1941, 2014, 2022: Comparing Ukraine’s Three Invasions in a Century

Ukraine has suffered the trauma of invasion repeatedly in modern history. Her geography—open plains between Central Europe and the Eurasian interior—has made her vulnerable to incursions from powerful neighbours. But few nations have experienced three such defining assaults in the space of a century: first in 1941, when Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa through Ukrainian lands; again in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and fuelled separatism in the Donbas; and most dramatically in 2022, when Russia unleashed the largest military invasion in Europe since World War II. These three moments, while separated by time and ideology, share recurring themes: the strategic centrality of Ukraine, the brutality of foreign occupation, and the tenacity of her national resistance.

1941: The Barbarossa Shock

On 22 June 1941, Nazi Germany launched her surprise invasion of the Soviet Union. Ukraine, then part of the USSR, bore the brunt of the initial attack. In just weeks, Wehrmacht (Nazi Armed Forces) units poured through Volhynia and Galicia, capturing Lviv, Kyiv and Odesa in rapid succession. For Hitler, Ukraine was no peripheral target—it was the agricultural breadbasket of the east and the industrial heartland of Soviet power. Nazi war planners envisioned Ukraine as the linchpin of their Lebensraum project, seeking to depopulate her of Slavs and repopulate her with Germans.

The violence of occupation was total. Between 1941 and 1944, an estimated 5 million Ukrainians were killed. Jews were exterminated in mass shootings such as the infamous Babi Yar massacre in Kyiv. Resistance movements, including nationalist factions like the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), fought both German and Soviet forces in a doomed effort to win independence. The legacy of these years remains bitterly contested, but what is clear is that Ukraine was not merely a battlefield—it was a crucible of genocidal ideology, scorched-earth warfare, and immense human sacrifice.

2014: The Hybrid Strike

When Russian troops seized Crimea in late February 2014, few in the West grasped that this was the opening salvo of a new kind of war. The fall of Kyiv’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in the Maidan Revolution had upended Moscow’s influence in Ukraine. Putin’s response was swift and unorthodox. Disguised troops—“little green men”—took control of Crimea’s parliament, airfields and media. A hastily staged referendum, rejected internationally, declared Crimea part of the Russian Federation.

Shortly afterwards war broke out in eastern Ukraine, in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Russian intelligence, mercenaries and equipment backed local separatists in a brutal, low-intensity conflict that consumed more than 14,000 lives between 2014 and 2022. The Kremlin’s method was hybrid warfare: disinformation, deniability, cyber-attacks and irregular forces. While Ukraine fought back and reformed her military, she lacked the strength to dislodge the separatist enclaves. For many Ukrainians, 2014 felt like an unfinished invasion—a bleeding wound that never healed, constantly inflamed by Russian pressure and Western hesitation.

2022: The Full-Scale War

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine again—but this time with columns of tanks, cruise missiles, and a clear intent to decapitate the Ukrainian state. The Kremlin’s ambition was to occupy Kyiv, install a puppet government, and bring Ukraine back into its imperial orbit. Instead, Russia met a wall of resistance. Ukrainian troops, armed with Javelin anti-tank missiles, drones and moral clarity, stunned Russian forces around Kyiv and Kharkiv. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, rather than fleeing, became a wartime symbol of national defiance.

The 2022 invasion brought new horrors—massacres in Bucha, the razing of Mariupol, mass deportations of children. But it also revealed a transformed Ukraine: better trained, more unified, and globally supported. NATO weapons flowed in. Civilian tech communities built wartime Apps. Farmers shot down drones with hunting rifles. What Russia planned as a Blitzkrieg became a grinding war of attrition.

By 2025, despite enormous casualties and displacement, Ukraine had reclaimed over half the territory seized after 2022 and was striking deep inside Russian logistics hubs. Unlike in 1941 or 2014, this time Ukraine was not merely the victim of history—she was reshaping it.

Points of Comparison

Historical Echoes and Divergences

All three invasions were grounded in imperial visions—whether Nazi, Soviet or Russian—and all underestimated Ukraine’s capacity for resistance. But the nature of the state changed dramatically. In 1941, Ukraine had no sovereignty; in 2014, she was weak and fragmented; by 2022, she had matured into a resilient democracy. The people of Ukraine now see themselves not as pawns of great powers but as agents of their destiny.

Another key divergence is international recognition. The genocide of 1941 was long overshadowed by Soviet narratives. The hybrid war of 2014 was met with equivocation. But in 2022, the world finally understood: Ukraine’s fight is a fight for Europe’s security and the rules-based order.

These three invasions, spanning a century, form a tragic arc—but also a story of emergence. Ukraine has moved from occupation to sovereignty, from victimhood to resistance, from silence to a national voice. Her enemies have changed uniforms, but their logic of conquest remains the same. Yet what has changed most of all is Ukraine herself: no longer a corridor for empires, but a sovereign republic standing at Europe’s eastern frontier.

The lesson of history is not merely that Ukraine has been invaded—but that each invasion forged a stronger nation in the fire of war.