Prelude to War

There was a large Russian military build-up near the Ukraine border in March and April 2021, and again in both Russia and Belarus from October 2021 onward. Members of the Russian government, including Putin, repeatedly denied having plans to invade or attack Ukraine, with denials being issued up to the day before the invasion. The decision to invade UkraineUkraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Kyiv is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnipro River. On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War that began in 2014.Ukraine was reportedly made by Putin and a small group of war hawks or siloviki in Putin's inner circle, including national security adviser Nikolai Patrushev and defence minister Sergei Shoigu.

In July 2021, Putin published an essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians", in which he called Ukraine "historically Russian lands" and claimed there is "no historical basis" for the "idea of Ukrainian people as a nation separate from the Russians". Days before the invasion of RussiaRussia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the largest country in the world by land area, and extends across eleven time zones; sharing land borders with fourteen countries. Russia is the most populous country in Europe and Moscow is its capital city. Boris Yeltsin was a Soviet and Russian politician and statesman who served as President of Russia from 1991 to 1999.Russia, Putin claimed that Ukraine never had "real statehood" and that modern Ukraine was a mistake created by the Russian Bolsheviks. American historian Timothy Snyder described Putin's ideas as Russian imperialism. British journalist Edward Lucas described it as historical revisionism. Other observers found that Russia's leadership held a distorted view of Ukraine, as well as of its own history, and that these distortions were propagated through the state.

In December 2021, Russia issued an ultimatum to the West, which included demands that NATOThe North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is an intergovernmental transnational military alliance. Established in the aftermath of World War II, the organization implements the North Atlantic Treaty, signed in Washington, DC, on 4 April 1949. NATO is a collective security system: its independent member states agree to defend each other against attacks by third parties. During the Cold War, NATO operated as a check on the threat posed by the Soviet Union.NATO end all activity in its Eastern European member states and ban Ukraine or any former Soviet state from ever joining the alliance. Russia's government said NATO was a threat and warned of a military response if it followed an "aggressive line". Some of the demands had already been ruled out by NATO. A senior US official said the United StatesThe United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country in North America. It is the world's third-largest country by both land and total area. The United States shares land borders with Canada to its north and with Mexico to its south. The national capital is Washington, D.C., and the most populous city and financial center is New York City.United States was willing to discuss the proposals, but added that there were some "that the Russians know are unacceptable". Eastern European states willingly joined NATO for security reasons, and the last time a country bordering Russia had joined was in 2004. Ukraine had not yet applied, and some members were wary of letting it join. Barring Ukraine would go against NATO's "open door" policy, and against treaties agreed to by Russia itself. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg replied that "Russia has no say" on whether Ukraine joins, and "has no right to establish a sphere of influence to try to control their neighbours". NATO underlined that it is a defensive alliance, and that it had co-operated with Russia until the latter annexed Crimea. It offered to improve communication with Russia, and to negotiate limits on missile placements and military exercises, provided Russia withdrew its troops from Ukraine's borders, but Russia did not do so.

Western leaders vowed that heavy sanctions would be imposed should Putin choose to invade rather than to negotiate. FrenchFrance, officially the French Republic is transcontinental country predominantly located in Western Europe and spanning overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. France reached its political and military zenith in the early 19th century under Napoleon Bonaparte, subjugating much of continental Europe and establishing the First French Empire.French President Emmanuel Macron and GermanGermany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. Germany borders Denmark to the north, Poland and the Czech Republic to the east, Austria and Switzerland to the south, and France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands to the west. Germany is a great power with a strong economy; it has the largest economy in Europe, with global power in industrial, scientific and technological sectors.German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met Putin in February 2022 to dissuade him from an invasion. According to Scholz, Putin told him that Ukraine should not be an independent state. Scholz told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to declare Ukraine a neutral country and renounce its aspirations to join NATO. Zelenskyy replied that Putin could not be trusted to abide by such a settlement. Ukraine had been a neutral country in 2014 when Russia occupied Crimea and invaded the Donbas. On 19 February, Zelenskyy made a speech at the Munich Security Conference, calling for Western powers to drop their policy of "appeasement" towards Moscow and give a clear time-frame for when Ukraine could join NATO. As political analysts Taras Kuzio and Vladimir Socor agree, "when Russia made its decision to invade Ukraine, that country was more remote than ever not only from NATO membership but from any track that might lead to membership".

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This article uses material from the Wikipedia article "Russian Invasion of Ukraine (2022–)", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.