But the agreements were never implemented, and the fighting transformed into a trench war, with roughly 75,000 troops facing off along a 420-km-long front line cutting through densely populated areas.
Between September 2014 and February 2015, Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany signed several iterations of the so-called Minsk agreements, which eventually stopped the forward movement of troops and reduced fighting significantly. Fierce battles in 2014-2015 ended with one third of the regions' territory, its most urbanised part, occupied by two Russian proxy statelets, the self-described Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Over the course of eight years, Ukrainian government forces fought Russian-backed separatists for control over much of the two heavily industrialised regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, also known as Donbas. Between then and early 2022, it had already killed over 14,000 people. The armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine started in 2014.
This provides crucial background for understanding what is happening today. The visual explainer below focuses not on the full-scale escalation that began on 24 February, but on fighting in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine that began in 2014. Crisis Group will be covering this crisis in depth as it develops.
Ukraine's president declared martial law, vowing stiff resistance, as Western powers condemned Moscow's actions. On 24 February 2022, Russia attacked Ukraine on several fronts beginning a major invasion.
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