Russia-Ukrainian War Timeline
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has been carried out since last February. The following is timeline of the Russia-Ukraine conflict that became an important moment.
In February, Russian troops attacked the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, from the north in an attempt to overthrow the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky. With Ukrainian forces outgunned and outnumbered, many military experts expect the offensive to be successful quickly. But after weeks of fighting, the Russians withdrew, stymied by Ukrainian resistance.
March, Russian troops attacking from the south take Kherson province. The advances are part of efforts to secure Ukraine’s Black Sea coast and form a land bridge between the territory of Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014, and the breakaway republic established with Moscow’s support that year in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
In April, a Russian missile attack on a train station in Kramatorsk, a city in Donetsk, killed more than 50 civilians. The attack came at the start of the Russian offensive to seize all of Donetsk and Luhansk, collectively known as the Donbas.
May,The last Ukrainian fighters surrendered to Russian forces in Mariupol, a port city and industrial center on the Sea of Azov. Russian troops destroyed the city during weeks of bombing that killed thousands of civilians. The battle ended with the siege of the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works factory, which became symbol of the Ukrainian resistance.
In June, Ukrainian troops raise fag over Snake Island, a strip of land in the Black Sea off the Ukrainian city of Odesa. Russian forces had seized the island early in the conflict, exposing the Ukrainian coast to missile attacks and a potential ground invasion. By expelling Russian troops from the island — two months after sinking the main ship of Russia’s Black Sea feet, Moscow is reducing the threat to Odesa that has further undermined the aura of Moscow’s naval power.
July, after weeks of artillery bombardment and street fighting, the last city under Ukrainian control in Luhansk, Lysychansk, fell to the Russians. However, in the weeks that followed, Moscow made little headway in its bid to secure the rest of the Donbas.
In August, Ukraine said it had launched a counter-offensive in the southern Kherson region. The build-up took weeks, during which Ukraine deployed newly arrived missile systems supplied by the United States and other Western countries to destroy Russian ammunition dumps and other military infrastructure. Ukraine also attacked a Russian air base in Crimea.