By: Lt Col JS Sodhi (Retd), Editor, GSDN

As the Sun set on February 23, 2022 which was a Wednesday, the Ukrainians were looking forward to the last weekend of February a couple of days away, with almost every family planning a fishing, trekking, sight-seeing trip or a dinner in their favourite restaurants.

But all was to change before dawn the next day and this change would not only affect Ukraine but its ripples were to be felt globally.

The next day at 4.30 am on February 24, 2022 well before the sunrise, Russia launched a war on Ukraine. The Russia-Ukraine War as it would be known, was the biggest war that Europe would see after World War II and the “end of the era of peace dividend” which came with the collapse of USSR in 1991 and the formal end of Cold War 1.0 that had lasted from the end of World War II till USSR’s disintegration.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was certainly not a sudden decision. It was a result of the buildup taking place since USSR disintegrated on December 26, 1991.

Reasons for the Russia-Ukraine War

While the spotlight for the reason of the Russia-Ukraine War has been the expansion of NATO which includes the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s insistence on joining NATO, another reason of the outbreak of this war which needs mention is the internal disturbance in Ukraine, which has been purposely ignored by many, as it puts Ukraine in an uncomfortable position.

Expansion of NATO:   Consequent to the meeting of the US President George W. Bush with the USSR President Mikhail Gorbachev in December 1989 in which the Soviet President was assured that the Soviet interests will not be harmed in the backdrop of the revolutions happening in Eastern Europe, the US Secretary of State James Baker met the Soviet President on February 09, 1990 in Moscow and promised that NATO, which was created on April 04, 1949 with 12 nations as its members, will not move one inch eastward.

The very next day, the West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl met the Soviet President and took his assent to unify both the Germanys. West Germany and East Germany unified on October 03, 1990.

After the British Prime Minister John Major assured Mikhail Gorbachev in March 1991 that NATO would not be strengthened further, the Soviet President believed the assurances of the US and UK leadership and dissolved the Warsaw Pact on July 01, 1991. At that point of time NATO had 16 members.

With the security cover withdrawn over the Eastern Bloc countries, and US reneging its promise of keeping USSR interests secure, the inevitable happened. USSR, one of the two superpowers, disintegrated into 15 nations in end-December 1991.

Thereafter, US went on a NATO expansion spree after the US President Bill Clinton on January 12, 1994 in Prague expressed his intent to expand NATO. And, by 2021, NATO had 30 members.

Since 1994, Russia had numerous talks with USA to stop NATO’s expansion but all talks failed.

In the 2008 NATO Summit held in Bucharest, Romania from 02-04 April, Ukraine and Georgia expressed interest to join NATO and Russia, the biggest country that was formed after collapse of USSR realised the danger that was closing in to its borders.

In August 2008, Russia invaded Georgia and in the 16-day war that lasted from August 01-16, 2008, Russia emerged victorious and a pro-Kremlin government was installed in Georgia and the issue of Georgia wanting to join NATO went on a back-burner.

Witnessing the Russian invasion of Georgia, the Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko who was in power from 2005-2010, too put on hold its decision to join NATO.

Internal Unrest in Ukraine: Viktor Yanukovych, who became Ukraine’s fourth President in 2010 and had pro-Kremlin leanings was not inclined for the NATO membership. Since he hailed from the Donetsk region of Ukraine having been its Governor and majority of the Donbas region in which Donetsk falls speaking Russian language, in 2012 he enacted the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko Law which made Russian as an official language of Ukraine.

Further, under Russian pressure Viktor Yanukovych withdrew from signing an association agreement with the European Union which was in an advanced stage of negotiations and instead accepted a Russian trade deal and loan bailout in November 2013.

This decision resulted in mass protests across Ukraine and with the civil unrest peaking in February 2014 in which more than 100 people died, the Ukraine Parliament impeached Viktor Yanukovych on February 22, 2014.

The very next day, the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko Law was repealed on February 23, 2014. The same day massive unrest started in Donbas, Odessa and Mariupol and mass defections started happening in the Ukrainian Armed Forces over the language issue.

Grabbing the perfect opportunity that the internal unrest created in Ukraine, Russia invaded Crimea on February 27, 2014which it had been eyeing for long as it overlooked the important sea-route from the Sea of Azov to the Black Sea passing though the Bosporus Strait, Dardanelles Strait in the Sea of Marmara to the Mediterranean Sea and finally linking to the warm waters of the Atlantic Ocean.

As the war in Crimea raged on between the Russian & Ukrainian Armed Forces, the Russian Navy destroyed three-fourth of the Ukrainian Navy and more than half of the Ukrainian Navy officers defected to Russia.

With the Ukrainian Navy crippled in the Crimean Peninsula, the war in Crimea did not last long and on March 16, 2016, Russia declared its victory in Crimea. On March 18, 2014, Crimea was incorporated as a part of Russia, consequent to a referendum held a couple of days earlier.

Meanwhile, the unrest in Donbas recommenced on April 12, 2014 and the Ukrainian Armed Forces launched a counter-offensive codenamed “Joint Forces Operation” for the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Heavy fighting ensued between Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Donbas separatists completely supported by Russia.  

