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How the first week of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine unfolded
Ukrainians are fighting back against one of the biggest militaries in the world to stop “a new Iron Curtain falling” in Europe. Here are the key moments from the first week of Russia’s attack.
A man kneels in front of an advancing tank. Explosions rip apart the night sky over the golden domes of Kyiv. Families scramble to board trains as others shelter in underground stations with their blankets and pets. A president refuses to leave his city.
These are images of war on a scale not seen in Europe since World War II, and all in the past seven days. But, while Russia’s military outguns Ukraine’s, the invasion is not unfolding as most expected. Ukraine’s fierce resistance so far has bought it time, says Dr Bobo Lo, a former Australian diplomat to Moscow. “They and their president have really shamed the West into acting more than they would have if Ukraine had folded quickly.” Still, Russia’s forces are changing tactics too, unleashing ever more deadly weapons as they continue their “pincer” move into Ukraine from the north, east and south.
Here’s what you need to know about the first week of the invasion.
Day one: Russia attacks
It started just before dawn. On February 24, as UN officials were publicly urging Russia back from the brink of war, President Vladimir Putin announced an all-out attack on Ukraine. Within minutes, missiles and rockets rained down on its cities, including the capital Kyiv, the second-largest city Kharkiv, and Odessa in the south.
Putin said the “special military operation” was to demilitarise and “de-Nazify” Ukraine – part of the Kremlin’s fiction that Ukraine has been carrying out a “genocide” in the east against Russian speakers and that the democratically elected Ukrainian government, run by the Jewish Volodymyr Zelensky, is a fascist regime. Putin warned the West of historic consequences if they interfered.
Earlier, President Zelenksy had made a plea directly to Russian citizens saying Ukrainians wanted peace but if they were attacked by Russian troops “you will see our faces – not our backs, but our faces”.
Russian troops spilled over the north-eastern border, landed on the southern coast from the Black Sea and Crimea (which Putin had seized in 2014) and started to push deeper into the east where Russian-backed separatists have been fighting a long-simmering war for territory with Ukrainian soldiers.
From the border with Kremlin ally Belarus, more Russian soldiers advanced and missiles fell. That night, Russians seized the Chernobyl nuclear power plant that had been the site of the disastrous 1986 meltdown, taking its staff hostage and raising concerns from international monitors.
Though US intelligence had warned of Kremlin plans for an all-out invasion of Ukraine, the scale of the attack shocked most observers. (“Deep down, I thought the worst-case scenario was a bluff,” says Ukrainian expert Professor Marko Pavlyshyn.) Germany’s spy chief was reportedly caught unawares in Kyiv and had to be extracted in a special operation. Ukrainians too, having lived with war looming since 2014, scrambled to flee west or take shelter.
Russia justified its attack at an emergency session of the UN Security Council as “self-defence” but was condemned by world leaders and diplomats (including from Africa, although not China, which has been drawing closer to Russia in recent years). While NATO countries had ruled out sending troops to Ukraine, as it is not part of the military alliance, they further ramped up troops in nearby member countries.
In Ukraine, Zelensky declared martial law, banning men aged 18 to 60 from leaving the country, as civilian militias swelled and more weapons landed from the West.
Even on day one, there were stories of Russian soldiers surrendering, having not realised they were invading Ukraine. “Many expected to be welcomed [as liberators] by the Ukrainian people,” Pavlyshyn says. “That’s not happening.”
Day two: Fighting reaches Kyiv streets
The fighting was still raging and the world reeling when dawn came again. Protests against the war had erupted around the globe – including in Russia, where more than a thousand people were arrested.
Ukrainian forces said they had recaptured a key airfield near Kyiv as invaders advanced on the capital. Kyiv, a 1500-year-old metropolis home to more than 3 million people, is a key prize for Putin as the birthplace of both Ukrainian and Russian cultures – and the seat of the Ukrainian government he wants to overthrow.
Western countries imposed tougher sanctions on Russia’s economy and ruling elite. Some, including Australia, extended financial freezes to Belarus too, and the US introduced Russia-wide bans on many of its sensitive technologies. But it did not answer Ukraine’s call to lock Russia out of the SWIFT payment system, which connects the world’s banks, citing concerns it would hurt European economies.
Zelensky said more than 100 people were killed in the first day of the invasion. He called them heroes and hit out at Russia’s claim that it was targeting only military assets. “They’re turning peaceful cities into military targets,” he said, adding that Russian sabotage groups had entered Kyiv hunting for political leaders, with Zelensky himself the number-one target.
But despite fake Russian reports that he had fled the city, he refused US offers to evacuate him from Ukraine. “I don’t need a ride, I need ammunition,” he said.
On the second night of the invasion, as Kyiv came under further attack and Putin called on the Ukrainian military to stage a coup, Zelensky warned that the fate of Ukraine was now being decided. Many sought refuge in train stations deep underground as more explosions and sometimes gunfire rang out in the streets overhead.
Day three: Ukrainians push back
By the morning of February 26, Ukrainian authorities said they had pushed back invaders near Kyiv. But the bombardment of Ukrainian cities and towns continued, hitting schools, hospitals and residential buildings, and many Ukrainians still faced the agonising choice to fight or flee.
Traffic jams and chaotic scenes at train stations played out around the country as people fled to countries such as Poland, Moldova and Romania, many of them women and children leaving behind male loved ones.
Meanwhile, in the growing bands of civilian militias marching the streets, grenades and homemade Molotov cocktails were being handed out. Hackers around the world were called to the defence of Ukraine’s critical infrastructure and began launching counter-strikes on Russian government websites.
