Three years into the Ukraine war, the first steps have been taken toward a possible peace deal.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is visiting the White House on Feb. 28 to discuss a framework between Kyiv and Washington that could exchange expansive profits from Ukraine’s rare earth minerals and natural gas for possible security guarantees from the United States and its allies.
Washington and Moscow have likewise agreed to begin working toward a framework for ending the war. Those discussions, although they are in the early stages, seem likely to lead to the United States’ agreeing to Moscow’s demand to never consider Ukraine for NATO membership.
U.S. President Donald Trump has said he thinks that Zelenskyy will have to make concessions to Russia, and the U.S. administration has indicated that it is unrealistic to expect that Ukraine could keep its pre-war borders.
Much remains to be resolved before the conflict can finally come to an end, but it is clear that the first European war of conquest of the 21st century has radically reshaped Europe, both on and off the map.
Euromaidan
A wave of mass protests rocked urban centers throughout Ukraine in November and December 2013, with the largest crowds gathering at Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in Kyiv.The protests were sparked by then-President Viktor Yanukovych’s surprise decision not to sign an agreement with the European Union (EU) that had previously been approved by Parliament.
That agreement would have committed Ukraine to anti-corruption measures and additional economic, judicial, and financial reforms to increase its policy compatibility with EU states.
It would also have gradually conformed Ukraine’s industries to EU technical and consumer standards while increasing the EU’s political and financial support to Ukraine.
Instead, Yanukovych abandoned the deal and unilaterally chose to pursue closer ties with Moscow by signing a deal to sell $15 billion in Eurobonds to Russia that also involved Russia lowering the cost of natural gas.
Protesters condemned the move as sabotage of the nation’s attempts to pursue closer ties with Europe. The Euromaidan movement quickly grew because of dissatisfaction about government corruption, abuses of power, human rights violations, and the influence of oligarchs.
Vitaliy Zakharchenko, Ukraine’s minister for internal affairs, was forced to apologize for what he described as an abuse of power after an incident in which an elite unit of riot police terrorized a neighborhood where protesters were operating, injuring about 80 civilians, many of whom were not involved in the protests.
Anti-Protest Laws Trigger Further Uprisings
In January 2014, members of the Ukrainian Parliament from Yanukovych’s pro-Russian Party of Regions and the Communist Party of Ukraine convened a lightning session of voting while other members of the body were away and could not vote against the measures.The lawmakers passed a series of 11 laws aimed at quashing dissent and limiting public protests that were quickly dubbed by detractors as “dictatorship laws.”
The laws allowed the government to imprison Ukrainians for spreading disinformation on social media or slandering government officials, and it mandated that all internet-based media and mobile phones be registered with the government.
The laws also introduced a 10-year prison term for protesters who blocked entry to a government building, a key tactic among the Euromaidan protesters.
The legality of the vote was called into question, as each measure had passed by a show of hands in a pre-planned fashion that critics said had moved too fast to actually count the votes.
Revolution of Dignity
Chaos and violence spread through Kyiv in January and February 2014 as government and police forces attempted to suppress the growing protest movement.The deadliest clashes took place from Feb. 18 to Feb. 20, when thousands of protesters advanced toward Parliament led by activists with shields and helmets.
Police snipers fired on and killed several protesters before clashes broke out directly between protestors and riot police, at which point many protestors were beaten to death by police while others were shot indiscriminately.
The violence resulted in the deaths of 108 civilians and 13 police officers.
Yanukovych and the opposition signed an agreement to form an interim unity government after his government resigned. Police abandoned central Kyiv and protesters seized control of much of the area, continuing to coordinate operations out of a barricaded protest camp in Independence Square.
Protesters tore down and defaced the statues of Soviet-era communist leaders, which had come to be seen as symbols of malign Russian influence.
Yanukovych Ejected From Office, Flees to Russia
Yanukovych secretly fled Kyiv on the night of Feb. 21. The protest movement hailed the moment as a revolutionary victory against a corrupt post-Soviet regime.On Feb. 22, 328 of Parliament’s 450 members voted to remove Yanukovych from office, saying he had abandoned his duties. No one voted against the measure and 36 members of the president’s own party voted for it.
Parliament also voted 386–0 to reinstate the nation’s 2004 constitution, which was a condition of the previous agreement with the EU that Yanukovych had reneged on.
That night, in a televised address from eastern Ukraine, Yanukovych declared that he would not resign, saying that he was “the legitimate head of the Ukrainian state” and that Parliament’s reversion to the 2004 constitution was illegal because he had not signed the action into law.
Yanukovych and other close officials of his regime were prevented by Ukrainian border guards from flying out of the country as leadership in Kyiv unveiled charges of treason and mass murder against him.
