Ukraine, eventually the Lithuanian state too would be dismantled with the help of a Belarusian invasion from the South. Russia annexes the Baltics 1 March 2027. By this point, European NATO and their allies are deeply engaged against pro-Serb and Macedonian insurgents in the Western Balkans supported by Russia and Serbia, and had already suspected Russia of involvement even before devastating attacks on Naval Station Norfolk in mid-November 2026 and officially declared war on Russia.
Category:Invasions
Category:Geopolitics 2020s
Category:Armenia