The war in Donbas, or Donbas war, was a phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War in the Donbas region of Ukraine. The war began 12 April 2014, when a fifty-man commando unit headed by Russian citizen Igor Girkin seized Sloviansk in Donetsk oblast. The Ukrainian military launched an operation against them. It continued until it was subsumed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
On 18 August 2014, during the war in Donbas, a convoy of refugees fleeing heavy fighting near Luhansk, Ukraine, was hit by an artillery strike. At least 17 people were killed in the strike which the Ukrainian government blamed on insurgents affiliated with the Luhansk People's Republic. The insurgents denied striking any convoy and blamed the attack on the Ukrainian government.
During the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War between the Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region of Ukraine that began in April 2014, many international organisations and states noted a deteriorating humanitarian situation in the conflict zone.
Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy is a Ukrainian politician and former actor who has been serving as the sixth president of Ukraine since 2019.
Russian war crimes are the violations of the international criminal law including war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of genocide which the official armed and paramilitary forces of Russia are accused of committing since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. These accusations also extend to the aiding and abetting of crimes which have been committed by proto-statelets or puppet statelets which are armed and financed by Russia, including the Luhansk People's Republic and the Donetsk People's Republic. These war crimes have included murder, torture, terrorism, deportation or forced transfer, abduction, rape, looting, unlawful confinement, unlawful airstrikes or attacks against civilian objects, and wanton destruction.
From April 2014 until September 2022, the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) claimed to be independent states. Their sovereignty was recognised by South Ossetian authorities in 2014, Russia and Abkhazian authorities in February 2022, Syria in June 2022 and North Korea in July 2022.
Many states, international organizations, and civil society actors worldwide had expressed their reactions to the then-escalating crisis between Russia and Ukraine that started in March 2021. The crisis eventually culminated in a Russian invasion of Ukraine, beginning on 24 February 2022.
The following is a list of events from the year 2022 in Ukraine.
On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in an escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War that started in 2014. The invasion became the largest attack on a European country since World War II. It is estimated to have caused tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties and hundreds of thousands of military casualties. By June 2022, Russian troops occupied about 20% of Ukrainian territory. From a population of 41 million in January 2022, about 8 million Ukrainians had been internally displaced and more than 8.2 million had fled the country by April 2023, creating Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. Extensive environmental damage caused by the war, widely described as an ecocide, contributed to food crises worldwide.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the Russian military and authorities have committed war crimes, such as deliberate attacks against civilian targets ; indiscriminate attacks on densely-populated areas ; abduction, torture and murder of civilians; forced deportations; sexual violence; destruction of cultural heritage; and mistreatment, torture and murder of Ukrainian prisoners of war.
The siege of Mariupol began on 24 February 2022 and lasted until 20 May, as part of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It saw fighting between the Russian Armed Forces and the Ukrainian Armed Forces for control over the city of Mariupol in southeastern Ukraine. Lasting for almost three months, the siege ended in a victory for Russia and the Donetsk People's Republic, as Ukraine lost control of the city amidst Russia's eastern Ukraine offensive and southern Ukraine offensive; all Ukrainian troops remaining in the city surrendered at the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works on 20 May 2022, after they were ordered to cease fighting.
During the southern Ukraine offensive of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the city of Odesa and the surrounding region have been the target of shelling and air strikes by Russian forces on multiple occasions since the conflict began, fired predominantly from Russian warships situated offshore in the Black Sea. The city has also been targeted by Russian cruise missiles.
The battle of Donbas was a military offensive that was part of the wider eastern Ukraine campaign of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The offensive began on 18 April 2022 between the armed forces of Russia and Ukraine for control of the Donbas region. Military analysts consider the campaign to have been the second strategic phase of the invasion, after Russia's initial three-pronged attack into Ukraine.
The battle of Sievierodonetsk was a military engagement in the wider battle of Donbas of the Eastern Ukraine offensive during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Bilohorivka is a rural settlement in Sievierodonetsk Raion, Luhansk Oblast, eastern Ukraine. It is located in Lysychansk urban hromada, one of the hromadas of Ukraine. It is located approximately 88 kilometres (55 mi) northwest from the centre of Luhansk and 25 kilometres (16 mi) west-south-west from Sievierodonetsk. The population is 808.
On 11 March 2022, the attack to the care house in Stara Krasnianka during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On 7 March, the Ukrainian armed forces reportedly occupied a care house in the village of Stara Krasnianka, near Kreminna, Luhansk region, and set up a firing position there without first evacuating the residents. On 11 March 2022, pro-Russian separatist forces attacked the care house with heavy weapons while 71 patients with disabilities and 15 members of staff were still inside. A fire broke out and approximately fifty people died.
During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian military have carried out deliberate attacks against civilian targets and indiscriminate attacks in densely-populated areas. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine says the Russian military exposed the civilian population to unnecessary and disproportionate harm by using cluster bombs and by firing other weapons with wide-area effects into civilian areas, such as missiles, heavy artillery shells and multiple launch rockets. As of 2024, the attacks had resulted in the documented deaths of between 10,000 and 16,500 civilians. On 22 April 2022, the UN reported that of the 2,343 civilian casualties it had been able to document, it could confirm 92.3% of these deaths were as a result of the actions of the Russian armed forces.
This timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine covers the period from 24 February 2022, when Russia launched a military invasion of Ukraine, to 7 April 2022 when fighting focused away from the north and towards the south and east of Ukraine.
This timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine covers the period from 8 April 2022, when the area of heavy fighting shifted to the south and east of Ukraine, to 28 August 2022, the day before Ukraine announced the start of its Kherson counteroffensive.
Since 19 September 2022, a military campaign has taken place along a 60-km frontline in western parts of Luhansk Oblast and far-eastern parts of Kharkiv Oblast amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Also known as the Svatove–Kreminna line or the Kupiansk–Svatove–Kreminna–Bilohorivka line after the major settlements along the front, the campaign began a day after the Ukrainian Army recaptured the nearby city of Lyman during the Kharkiv counteroffensive after of which the front line froze over the next few months.
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