intelligence officials warning of a Russian invasion in early 2022. By the end of 2021, more than one hundred thousand Russian troops were in place near the Russia-Ukraine border, with U.S. Commercial satellite imagery, social media posts, and published intelligence from November and December 2021 showed armor, missiles, and other heavy weaponry moving toward Ukraine with no official explanation from the Kremlin. The goal of this strategy was to bolster allied defenses and dissuade Russia from taking aggressive action. In the days and weeks leading up to the invasion, the Joe Biden administration made the unconventional decision to reduce information-sharing constraints and allow for the broader dissemination of intelligence and findings, both with allies-including Ukraine-and publicly. In his statement, Putin claimed that the goal of the operation was to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine and end the alleged genocide of Russians in Ukrainian territory. Both were answered on February 24, 2022, when Russian forces invaded a largely unprepared Ukraine after Russian President Vladimir Putin authorized a “ special military operation” against the country. ![]() The only remaining questions were when the attack would take place and whether the United States would be able to convince allies to act preemptively. intelligence, military, and diplomatic leaders on a near-certain mass-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. In October 2021, months of intelligence gathering and observations of Russian troop movements, force build-up, and military contingency financing culminated in a White House briefing with U.S. The exercises came after Russia held its own annual military exercises in September 2018, the largest since the fall of the Soviet Union. In October 2018, Ukraine joined the United States and seven other NATO countries in a series of large-scale air exercises in western Ukraine. ![]() Department of State approved the sale of anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, the first sale of lethal weaponry since the conflict began. In January 2018, the United States imposed new sanctions on twenty-one individuals–including a number of Russian officials–and nine companies linked to the conflict in eastern Ukraine. ![]() Army tank brigades to Poland to further bolster NATO’s presence in the region. In September 2017, the United States also deployed two U.S. In April 2016, NATO announced the deployment of four battalions to Eastern Europe, rotating troops through Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland to deter possible future Russian aggression elsewhere on the continent, particularly in the Baltics. Efforts to reach a diplomatic settlement and satisfactory resolution, however, were largely unsuccessful. The agreement framework included provisions for a ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weaponry, and full Ukrainian government control throughout the conflict zone. The conflict transitioned to an active stalemate, with regular shelling and skirmishes occurring along frontlines separating Russian- and Ukrainian-controlled eastern border regions.īeginning in February 2015, France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine attempted to kickstart negotiations to bring an end to the violence through the Minsk Accords. Russia denied military involvement, but both Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) reported the buildup of Russian troops and military equipment near Donetsk and Russian cross-border shelling immediately following Crimea’s annexation. The crisis heightened ethnic divisions, and two months later, pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk held their own independence referendums.Īrmed conflict in the regions quickly broke out between Russian-backed forces and the Ukrainian military. ![]() Russia then formally annexed the peninsula after Crimeans voted to join the Russian Federation in a disputed local referendum. Russian President Vladimir Putin cited the need to protect the rights of Russian citizens and Russian speakers in Crimea and southeast Ukraine. One month later, in March 2014, Russian troops took control of the Ukrainian region of Crimea. The protests widened, escalating the conflict, and President Yanukovych fled the country in February 2014. The previous year, protests in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to reject a deal for greater economic integration with the European Union (EU) were met with a violent crackdown by state security forces. Armed conflict in eastern Ukraine erupted in early 2014 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
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