Russian invasion of Ukraine — Four Years On

Tuesday 24 February 2026

Four years have now passed since the dawn airstrikes and armoured columns that marked the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On 24 February 2022, Europe awoke to the unmistakable sound of a war that many had warned of, yet too many had discounted. Missiles struck Kyiv, Kharkiv and Odesa; helicopters descended upon Hostomel; columns of armour rolled south from Belarus and north from Crimea. What was presented in Moscow as a limited ‘special military operation’ was in fact a war of aggression in its classical, prohibited sense — an assault upon the sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of a neighbouring state.

The Immorality of Aggression

At its moral core the invasion represents a repudiation of the elementary principle that peoples are entitled to determine their own political future. Ukraine, whatever her imperfections, was a sovereign state recognised by Russia herself. By attempting to subjugate her through force the Kremlin sought not merely territory but the extinguishment of political agency.

Aggressive war is not merely a strategic miscalculation; it is an ethical crime. It presupposes that power justifies violence and that borders may be altered at the whim of a stronger neighbour. In this sense, Russia’s conduct has revived a pre-1945 worldview — one in which empires expand through force and smaller states survive at sufferance. The post-war European order was designed precisely to abolish such logic. The invasion thus constitutes not only a wrong against Ukraine but a repudiation of the moral settlement that underpinned seventy years of relative continental peace.

The Humanitarian Horror

The moral abstraction of aggression finds its concrete manifestation in human suffering. Entire cities — Mariupol, Bakhmut, Severodonetsk — have been pulverised. Civilian infrastructure has been systematically targeted: electricity grids in winter, water systems, hospitals, schools. Millions have fled across borders; millions more have been internally displaced.

The war’s horror is not confined to the battlefield. Reports of torture chambers in occupied territories, forced deportations of Ukrainian children into the Russian Federation, filtration camps and summary executions have stained the conscience of Europe. In Mariupol alone, thousands perished under siege conditions reminiscent of the darkest episodes of twentieth-century warfare. The deliberate targeting of civilian morale through missile strikes upon residential districts has rendered ordinary life — commuting, schooling, heating one’s home — an act of quiet defiance.

Ukraine’s landscape bears scars not only of craters but of trauma. Cemeteries have expanded with brutal speed. The war’s psychological toll — on soldiers, widows, children who have grown accustomed to air-raid sirens — will endure long after the guns fall silent.

Disruption of the International Legal Order

From a legal perspective the invasion is a textbook violation of Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations, which prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. Russia, as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, bears a particular responsibility to uphold that prohibition. Instead she has exploited her veto to shield herself from institutional accountability.

The 1994 Budapest Memorandum — under which Ukraine relinquished the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — has been gravely undermined. While the memorandum did not create a formal military alliance it embodied a solemn political commitment to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and borders. Its violation sends a dangerous signal to non-nuclear states: that disarmament may invite rather than prevent aggression.

Moreover the annexation of territory — first Crimea in 2014, then the attempted incorporation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions following sham referendums — challenges the principle that territory cannot lawfully be acquired by force. If such annexations were normalised, the stability of borders worldwide would become contingent upon military capability.

A Pattern of Adventurism

The invasion of 2022 did not emerge from a vacuum. It is part of a discernible pattern of Russian military adventurism over the past two decades.

In 2008, during the brief war with Georgia, Russian forces intervened in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, subsequently recognising them as independent states. In 2014, the seizure and annexation of Crimea marked the first forcible alteration of European borders since the Second World War. That same year, Moscow fomented and armed separatist conflict in the Donbas. Beyond the post-Soviet space, Russia intervened militarily in Syria in 2015, projecting power into the Levant while bolstering the Assad regime.

Each episode tested the resilience of international norms. Each elicited condemnation and sanctions — yet none resulted in decisive reversal. Crimea remained occupied. The Donbas simmered. The lesson drawn in Moscow may have been that incremental revisionism, although costly, was survivable.

The 2022 invasion represented a qualitative escalation — from limited intervention and proxy warfare to an overt attempt at regime change and territorial absorption on a vast scale. It was, in effect, an effort to complete what had begun in 2014: the subordination of Ukraine to Russian geopolitical will.

Europe Transformed

Yet the consequences have not unfolded as Moscow anticipated. Ukraine did not collapse; she mobilised. Civil society hardened; the Armed Forces adapted; Western military assistance reshaped the character of the war. The North Atlantic alliance expanded, with Finland and Sweden abandoning decades of neutrality. Defence budgets across Europe increased. Energy dependency upon Russia has been dramatically reduced.

Paradoxically the invasion designed to restore Russian influence in Europe has diminished it. She has become more isolated diplomatically, more dependent upon China economically, and more estranged from her European markets.

A Moral Reckoning

On this fourth anniversary it is necessary to state plainly what sometimes becomes obscured by operational maps and casualty figures: this war began with a choice. It was not inevitable. It was not defensive. It was not compelled by existential necessity. It was the product of a political decision to employ force against a neighbour whose primary offence was to pursue an independent path.

The immorality lies not only in the suffering inflicted but in the premise that such suffering was an acceptable instrument of policy. The humanitarian horror lies not only in ruined cities but in the deliberate transformation of civilian vulnerability into strategic leverage. The disruption of international law lies not only in violated treaties but in the corrosion of the norm that borders are not to be redrawn by artillery.

Four years on, Ukraine endures. She has paid in blood, displacement and destruction. Russia, too, has paid — in lives lost, in economic contraction, in reputational ruin. The wider world has paid in instability, inflation and geopolitical fracture.

History will ultimately judge this invasion not merely as a regional war but as a pivotal moment in the contest between a rules-based order and the politics of force. The outcome remains uncertain. But the moral ledger is not.