British officials said the Ukrainian resistance had been extraordinary so far considering the firepower they were up against, with missiles provided by the West helping them take out Russian aircraft and whole columns of tanks.
As Putin reportedly told China’s President Xi Jinping that he was willing to begin negotiations with Ukraine, Western countries including Australia imposed rare personal sanctions on Putin. Lo says it was Zelensky, the TV comedian turned “extraordinary wartime leader”, who moved European leaders from “near indifference, frankly, to serious action” on Russia. “A penny had finally dropped.”
Later, Russia used its veto power at the UN Security Council to quash a draft resolution calling on Moscow to halt the invasion (China abstained from the vote.)
Kyiv passed a third night of war under curfew as Ukrainian forces searched for Russian mercenaries in the city’s streets.
Day four: More hits to Russian banks
Britain said Russia’s advance had slowed by February 27 – forces appeared to be bypassing other cities to focus on the country’s biggest: Kyiv and Kharkiv.
More European nations closed their airspace to Russian planes and Germany backflipped on its previous refusal to send weapons to Ukraine. Soon after, Australia announced it would send weapons too.
Echoing NATO’s warning that “the Kremlin’s objectives are not limited to Ukraine”, US President Joe Biden noted even neutral Finland and Sweden had now flagged joining NATO. That showed just how badly Putin had miscalculated the West’s reaction, he said.
In combat gear on the streets of Kyiv, former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko joined calls for a NATO no-fly zone over Ukraine – which, as Pavlyshyn explains, would help stop Russian bombing but risks a wider war.
Instead, came the big economic hit: Western allies, including key European countries such as Germany, agreed to remove “selected Russian banks” from the SWIFT system. Still, many experts, including Lo, lamented that “sanctions always come too late”.
Meanwhile, thousands more Russian troops arrived from the south and the north. Fears of ecological disaster flared again when an oil depot near Kyiv was struck by missile – lighting up the night with a “pulsing glow”. Russian forces also reportedly blew up a gas pipeline in Kharkiv, and international monitors said two nuclear waste facilities had been damaged in the war.
Then, in a move the US said was designed to scare off the West as it tightened sanctions, Putin put Russia’s nuclear deterrent systems on high alert.
By the end of the fourth day, the UN said at least 200,000 people had crossed from Ukraine into Poland and other neighbouring countries, some on foot. Australia joined countries promising places to Ukrainian refugees.
Day five: Russia and Europe change tactics
By February 28, Ukraine said Russian forces had taken the small southern city Berdyansk, but Mariupol was “hanging on”.
US officials disputed Russia’s claim that it already had dominance over Ukrainian airspace but warned Russia was shifting to siege tactics as its attack stalled, increasing missile strikes. Kyiv mayor Vitaly Klitschko told residents to go to shelters as “the enemy is getting angry”.
Meanwhile, in two major policy shifts in Europe, Germany revealed it would drastically increase its own defence budget, and the famously neutral Switzerland imposed sanctions on Russia.
Elsewhere, a controversial referendum in Belarus ditched the country’s non-nuclear status as President Alexander Lukashenko repeated comments that his country may host nuclear weapons for Russia.
Day six: Talks resume but siege intensifies
Even as talks restarted between Russia and Ukraine at a secret location in Belarus, fierce new missile strikes were pummelling Kharkiv, some targeting government buildings.
Zelensky called on the UN Security Council to strip Russia of its veto power, and a prosecutor at the International Criminal Court said it was investigating possible war crimes alleged by Ukraine, including that Russia had started using “cluster munitions” and vacuum bombs, banned by most countries. The UN said at least 102 Ukrainian civilians had been killed so far, and likely many more. Ukrainians claimed that Russian soldier casualties, meanwhile, were almost as high as 6000, although the Kremlin would not confirm numbers.
Fears grew that Kyiv would soon come under the same bombardment as Kharkiv, though Lo notes that its historic significance and size make it a difficult city to capture. Russia warned civilians to leave apartment towers as its missiles targeted a TV tower in the capital.
NATO ruled out establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, even as Zelensky asked for Ukraine’s immediate accession to the European Union.
Earlier, it emerged that the “heroes of Snake Island” who stood up to a Russian warship on day one had survived the takeover of their small outpost after all.
Day seven: Kyiv in the balance
On March 2, a convoy of Russian forces more than 50 kilometres long was still edging towards Kyiv. And invaders encircled five other Ukrainian cities, including Kharkiv, where airborne troops landed and attacked a hospital.
As night fell in Kyiv, Ukrainian authorities said the assassination plot against Zelensky had been foiled (and mercenaries sent into the city by Russia “destroyed”). Soon after, an airstrike hit near a central train station, where thousands were rushing to evacuate.
The UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to demand Russia withdraw its forces from Ukraine. (China and India abstained from the vote.) Earlier, Biden used his State of the Union address to announce the US was closing its airspace to Russian flights and assembling a taskforce targeting the crimes of its oligarchs, seizing yachts, private jets and luxury apartments. He said Putin had “no idea what’s coming”, later refusing to rule out banning Russian oil and gas imports.
Many experts, including Lo and Pavlyshyn, agree with Biden’s assessment that Putin gravely underestimated both the Ukrainian people and the unity of the Western response. Still, they warn Putin’s obsession with Ukraine, as a key battlefield in his war for influence in Europe, makes him dangerous too, unlikely to pull back.
If Russia does seize major cities and remove Ukraine’s government, Lo says there will still be a brutal and costly occupation to come. “Insurgencies will just get fiercer if, say, Zelensky is killed. You can win the battle and lose the war ... But Putin has no limits now. He can look like a prick, but he cannot look weak.”
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