What’s the latest?
Russian forces are continuing their bombardment on Kyiv and other major cities but without moving deeper into Ukrainian-held territory. In the capital, a 12-storey apartment building in the city centre burst into flames when it was hit by shrapnel.
In Mariupol, hundreds of patients remained trapped at the Ternopil municipal hospital. “It is impossible to get out of the hospital,” one hospital employee said on the Telegram social media platform. “They shoot hard, we sit in the basement.
The right bank of Mariupol, which is divided by a river, is at the centre of a vicious battle between Ukrainian and Russian forces. The left bank is under Russian occupation and almost completely cut off.
One of the two bridges from the left bank has been destroyed and those in contact with relatives inside the city say the second bridge is being heavily fought over.
What has happened since Russia invaded?
On Thursday 24 February, Russia attacked Ukraine along multiple axes, bringing to a calamitous end weeks of fruitless diplomatic efforts by western leaders to avert war.
On Friday 25 February, Russian forces reached the outskirts of Kyiv and carried out an amphibious assault from the Sea of Azov near Mariupol. The shape of the Russian incursion became clearer:
On Saturday 26 February, Russian forces in control of territory to the north-west of Kyiv continued their assault on the capital. Elsewhere, heavy fighting was reported in and around Kharkiv and there were Ukrainian counterattacks in some places previously claimed by Russian forces.
On Monday 28 February, Russian rocket attacks killed dozens of people in Kharkiv. Pre-dawn blasts were heard again in Kyiv and in Mariupol, which was surrounded by Russian forces and under heavy attack.
On Tuesday 1 March, Russian forces bombarded the government headquarters in Kharkiv, and the armoured column continued rolling towards the capital.
On Wednesday 2 March, Moscow’s forces took the port and train station in the strategically important city of Kherson, on the Black Sea. Russian paratroopers landed in Kharkiv, after several days of fierce bombardment. Kyiv came under more heavy shelling.
A week into the Russian invasion, on Thursday 3 March, the Black Sea port of Kherson became the first major Ukrainian target to fall under the de facto control of Moscow’s forces.
On Friday 4 March the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant was seized by Russian military forces after a fire sparked by overnight shelling burned for several hours.
On Saturday 5 March a deal to evacuate civilians from the besieged city of Mariupol and the nearby town of Volnovakha collapsed, and residents in occupied Kherson and Melitopol took part in anti-Russia demonstrations.
On Sunday 6 March civilians came under fire as they tried to leave areas including Irpin, where a young family was killed.
On Monday 7 March Ukraine dismissed as immoral and unacceptable Russian proposals to evacuate civilians along routes into Russia or Belarus.
On Tuesday 8 March civilians left Sumy and Irpin in the north, and Russia was accused of violating a ceasefire by shelling a proposed humanitarian corridor from besieged Mariupol.
On Wednesday 9 March, a children’s hospital and maternity ward in Mariupol was destroyed by a Russian air strike.
On Thursday 10 March a humanitarian convoy trying to reach Mariupol was forced to turn around due to fighting, and airstrikes struck the western city of Zhytomyr. Satellite images showed the extent of the destruction in Mariupol.
Drone footage emerged of a Ukrainian ambush on a Russian armoured column just outside Brovary, an eastern suburb of Kyiv.
On Friday 11 March Russian airstrikes hit three cities, including two in the country’s west, as the scope of the military offensive widened.
On Sunday 13 March Russia struck a military base close to the Polish border that has previously hosted foreign military trainers from the UK, US and other countries.
On Monday 14 March a convoy of more than 160 cars left Mariupol in what appears to be the first successful use of a “humanitarian corridor” to evacuate civilians from the besieged port city. Moscow’s forces have stepped up their campaign to capture Kyiv, where one person was killed and several other wounded in a strike on a block of flats in Obolon district.
On Tuesday 15 March Russian shells and missiles pounded Kyiv, killing at least five people and prompting city hall to impose a 35-hour curfew. In the east, the airport in Dnipro sustained massive damage overnight, while Russian forces launched more than 60 strikes on Kharkiv. In Mauripol, authorities said Russian forces had taken hundreds of civilians hostage at a hospital.
How did we get here?
Over the previous few months Russia had deployed hundreds of tanks, self-propelled artillery and short-range ballistic missiles from as far away as Siberia to within striking range of Ukraine.
Moscow’s rhetoric grew more belligerent. Putin demanded legal guarantees that Ukraine would never join Nato or host its missile strike systems, concessions he was unlikely to receive. A flurry of diplomatic activity did little to ease tensions.
The second half of February was long seen as the most likely period for a potential offensive. Russian soldiers stayed on in Belarus beyond the end of planned military exercises, and the Winter Olympics, hosted by Russia’s ally China, concluded.
The invasion was preceded on 22 February by Putin saying Russia would recognise the territorial claims of self-proclaimed republics in Luhansk and Donetsk. He had already ordered his forces into Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.
What do we know about Russia’s deployments?
Scores of battalion tactical groups – the smallest operational unit in Russia’s army, consisting of about 800-1,000 troops – were put in place near the borders of Ukraine in Russia and latterly Belarus prior to the invasion. As of 18 February, the US estimated that Russia had between 169,000 and 190,000 personnel in and around Ukraine.
An estimated 32,000 separatist forces were already operating in the breakaway areas in Donetsk and Luhansk – some of whom were likely to be unacknowledged Russian forces – before the invasion.
Many of the heavy weapons stationed near Ukraine arrived as far back as spring 2021. Over the new year Russia also began to move tanks, artillery, air-defence systems and fighter jets to Belarus for joint exercises in February. That deployment then grew.
These satellite image composites show the buildup of troops in Yelnya and Pogonovo over the new year.
Satellite photographs also showed increased deployments in Novoozernoye, in western Crimea.
The US estimates that 10,000 troops moved into Crimea in late January and early February.
Satellite images taken on 20 February showed troops and equipment being moved from holding areas to potential launch locations.
How do the militaries compare?
Russia’s invasion pits the Kremlin’s large, recently modernised military against an adversary largely using older versions of the same or similar equipment, dating back to the Soviet era. Russia has significant numerical advantages on land and in particular in the air and at sea, although Ukrainians are defending their homeland.
What is the historical context?
In 2014 Putin sent troops to annex Crimea, a mainly Russian-speaking region of Ukraine. Russia also incited a separatist uprising in Ukraine’s south-east, clandestinely sending soldiers and weapons to provoke a conflict that grew into a full-blown war.
A 2015 peace deal established a line of demarcation and called on both sides to make concessions. After that, low-level fighting continued along the front, and each side accused the other of violating the agreement.
Going back further, Russia has long opposed any attempts by Ukraine to move towards the EU and Nato. One of Putin’s often repeated demands was a guarantee that Ukraine never joins Nato, the alliance of 30 countries that has expanded eastwards since the end of the cold war.
What was the role of Nord Stream 2?
On 22 February, the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, stopped the certification process for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in response to Russia’s recognition of the two self-proclaimed republics.
First announced in 2015, the $11bn (£8.3bn) pipeline owned by Russia’s state-backed energy firm Gazprom was built to carry gas from western Siberia to Lubmin in Germany’s north-east, doubling the existing capacity of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline and keeping 26m German homes warm at an affordable price.
Nord Stream 2, Europe’s most divisive energy project, bypassed the traditional gas transit nation of Ukraine by running along the bed of the Baltic Sea. It faced resistance within the EU, and from the US as well as Ukraine, on the grounds that it increased Europe’s energy dependence on Russia, denied Ukraine transit fees and made it more vulnerable to Russian invasion.