He then requested and received support from covert Russian military operators, who smuggled him from Donetsk Province to Crimea and ultimately into Russia, where he received asylum from Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Counterrevolutionary Protests Erupt
Yanukovych was convicted in March 2014 in absentia of high treason against Ukraine and wanted for mass murder because of his actions against protesters the previous month.From Moscow, he continued to proclaim that he was the rightful president of Ukraine and to call on Ukrainians to resist what he characterized as an illegitimate government in Kyiv.
Russian state-owned media began to describe the president’s ouster as a coup organized by U.S. intelligence, and counterrevolutionary protests erupted in southern and eastern Ukraine, where most of the population speak Russian as their first language.
Out of fear that pro-Yanukovych protesters in east Ukraine were being influenced by Russian propaganda, the Ukrainian Parliament adopted a bill to revoke the status of Russian as an official state language.
The bill was not enacted but caused mass outrage and fear in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine.
Thousands of counterrevolutionary protesters marched against the new government in several major cities.
In Kharkiv, anti-government demonstrators guarded a statue of communist leader Vladimir Lenin and blocked officials from entering the city council building.
Public surveys revealed that most people in Ukraine’s Russian-speaking east considered all levels of the new government to be illegitimate.
The Annexation of Crimea
At the end of February 2014, Sergey Aksyonov, a Russian citizen, was elected as prime minister of Crimea after inviting Parliament into a locked session in the presence of armed Russian soldiers.The appointment required the approval of the president, which was delivered by Yanukovych in Moscow.
Throughout March, Yanukovych continued to urge members of the Ukrainian military to disobey orders from the new government.
Russian troops began to covertly infiltrate the Crimean peninsula in southern Ukraine.
Russia’s representative at the United Nations sparked alarm when he informed the U.N. Security Council that Yanukovych had requested Russian military assistance to protect Russian-speaking civilians in Ukraine.
On March 4, Putin told reporters that sending troops into Ukraine was legal because Yanukovych was the “legitimate president” of Ukraine and had requested it.
Russian special forces and local paramilitaries seized government buildings in Crimea throughout the month, raising Russian flags wherever they went.
Hundreds of anti-government protesters also blocked access to the Crimean Parliament, demanding that local lawmakers not recognize the new government in Kyiv as legitimate and requesting a referendum on Crimea’s status as an autonomous republic.
On March 11, the Supreme Council of Crimea and the Sevastopol City Council issued proclamations that the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol were a sovereign state called the Republic of Crimea. The local Parliament was dissolved.
Ukrainian law requires the Supreme Council of Crimea to consult with the president of Ukraine to carry out such a course of action.
In a blow to the new government in Kyiv, Crimean leaders recognized Yanukovych as the rightful president and obtained his approval from Moscow.
The referendum to declare Crimean independence was illegal under the Constitution of Ukraine recognized in Kyiv and effectively placed Ukraine in a state of civil war.
Aksyonov, as the new prime minister of Crimea, asked Putin for assistance in ensuring peace in Crimea, and Putin authorized an immediate Russian military intervention.
Donbas States Break Away
As Russia occupied and annexed Crimea, armed pro-Russian separatists began to seize government buildings in the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, collectively known as the Donbas.Rebel leaders announced a referendum on whether Donetsk should join the Russian Federation and elect several Russian citizens to the government.
In April 2024, rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk, which border Russia, formally announced that they were seceding from Ukraine to form the independent Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR).
The two breakaway states were described in international media as puppet states of Moscow.
Russia did not formally acknowledge their independence, but Russian arms and fighters began spilling over the border to support the rebels.
War in Donbas Begins
The secession of Donetsk and Luhansk launched a decade of internecine conflict that wracked Ukraine, with those in the Eurocentric west of the country considering the separatists to be terrorists and those in the Russo-centric east branding Kyiv as illegitimate.Tens of thousands of Russian citizens crossed the border into the Donbas over the course of the year to aid rebels and Moscow began to covertly send combat veterans to train the fighters there.
Ukraine sent an anti-terror military mission to the region and reconquered most of its lost territory by August 2014.
In response to Ukraine’s gains, Russia began directly sending troops, tanks, and artillery into the Donbas. With Russian backing, the rebels then began to retake the territories from the Ukrainian military.
Minsk Agreements
Kyiv and Moscow attempted to reach a series of ultimately unsuccessful cease-fire arrangements beginning in September 2014.In Minsk, the capital of neighboring Belarus, representatives from Ukraine, Russia, the DPR, and the LPR agreed to terms including an immediate cease-fire, exchange of prisoners, political concessions in Donetsk and Luhansk, and the return of control of the border to Ukraine.
Fighting continued sporadically regardless of the agreement, and each side accused the other of violating the terms.
