On February 24, 2022, Russian forces, which had been massing on the border with Ukraine since November of the previous year, crossed the border to begin their invasion of Ukraine.

In the weeks leading up to this invasion, the Russian government claimed nothing untoward was happening as they slowly built up nearly 100,000 soldiers all along that shared border.

And then eventually along the Belarusian border with Ukraine as well.

Belarus's government being fairly strongly allied with Russia's government, almost to the point of being politically and militarily subsumed by their much larger and more powerful neighbor.

During this build-up period, Russian officials said they were engaging in military

exercises, and they did perform some exercises, including one round in late January 2022

that involved thousands of Russian troops and dozens of jets near an occupied portion of Ukraine,

annexed by Russia in 2014, called Crimea, which is a fairly vital

piece of real estate, as it is strategically located along the Black Sea and houses the naval base

Russia has long used for its fleet in the region. Russia and Belarus stepped up these

exercises in mid-February and fighting, which had been ongoing for years between the Ukrainian government and Russia-supported separatist groups in the eastern Ukrainian Donbos region, escalated to an intensity the region had not seen for years.

On February 21st, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that he was recognizing the independence of two regions in that eastern portion of Ukraine,

which triggered an earlier threatened round of economic sanctions from NATO countries.

This was similar to what happened in the buildup to Russia taking Crimea in 2014.

And then a few days later, on the 24th, Russia attacked.

Putin calling the invasion a quote unquote special military operation, saying that Russia had

no intention of occupying any part of Ukraine and that they were merely supporting those

would-be breakaway provinces and their right to self-determination.

This claimed goal would change a few times

over the next several months, and seemingly accidentally published victory editorials in Russia-controlled

suggested that Russia's intention in those early days was to hit Ukraine's capital city, Kiev,

hard and fast, launching a decapitation

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