Russia launched an attack in Ukraine on Thursday, Feb. 24, with missile and air strikes on multiple cities, Ukrainian officials said.
Officials in the capital city of Kyiv said dozens of soldiers and civilians have already been killed in the attack ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The offensive, which began just minutes after a televised speech by Putin overnight has plunged Europe into one of its most dire security crises since the end of World War II.
Putin said in his speech that he was greenlighting military action in Ukraine and that any nation that tried to interfere would face a response by Russia “so severe that no foreign nations have ever experienced it before.”
“We are being attacked from the south, north, east and from the air,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a speech broadcasted on Thursday morning. “We are giving away weapons and we will continue doing so to anyone who will ask for it in order to protect our sovereignty. Our future depends on each and every citizen.”
Why has Russia invaded Ukraine?
Putin said in a speech on Monday that he is defending Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine, particularly the self-declared republics of Luhansk and Donetsk, which broke from control of the Ukrainian government in 2014.
He deemed the attack a “peacekeeping” operation and said Ukraine was trying to subject Russian speakers to a “genocide” by forcibly trying to take back the breakaway regions. No evidence of that has been found, and Ukrainian officials have denied any military effort to reclaim the territory.
The Russian president said in his speech Wednesday that he ordered the military action to “demilitarize” Ukraine, a sovereign democracy that borders Russia, due to the prospects of Ukraine joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which he considers “a hostile act.”
Putin said that Ukraine, which was part of the Soviet Union before its collapse in 1991, was “in full and in whole created by Russia — Bolshevik, Communist Russia to be precise.” He believes it’s an illegitimate country that should be under the sphere of Moscow because the two are part of an inseparable whole.
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U.S. officials have warned for months that the Russian government was trying to manufacture a pretext to attack Ukraine.
“Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring, and the United States and its allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way,” President Joe Biden said in a statement Wednesday. “The world will hold Russia accountable.”
What is happening in Ukraine?
Ukrainian officials said Thursday that Russian forces have attacked with missiles, airstrikes and ground forces in cities throughout the country.
Explosions were seen and heard in multiple cities, according to NBC News reporters on the ground. Officials in the nation’s capital, Kyiv, reported missiles targeting military control centers in the city.
“Russia treacherously attacked our state in the morning, as Nazi Germany did in #2WW years,” Zelenskyy tweeted Thursday. “As of today, our countries are on different sides of world history. (Russia) has embarked on a path of evil, but (Ukraine) is defending itself & won’t give up its freedom no matter what Moscow thinks.”
In a tweet, Zelenskyy also characterized Russian forces’ seizure of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant near the border of Belarus as “a declaration of war against the whole of Europe.”
There have also been reports by Ukrainian officials of 40 soldiers being killed, a Russian shell hitting a hospital in the Donetsk region, a bombing in the southern Odessa region and battles in Hostomel outside Kyiv, according to NBC News.
NBC News was not immediately able to confirm the government reports of casualties, battles and troop movements.
Several Ukrainian parents told TODAY they have taken to sending their children to school wearing stickers listing their blood types and instructing them on what to do in emergency situations. Ahead of Thursday’s attack, some schools were conducting drills similar to mass shooting drills in the U.S. to prepare the children.
Children in some parts of Kyiv were instructed to flee to subway stations that would double as bomb shelters, a father in the city told TODAY Parents.
A U.S. intelligence assessment earlier this month estimated that 50,000 civilians could be killed or wounded in a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
What is the response by the U.S. and Western Europe?
Biden has condemned the attacks and vowed “severe” sanctions aimed at damaging Russia’s economy in response to Putin’s actions.
He announced a new round of sanctions on Russian exports to the U.S. on Thursday, saying in a televised speech that “Putin chose this war” and that “he and his country will bear the consequences.”
Biden had previously announced sanctions against two large Russian banks on Feb. 22 and other measures to cut off Western financing to Russia. He said Thursday’s sanctions also target Russian financial institutions.
European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Thursday that the EU “will freeze Russian assets in the European Union and stop the access of Russian banks to European financial markets.”
Canada’s Justin Trudeau, Germany’s Olaf Scholz, France’s Emmanuel Macron, and Britain’s Boris Johnson also released statements condemning the attack.
“The Kremlin’s aim is to re-establish its sphere of influence, rip up the global rules that have kept us all safe for decades and subvert the values that we hold dear,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Thursday. “Peace on our continent has been shattered.”
Scholz said at a news conference in Berlin on Feb. 22 that he has suspended certification for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would bring natural gas from Russia into Europe in punishment for Putin’s actions. Germany relies on Russia for about a third of its natural gas.
“These are difficult hours for Europe and almost 80 years after the end of the Second World War, we might see a new war in Eastern Europe,” Scholz said at the news conference.
Some members of NATO are also providing military equipment and weapons to Ukraine, but NATO was not directly providing them as an organization as of Thursday, according to NBC News.
How could the U.S. be affected by the invasion?
The attack could potentially drive up gas prices as the U.S. weathers the highest inflation rate in 40 years.
Oil prices jumped more than 5% on Thursday after news of Russia’s invasion. U.S. crude futures jumped to trade at $96.92 per barrel, with natural gas prices up 5.4%.
While Russia was the third largest supplier of oil by country to the U.S. behind Canada and Mexico in 2020, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, it accounted for 7% of gross petroleum imports, compared with Canada’s 52%. Still, a rise in global prices due to shortages caused by the invasion could potentially cause prices at the pump in the U.S. to rise.
If the U.S. chooses to issue harsh sanctions involving the purchase of Russian oil or natural gas, that could also potentially drive up the price.
“Will they sanction Russian oil or gas? Because this would mean significant pain for even U.S. consumers,” Ellen Wald, the president of Transversal Consulting, told “Street Signs Asia,” according to CNBC. “The United States does import Russian oil. In fact, there’s oil headed to the U.S. as we speak.”
Goldman Sachs said in a Wednesday report that the impact on energy prices should not be significant.
“While Europe imports a large share of its natural gas consumption from Russia, the US is a net exporter of natural gas and any spillover effects on US gas prices should be modest,” analysts said in the report.
The stock market was roiled on Thursday by the news of the invasion but recovered by the end of the day, with the S&P 500 up 1.5% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average up 0.28%.
What is Ukraine’s history with Russia?
Ukraine’s territory was controlled by the Russian Empire and Austria-Hungary in the 19th century before the people asserted their independence and became the Ukrainian People’s Republic in 1917.
Ukraine then became part of the Soviet Union in 1922 and did not regain its independence until the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Ukrainians voted in a landslide to become an independent nation.
Pro-democracy leader Viktor Yuschenko was elected president in a third round of voting in 2004 after what became known as the Orange Revolution. Mass protests were held after accusations of election rigging when a candidate supported by Putin, Viktor Yanukovych, initially defeated Yuschenko.
Yanukovych was eventually elected president in 2010, but fled to Russia in 2014 in the wake of protests, resulting in an interim government being installed. Putin declared the new government illegal and then sent troops to take control of the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine, which was ultimately annexed by Russia.
Violence also broke out that year in Donbas, an eastern region of Ukraine. The fighting has continued to this day in the region after Russian-backed separatists stormed government buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk in 2014. Russia has also regularly engaged in cyberattacks in Ukraine, including a hack of the power grid in 2015 that caused widespread outages.
More than 14,000 people have died in the fighting between Ukraine and Russia since 2014, according to the United Nations.
