Russia struggles to repel Ukraine’s deep incursion on fourth day of cross-border attack

Ukraine and Russia have a long, complicated history.

After the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine gained its independence in 1991 and gradually moved closer to the European Union and the West.

Russia had long opposed Ukraine’s rapprochement with the EU and the Western military alliance NATO.

For years, Putin denied Ukraine’s statehood, culminating in a lengthy essay in 2021 in which he claimed that Russians and Ukrainians were one people – a claim that has been rejected as false by many historians in Ukraine and around the world.

He has frequently – and falsely – accused Ukraine of being taken over by extremists since pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in 2014 after months of protests against his rule.

At that time, Russia responded by occupying the southern Ukrainian region of Crimea. An uprising by Russian-backed separatists in the east sparked a war that claimed around 14,000 lives.

Image source, Getty Images

In 2021, Putin began deploying large numbers of troops near the Ukrainian border, but for months he denied that he would attack his neighbor.

When Putin announced the invasion on February 24, 2022, he accused NATO of threatening Russia’s “historic future as a nation” – a claim the military alliance rejected as baseless.

The United States had warned its European partners that the military maneuvers on Russia’s borders were consistent with preparations for an attack on Ukraine. But until this day in 2022, few believed that Russia would actually launch an invasion.

And yet probably just as few thought that Ukraine could hold out that long.