source: pbs.org
- February 24th 2022: Russian President Vladimir Putin launches an invasion of Ukraine from the North, East and South where he sent up to 200,000 soldiers. He said the “special military operation” is aimed at “demilitarization and “denazification” of the country to protect ethnic Russians.
- March 2nd 2022: Russia claims control of the southern city of Kherson. In the opening days of March Russian forces also seize the rest of the Kherson region and occupy a large part of the neighbouring Zaporizhzia region, including the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s largest.
- March 16th 2022: Russia strikes a theatre in the strategic port city of Mariupol where civilians, including children, were sheltering killing hundreds of people in one of the war’s deadliest attacks. The word ‘children’ was written in Russian outside the theatre to show from above that people were sheltering and around 300 civilians were killed.
- March 29th 2022: Moscow announces the withdrawal of forces from Kyiv and other areas, saying it will focus on the eastern industrial heartland of the Donbas, where Russia-backed separatists have fought Ukrainian forces since 2014 following the illegal annexation of Crimea.
- April 9th 2022: A Russian missile strike on a train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk kills 52 civilians and wounds over 100. Intense battles rage for Mariupol on the sea of Azov and Russian air strikes and artillery bombardment reduce much of it to ruins.
- April 13th 2022: The missile cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, is hit by Ukrainian missiles and sinks the next day, damaging national pride.
- May 16th 2022: Ukrainian defenders of the giant Azovstal steel mill, the last remaining Ukrainian stronghold in Mariupol, agree to surrender to Russian forces after a nearly three-month siege. Mariupol’s fall cuts Ukraine off from the Azov coast and secures a land corridor from the Russian border to Crimea.
- May 18th 2022: Finland and Sweden submit their applications to join NATO in a major blow to Moscow over the expansion of the military alliance.
Nika Soshnikova, Trukhanov Ostrov, Kyiv, Ukraine
- June 30th 2022: Russian troops pull back from Snake Island located off the Black Sea port of Odesa and seized in the opening days of invasion.
- July 22nd 2022: Russia and Ukraine with mediation by Turkey and the United Nations, agree on a deal to unblock supplies of grain stuck in Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, ending a standoff that threatened global food security.
- July 29th 2022: A missile strike hits a prison in the Russia-controlled eastern town of Olenivka where Ukrainian soldiers captured in Mariupol were hold, killing at least 53. Ukraine and Russia trade blame for the attack.
- August 9th 2022: Powerful explosions strike an air base in Crimea. More blasts hit a power substation and ammunition depots there a week later. Signalling the vulnerability of the Moscow-annexed Black Sea peninsula that Russia has used as a major supply hub for the war. Ukraine’s top military officer later acknowledges that the attacks on Crimea were launched by the Kyiv’s forces.
- September 6th 2022: The Ukrainian forces launch a surprise counteroffensive in the Northeastern Kharkiv region, quickly forcing Russia to pull back from broad areas for months.
- September 21st 2022: Putin orders mobilization of 300,000 reservists, an unpopular move that prompts hundreds of thousands of Russian men to flee to neighbouring countries to avoid recruitment. At the same time, Russia hastily stages illegal “referendums” in Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions on whether to become part of Russia. The votes are widely dismissed as a sham by Ukraine and the West.
- September 30th 2022: Putin signs documents to annex the four regions at Kremlin ceremony.
- October 8th 2022: A truck laden with explosives blows up on the bridge linking Crimea to Russia’s mainland in an attack that Putin blames on Ukraine. Russia responds with missile strikes on Ukraine’s power plants and other key infrastructure.
- October 10th 2022: After the first wave of attacks the barrage continues on a regular basis in the months that follow, resulting in blackouts and power rationing across the country.
- November 9th 2022: Russia announces a pullback from the city of Kherson under a Ukrainian counteroffensive, abandoning the only regional center Moscow captured, in a humiliating retreat for the Kremlin.
- December 5th 2022: The Russian military says Ukraine used drones to target two bases for long-range bombers deep inside Russian territory. Another strike takes place later in the month, underlining Ukraine’s readiness to up the ante and revealing gaps in Russian defences.
- December 21st 2022: Zelenskyy visits the United States on his first trip abroad since the war began, meeting with President Joe Biden to secure Patriot air defense missile systems and other weapons and addressing congress.
- January 1st 2023: Just moments into the New Year, scores of freshly mobilized Russian soldiers are killed by a Ukrainian missile strike on the city of Makiivka. Russia’s defence Ministry says 89 troops were killed, while Ukrainian officials put the death poll in the hundreds.
- January 12th 2023: After months Russia declares the capture of the salt mining town of Soledar although Kyiv does not acknowledge it until days later. Moscow also presses its offensive to seize the Ukrainian stronghold of Bakhmut.
- January 14th 2023: Russia Launches another wave of strikes on Ukraine’s energy facilities, a Russian missile hits an apartment building in the city of Dnipro, killing 45.
