At dawn, missiles struck Kyiv, Kharkiv, and cities across Ukraine. Russia’s full-scale invasion began. Airfields, neighborhoods, command posts — all targets.
World leaders condemned. Sanctions escalated. NATO shifted troops to Poland and the Baltics. But Ukraine stood alone.
The breakdown:
- Propaganda. Putin framed conquest as “denazification.” The language was absurd, but repetition hardened it.
- Sanctions. Western powers promised crippling measures. Delivery was slower than artillery.
- Exodus. Refugees surged west within days. Europe faced its largest displacement in generations.
The war was not about NATO expansion. It was about power projection, empire in twenty-first-century form. Putin gambled that democracies were too divided, too distracted, too dependent to stop him. The gamble looked right.
The largest land war in Europe since 1945 had begun.