Russia-Ukraine war timeline: From attack on Kyiv to counteroffensive
February 2022: Russia invades Ukraine
Early on Feb. 24, Russia begins a full-scale attack on its neighbor, launching missile and rocket strikes on Ukrainian cities and military installations. Russian military vehicles and troop columns roll into the country, crossing from Moscow ally Belarus in the north and making a beeline for Kyiv, the capital; from the northeast in a push to take the city of Kharkiv; from Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, to the south; and from Donbas in the east.
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In the early hours of the invasion, Russian forces take Chernobyl, the site of a disastrous 1986 nuclear accident, along with the surrounding “exclusion zone,” risking catastrophe by disrupting ongoing containment efforts there.
In a televised address that morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin questions Ukraine’s right to exist and justifies the attack with the baseless claim that Russian speakers in Ukraine face “genocide.” He says Russia aims to protect the people of Donbas, where conflict is already underway over Russian control of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, and pledges to achieve the “demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine.” He refers to the invasion as a “special military operation.”
Russia had massed troops and military equipment for months around Ukraine’s borders, though Russian officials and commentators had denied that Moscow was planning to attack its neighbor. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had also downplayed the threat amid repeated warnings from Western officials — including President Biden — citing a desire to avoid panic.
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Source: The Washington Post