Buildup to the 2022 Russia-Ukraine War

The first invasion in Europe after the World War II was the invasion of Georgia by Russia from August 01-16, 2008 which resulted in victory of Russia and the installation of a pro-Kremlin government in its capital, Tbilisi. Six years later, in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine.

The Russians were now confident of their military might and the weakening of the US-led NATO and the division, hesitancy and poor leadership in the European Union. On November 07, 2019, the French President Emmanuel Macron had described NATO as “brain-dead”.  Clearly, all stars now aligned to Russia’s geopolitical and military advantage in Europe.

As Donbas started witnessing heavy fighting after Crimea was annexed, President Putin assessed that eventually Donbas will fall on its own to the Russians and thus for the next about seven years till February 2021, there were no plans of Russia to launch a full-fledged war on Ukraine.

However, in February 2021, the National Security Council of Ukraine banned three television channels which were owned by Viktor Medvedchuk, a Ukrainian oligarch with strong pro-Kremlin leanings. Now, television is the strongest medium to indoctrinate views and shift leanings. This act of Ukraine enraged Putin who saw it as a strong rebuttal to his long-term plans of Donbas ceding on its own from Ukraine to Russia.

Two months later, Putin and Russia’s Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu went on a vacation to a secluded resort in Serbia. It was here that the plan for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was hatched. As a signal of divine blessings, Putin and Shoigu at the end of their vacation in Serbia went to meet a famed Serbian priest who lived in near vicinity and the duo were blessed by him and the priest gave the date of the invasion as February 22, 2022!

On return from the vacation in Serbia, Putin wrote a 5000-word article titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians & Ukrainians” which was uploaded on the Presidential website of Kremlin on June 12, 2021. This article has become a mandatory reading in all Russian military academies since then.

The preparation for Russia war on Ukraine began in right earnest.

While the US intelligence was sure of a large-scale invasion next year by Russia in early-2022, President Zelenskyy dismissed the idea of Russia attacking Ukraine. Thus, the subtle message to the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian citizens was that Russia would never attack Ukraine.

Hence, life in Ukraine went on normal though the war clouds were darkening and the American intelligence repeatedly warning Zelenskyy of the impending war.

Russia, meanwhile was planning a three-pronged attack on Ukraine.

And on February 24, 2022 at 4.30 am early in morning, well before the sun could rise in Ukraine, Russia had invaded Ukraine from the northern, southern and the south-eastern fronts from Belarus, Crimea and the Donbas respectively.

It was not that the Russian offensive went on smoothly. There were serious flaws in the Russian military operations which have been discussed by the Author in an article published earlier.

However, as on date Russia controls 18.2% of the Ukrainian territory which includes a successful land-corridor from the Donbas region to Crimea, while Ukraine controls about 1200 square kilometres of the Russian territory, primarily in the Kursk region.

On the day Russia waged the war on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Russians controlled one-third of the Donbas region apart from the whole of Crimea, annexed eight years earlier.

Though today marks three years of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War, the Ukrainians had already lost a large chunk of their land to the Russians before the war had begun on February 24, 2022.

Way ahead for the War

Whatever little hopes Zelenskyy had pinned on the US President Donald Trump for continued aid and assistance to Ukraine in its war against Russia were dashed on January 29, 2025 when the US President suspended all aid globally, except to Israel and Egypt.

And the final American nail on the coffin of Ukraine’s war efforts, came on February 12, 2025, when Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of Defence in Brussels, rejected Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership and called the return to the pre-2014 borders in Ukraine as unrealistic.

Had the Ukrainian President studied international relations and geopolitics, he would have understood that in the past one decade the USA has never sent its military soldiers to any of its ally, whenever war has besieged them.

President Zelenskyy created conditions for Russia to wage a war on his country, which in simplistic terms can be described as fool-hardy. With over 100,000 Ukrainians killed and much of Ukraine reduced to dust and large swathes of land lost to the Russians, Ukraine stands at the same crossroads which it did a decade earlier, with no NATO membership on the horizon.

And to add wounds to Ukraine’s injury, on February 18, 2025, the global media reported of a “privileged and confidential” document of February 07, 2025 that the USA had offered US$ 500 billion to the war-torn Ukraine to take full control of Ukraine’s natural resources including rare earth minerals, oil and gas, ports and infrastructure with a warning that if Ukraine rejects this deal, then it would be handed over to Russia “on a plate”. This deal amounted to a higher share of the Ukrainian GDP than Germany’s First World War reparations and much harsher than the conditions imposed on both Germany and Japan after their defeat in World War II in 1945.

And on the same day the US offer to Ukraine leaked, senior US and Russian officials met for the first time since the outbreak of the war to discuss the end to this war. The American delegation was led by Marco Rubio, Secretary of State and the Russian team was led by Sergei Lavrov, Foreign Minister. The meeting in Riyadh ended on a positive note of ending the war, both for the USA and Russia. But with Ukraine left out of the meeting, for sure dark and gloomy days will continue for Ukraine even after the war ends.

The words of the former National Security Advisor of USA, Henry Kissinger “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal” would be ringing loudly in President Zelenskyy’s ears as he finds himself standing lonely on a steep precipice looking at the death and destruction in Ukraine including territorial loss due to his own grave blunder of having blind-faith in the American assistance resulting in the imminent Russian victory in near distance, and the mortgaging of Ukraine to USA lurking in the far distance.