On February 24, 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of neighboring Ukraine, plunging the country into bloodshed, and activating a united response from the West as they rushed to defend their ally and enacted massive sanctions against the Kremlin and its wealthiest supporters.
Putin has targeted Ukraine since 2014, when he seized Crimea and supported separatists in the east of the country, after a revolution unseated Kyiv’s Russia-leaning government and replaced it with a democratic one instead that sought to foster ties with the European Union.
Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was met by steadfast resistance from the Ukrainian government and its people, including Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. It also brought undivided condemnation from the United States and its European allies, which responded with crushing sanctions against Russia and a growing list of oligarchs who are some of the world’s wealthiest individuals. In the week following Russia’s onslaught, its currency crumbled, its credit rating tanked, and its stock market shuttered. An increasingly isolated Putin responded to Western sanctions and censure by placing his nuclear deterrent forces on high alert. Met with opposition from Russian citizens, Putin also tightened restrictions on media, executing a state-run propaganda campaign, and imprisoned anti-war protesters. Meanwhile, the U.S. and E.U. nations began the process of seizing Putin-allied Russian oligarchs’ assets, including mansions and yachts.
Ukraine remains under siege, as the Russian military, which has continued to make territorial gains, indiscriminately bombs major cities, hitting hospitals, schools, and municipal buildings, aiming to seize the nation’s capital city of Kyiv. In the first week of the conflict alone, a million people fled the violence in Ukraine, with bordering countries such as Poland and Romania accepting refugees.
