Russo-Ukrainian war (2022–present)
full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia starting on 24 February 2022, part of Russo-Ukrainian War
On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the existing war between the two countries that began when Russia attacked Ukraine in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thousands of military casualties and tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties. Russian troops
occupy roughly 20% of Ukraine. From a population of 41 million, about 8 million Ukrainians have been internally displaced and 6–7 million have fled the country, creating Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II.
In late 2021, Russia massed troops near Ukraine's borders and issued demands to the West, including a ban on Ukraine ever joining NATO. After repeatedly denying having plans to attack Ukraine, on 24 February 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced a "special military operation," saying it was to support the Russian-backed breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, whose paramilitary forces had been fighting Ukraine in the Donbas war since 2014. Putin espoused irredentist and imperialist views challenging Ukraine's legitimacy as a state. He claimed without evidence that the Ukrainian government were neo-Nazis committing genocide against the Russian minority in the Donbas and that Russia's goal was to "demilitarise and denazify" Ukraine. Russian air strikes and a ground invasion were launched on a northern front from Belarus towards the capital, Kyiv; a southern front from occupied Crimea; and an eastern front from the Donbas towards Kharkiv. Ukraine enacted martial law, ordered a general mobilisation, and severed diplomatic relations with Russia.
Russian troops retreated from the north and the outskirts of Kyiv by April 2022, after encountering stiff resistance and logistical challenges. The Bucha massacre was uncovered after their withdrawal.
The public source identifies “Russo-Ukrainian war (2022–present)” as full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia starting on 24 February 2022, part of Russo-Ukrainian War. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Russo-Ukrainian, present and full-scale.
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The record creator and administrative purpose are central evidence, because official documentation reflects both action and institutional priorities. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q110999040. The Library of Congress control number is sh2022006260. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2022, 2014 and 2021.
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This entry incorporates text from “Russo-Ukrainian war (2022–present)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.