Further negotiations resulted in the second Minsk agreement in February 2015, an extended and more detailed version of the original protocol, although it too failed to fully bring about peace.
The conflict remained unresolved and guerilla actions by both sides ultimately led to the abandonment of the cease-fire altogether.
Eruption of Heavy Fighting in Donbas
From 2017 to 2019, Ukraine and Russian-backed rebel forces agreed to and then quickly abandoned more than a dozen cease-fire arrangements.The Ukrainian military began to ramp up operations against rebels in the Donbas.
Meanwhile, Russia began increasingly suggesting that the DPR and LPR’s independence from Ukraine was legitimate, first granting Russian license plates to those living in the regions and finally handing out Russian passports to residents of the rebel territories.
The Ukrainian government condemned Russia’s distribution of passports as a step toward annexation of the region.
Fearing that it would not be able to defend its sovereignty, the Ukrainian Parliament voted 334–17 to amend the nation’s constitution to state that its strategic objective was to join the EU and NATO, codifying a key goal of Kyiv’s since the 1990s.
Escalation of Hostilities, Russian Troops Mass on Border
In March 2021, the Russian military began to move large quantities of arms and equipment to the border of Ukraine.Troops and equipment were brought to the border from as far away as Siberia and deployed across the border in Crimea, Russia, and Belarus.
The move was the largest unannounced military operation since the toppling of Crimea in 2014.
Zelenskyy met with NATO leadership, reaffirmed Kyiv’s desire to join the military alliance, and said he feared a full-scale attack from Russia.
Kremlin official Dmitry Kozak responded that Russian forces could be used to defend Russian citizens in Ukraine and that any direct conflict between the two nations would mark “the beginning of the end of Ukraine.”
Moscow Issues Demands to NATO
In December 2021, Moscow issued a series of demands to Washington and its NATO allies, telling them that to prevent a war, they must prohibit Ukraine from ever joining the alliance.Putin also demanded that NATO remove all joint troops and weapons from the eastern European nations that had joined the alliance since the fall of the Soviet Union.
At that time, NATO leadership assured Russia that it would not expand into Moscow’s sphere of influence.
The agreements were not binding, and NATO continued to accept new members, including former Soviet states, which Moscow contended was a threat to its national security.
Washington responded to Russia’s security demands, saying that it would not end NATO’s “open-door” policy that allows any nation to petition to join but that it was willing to work with Moscow on a “pragmatic evaluation” of Russian security concerns.
NATO agreed to not send troops to Ukraine but warned of severe economic sanctions if Putin took military action against Ukraine.
Two days later, Moscow issued a statement saying that its demands had not been met. NATO put several units on standby and reinforced Eastern Europe with additional ships and aircraft.
Russia Invades Ukraine
In a late-night speech on Feb. 21, 2022, Putin formally recognized the independence of the DPR and LPR and announced a Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance with the two states.Putin then declared that Ukraine itself was an “inalienable part of [Russian] history” and described the ouster of Yanukovych 10 years before as an illegal coup orchestrated by Western powers.
He also claimed that Kyiv was developing nuclear weapons to use against Russia.
The Russian leader then announced the beginning of “special military operations” in Ukraine with the goal of the total “demilitarization” of Ukraine and its rendering into a neutral state that would be part of neither the EU nor NATO.
Kyiv Under Siege
Immediately following Putin’s address, explosions rocked every province and major city of Ukraine as Russia launched missile and drone attacks against key airfields, military bases, and depots.Russian paratroopers dropped into cities, including Kyiv, and the United States said it believed that Moscow was attempting to “decapitate” Ukraine’s government to install a puppet regime and that it expected Kyiv to fall within 96 hours.
Ukrainian media reported that Yanukovych had been spotted in Minsk and that Russia intended to declare Yanukovych as president of Ukraine after toppling the current government.
Ukrainian National Guard units successfully repelled the first major attempt by Russia to seize Kyiv’s Hostomel Airport and shot down three of 34 Russian helicopters.
Russian saboteurs conducted terror attacks throughout Kyiv. Multiple assassination attempts were made against Ukrainian political leadership, but none were successful.
The Wagner Group, a Russian private military company, transferred most of its forces from Africa to Ukraine. The group was condemned for its atrocities, including filming the torture and execution of captured enemies with sledgehammers.
The Russian military entered Ukraine on three fronts: from the north in Belarus, from the south in Kyiv, and from the east through the Donbas.
Ukrainian leadership survived the initial onslaught, and a combination of Ukrainian tenacity and Russian poor planning ultimately crippled the speed of Russia’s advances in the north and south. However, the Pentagon warned that Russia had sent only 30 percent of the 150,000 troops it had massed at the border into Ukraine.
