A year ago, to the day…
“I took the decision of a special military operation”. With these words, Vladimir Putin launches, on February 24, 2022, the invasion of neighboring Ukraine. In a context of heightened tensions with the West, the Russian president opens hostilities shortly before 6 a.m. local time in a statement on television.
The goal is a “demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine”hammers, chilling, the master of the Kremlin, reiterating his unfounded accusations of a “genocide” orchestrated by Ukraine in the Russian-speaking east of the country and denouncing a policy « agressive » of NATO. Two days earlier, Vladimir Putin said the” independence “ of Ukrainian separatist territories in Donbass – which kyiv has been fighting with arms since 2014. It threatens the West with “consequences never seen before”if it interferes.
Powerful explosions rip through the skies of the former Soviet republic. They shake the capital, kyiv, Kramatorsk, headquarters of the Ukrainian army in the East, Kharkiv, the second metropolis of the country located near the Russian border. They also resound in Odessa, on the Black Sea, as well as in Mariupol, the main port of the country. From one end of the territory to the other, the aerial warning sirens began to howl.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba denounces the start of a “large-scale invasion”. From dawn, residents crowd into the kyiv metro, transformed into a shelter.
promising to “conquer”Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky proclaims martial law and calls on his 40 million fellow citizens to “don’t panic”, in a video on Facebook. In the early morning, Russian armor penetrated Ukrainian soil in the north – from Belarus, allied with Moscow – in the south and in the east.
Equipped with a “total air superiority” on Ukraine, the Russian army advances towards kyiv, where a curfew is imposed. Russian helicopter forces attack the military airport of Hostomel, at the gates of the Ukrainian capital.
Over the hours, troops from the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea – annexed in 2014 by Vladimir Putin – progressed in the South where they took control of Henichesk, in the Kherson region. In the northeast, fighting is raging in Kharkiv, where Russian paratroopers have been dropped.
At the end of the first day of war, Volodymyr Zelensky laments the death of “137 heroes” Ukrainians and decrees general mobilization.
A year later, to the day, Ukraine is showing fierce resistance and, with the help of Westerners, is inflicting unexpected setbacks on Vladimir Putin.
L’Ukraine “didn’t crack” and will triumph over Russia, assured the Ukrainian president on Thursday.