Ukraine

On February 27th, 2014, unmarked soldiers from the Russian border began occupying Crimea, a peninsula in Eastern Europe connected to mainland-Ukraine, marking the start of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. Despite denying affiliation with the troops, Russia officially annexed Crimea on April 18th and began occupying military bases. By late March, Ukraine had ordered its soldiers to withdraw from Crimea, foregoing the territory with very little bloodshed. Between the annexation of Crimea and 2022, the Russo-Ukrainian War remained relatively small scale, with most violence occurring in the intermittent battles of the Donbas Wars.

                  The full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on the morning of February 24th, 2022, when President Vladimir Putin declared a “special military operation” was necessary to defend Russia from an encroaching NATO threat. The attacks began with a large ground invasion and missile strikes against Kyiv, Ukraine’s capitol. Russia found early success by taking significant territory along Ukraine’s Northern and Eastern regions in the first weeks of the war. However, by October of 2022, Russia had failed to topple Kyiv, and Ukraine had regained its Northern territories. Since then, the frontline in the East has been at a relative stalemate while Russian bombings against military and civilian targets have continued.

Within the first week of the invasion, the UN reported that up to one million refugees had fled Ukraine, a number that now stands at roughly 6.5 million. An additional 3.7 million Ukrainians remain internally displaced. As of February 29th, 2024, the UN confirmed that a minimum of 10,675 civilians had been killed and 20,080 wounded, with estimates believed to be higher. Lastly, according to U.S. estimates in August 2023 and March 2024, 70,000+ Ukrainian and 350,000+ Russian soldiers have been killed since the invasion began.