FOREIGN POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE
A NEW INVASION AND ITS REPERCUSSIONS Russia foreshadowed its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine in March and April of 2021. At that time, it beefed up forces in Crimea and near Ukraine, ostensibly in preparation for exercises, with total numbers reaching over 100,000 personnel.45 While many subsequently returned to their bases, the infrastructure remained.
been concentrated in these areas. Russia has been successful in holding much of the southern territory it took in the war’s early days over the summer made incremental progress in Donbas, where it took full control of Luhansk region in early July. But a Ukrainian counteroffensive from late August into October regained most of Kharkiv region and made inroads on all other fronts. Russia responded by announcing both a substantial mobilization and the annexation of unspecified portions of Ukrainian territory. It has also attacked Ukrainian infrastructure and, intentionally or not, civilian areas and made new nuclear threats.
This infrastructure provided groundwork for a second build-up of forces and equipment in the fall. Western and Russian experts debated whether or not Moscow was preparing a significant military action, signaling, exercising, or doing something else.46 Meanwhile, Russian forces kept coming. By mid-February 2022, Russia had roughly 200,000 troops in Belarus and Russia, massed around Ukraine.47 This was the force that invaded Russia’s neighbor from the north, east, and south starting on February 24.
Russia’s multi-axis attack was soon flummoxed, as much by its own poor tactics and planning as by brave Ukrainian resistance.
Russia calls its invasion and continuing war against Ukraine a “special military operation.” Moscow says that its goals are the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine. Although it has never specified what either term means, it initially likely hoped to see Ukraine’s government shift to one more in line with Moscow’s wishes and to impose limits on Ukraine’s military capacity and relationships with NATO member states. There is no reason to think that these goals have changed.
The war has meanwhile galvanized NATO. Member states have sanctioned Russia and are sending a variety of weapons, humanitarian aid, and other supplies to Ukraine, as well as training Ukrainian forces on Western equipment.48 But they are also bolstering their own posture. In 2020, a NATO official told the authors that the alliance intended to further increase its troop presence in both the Black Sea and Baltic Sea regions.49 Now, this is coming to pass, multifold. With Sweden and Finland joining the alliance, numerous European nations increasing their defense expenditures, and Eastern Europeans upgrading from Soviet-era equipment as they donate the latter to Ukraine, a larger, more modernized NATO Eastern front is taking shape.
Russia’s military aims, however, have shifted since February 24. Its multi-axis attack was soon flummoxed, as much by its own poor tactics and planning as by brave Ukrainian resistance. The plan, such as it was, relied on a fairly warm welcome from Ukraine’s population. Once it was clear that this was not forthcoming, that Russia’s initial approach had failed, and that Kyiv was not going to fall easily, Russia’s Defence Ministry pulled forces out of Ukraine’s northern and central regions and declared it would focus its military efforts on securing the Donbas and Ukraine’s south. Since late March, fighting has
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