Russia against Ukraine

The 2022 invasion of Ukraine is the military offensive initiated by the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on February 24, 2022, invading Ukrainian territory and thus marking an abrupt escalation of the Russian-Ukrainian crisis that has been underway since 2014.The war caused the greatest crisis for the reception of refugees in Europe after the end of the Second World War, so much so that it was deemed necessary to invoke the Temporary Protection Directive.

The armed intervention was preceded by a prolonged massing of Russian forces on the border in the spring that began in 2021, motivated by Russian President Vladimir Putin on the basis of the fear of Ukraine joining NATO  and followed by military exercises.  A few days before the invasion, Russia recognized the independence of two self-proclaimed states in the Donbass region, within the borders of Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Lugansk People’s Republic, and on February 20, in violation of the Budapest Memorandum on Ukraine’s security guarantees, sent its armed forces there to garrison its territory. The following day, the Federation Council unanimously authorized President Vladimir Putin to use military force outside the border.

Numerous warnings about an impending invasion had already been broadcast in the media starting in October 2021, but senior Russian officials had consistently denied that they were planning it.