On February 24, 2024, political leaders and the media will comment on the "second anniversary" of the war in Ukraine, an event whose importance has not waned since it began. Part of the shock still felt at the mention of this date comes from the clarity of the events that took place on that day: Vladimir Putin's military intervention on television at dawn, columns of armored vehicles moving deep into Ukrainian territory and air strikes across the country.
This formal declaration of war (even if the Russian president prefers the euphemism of "special military operation"), this invasion that is hidden only in form, provides clear benchmarks, all the more striking because they seem to come from a forgotten age – that of open, frontal conflicts between countries. Does this mean that the Russian war in Ukraine, the Russian war "against" Ukraine, really began two years ago?
On February 24, 2022, the forces attacking Ukraine from the south, rushing to Mykolaiv and Nova Kakhovka, entered Crimea. Control of the peninsula have given Moscow an additional option in its invasion plans. The mention of Crimea also serves as a reminder: Russian troops have been present on the internationally recognized territory of Ukraine (including by Russia) for – at the time – already eight years. After denying it, Putin himself admitted that the unmarked soldiers who took control of the peninsula's public buildings, military bases and main roads at the end of February 2014 were Russian military. However well it was carried out, it is not true to say that the annexation took place "without a shot being fired." The death toll is disputed, but at least two Ukrainian soldiers were killed, along with a handful of pro-Kyiv demonstrators, and dozens more disappeared.
Reverse logic
Other Russian sources have acknowledged that this first invasion had been planned and prepared for a long time. The medal awarded to the participants in the annexation (later legitimized by a coup against the Simferopol parliament and a hastily organized referendum) mentions February 20, 2014, as the start of the operation. This was two days before Viktor Yanukovych, the then contested president elect of Ukraine, fled to Russia.
In the Russian narrative of the war in Ukraine, the Maidan Revolution is a central point. It was after the "coup d'état," as Moscow calls the ousting of Yanukovych by parliament, that Kyiv began to persecute the Russian-speaking populations of the south and east. According to this version, the annexation of Crimea prevented the peninsula from suffering the same fate as the Donbas, namely the unleashing of Ukrainian "punitive battalions" to repress the local population.
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