In a first victory of sorts, Ukraine prevented Russian fighters from obtaining air dominance throughout the country, effectively laying the groundwork to ensure that it could conduct ground operations against Russian forces without being destroyed by Russian air elements.
1st Ukrainian Counteroffensive
Ukrainian forces began their first counteroffensive in an attempt to expel Russian forces from the southern provinces of Kherson and Mykolaiv. They gained moderate success by August 2022, largely without international support.In April 2022, 41 international partners convened the first meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group to coordinate supplying military aid to Ukraine.
At about the same time, Iran began supplying Russia with one-way attack drones.
2nd Ukrainian Counteroffensive
Ukraine launched a counteroffensive into Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia as a fierce battle for the city of Bakhmut decimated both sides. Described as a “meat grinder,” the battle for Bakhmut drew comparisons to World War I for its brutal trench warfare and high casualty rate.Wagner Group forces secured ultimate victory in Bakhmut at great cost in May 2023.
At about the same time, Moscow and Tehran began formulating an arms deal arrangement in which Iran would receive advanced military systems from Russia in exchange for additional missiles and drones.
The next month, the Kakhovka Dam on the Dnieper River was destroyed by unidentified saboteurs, flooding vast areas downstream and reducing water supplies to Crimea.
Wagner Mutiny
Wagner Group leader and Putin confidante Yevgeny Prigozhin declared a mutiny against the Russian defense establishment in June 2023.Prigozhin said he was seeking revenge against Russian military leaders for their incompetence and an alleged incident in which Russian forces shelled a Wagner position.
Labeling his mutiny the “march of justice,” Prigozhin told regular military units to stay away or be destroyed. Putin suggested that the activities could be an incitement to civil war.
Prigozhin, with some 25,000 Wagner troops under his command, shot down a Russian helicopter and seized the town of Rostov-on-Don before suddenly announcing that he would stop his march and Wagner would disperse to military camps.
Following talks with Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko, Prigozhin accepted a deal from the Kremlin to go into exile in Belarus and for the Wagner Group to be subsumed into the Russian military proper.
Prigozhin died suddenly in August 2023 when a plane carrying him and several other Wagner officers exploded and crashed, killing all on board.
International Weapons Shipments Drive War
Ukraine and Russia struggled to gain or hold ground on various fronts along a battle line that crossed hundreds of miles of Ukrainian territory. Both sides began to suffer from shortages of arms and manpower, and both increasingly relied on international support from 2023 into 2024.Kyiv continued to receive support coordinated through the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, with the international partners pledging roughly $380 billion from the beginning of the war through mid-2024.
NATO members nevertheless refrained from sending many of their best weapon systems to Ukraine for fear of triggering escalation from Moscow. It was not until late 2024 that the United States allowed the transfer of short-range ballistic missiles to Ukraine.
Moscow likewise turned increasingly to international partners to fuel its campaign.
Communist North Korea began to ship thousands of cargo containers of ammunition to Russia, believing itself to be supporting a proxy war against the United States.
Ukraine Seizes Russian Territory
Ukraine launched a major offensive into the Russian province of Kursk in August 2024, marking the first major cross-border military operation by Ukrainian forces since the conflict began.Approximately 11,000 Ukrainian troops advanced into the region, capturing 400 square miles of Russian territory and seizing control of dozens of villages before losing some of those gains to Russian forces.
The move provided Ukraine with a bargaining chip for cease-fire negotiations, and Zelenskyy later said he intended to trade Kursk to Moscow in exchange for some of Ukraine’s occupied territories at the end of the war.
Russia deployed 50,000 troops to counter the Ukrainian advance, supported by air and artillery strikes, and reportedly began to move 10,000 North Korean troops to the region in the first and only instance of direct foreign military involvement in the war.
US Calls for Cease-Fire Negotiations to Begin
Trump called on Moscow and Kyiv to begin pursuing an end to the war after assuming office in January 2025.The U.S. leader reopened diplomatic channels with Moscow that had been closed since 2022 and began pressuring Kyiv to grant the United States access to rare earth minerals in exchange for continued military support.
Trump unilaterally declared that Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO and that the nation’s security would be guaranteed by troops from European powers, although the administration has not discussed any such arrangement with Europe or NATO.
Trump administration officials also publicly acknowledged that a negotiated settlement would likely require Ukraine to cede some occupied territory to Russia.
In February, U.S. and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia to begin the process of normalizing relations. They discussed the terms of ending the war without any officials from Ukraine or Europe present.
Leaders from the UK, Germany, Poland, Italy, Denmark, the EU, and NATO convened an emergency meeting to discuss organizing European assistance to Ukraine without U.S. support.
Leadership in Germany, Sweden, and the UK said they are open to sending peacekeeping forces to Ukraine, while Polish leadership said it would not send troops but would provide logistical and operational support to peacekeeping forces.
