On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War which began in 2014. The invasion caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II, with more than 8.2 million Ukrainians fleeing the country and a third of the population displaced. The invasion also caused global food shortages. Reactions to the invasion have varied considerably across a broad spectrum of concerns including public reaction, media responses, and peace efforts.
Summary
The invasion received widespread international condemnation from governments and intergovernmental organisations, with reactions including new sanctions imposed on Russia, which triggered widespread economic effects on the Russian and world economies. The European Union financed and delivered military equipment to Ukraine. The bloc also implemented various economic sanctions, including a ban on Russian aircraft using EU airspace, a SWIFT ban on certain Russian banks, and a ban on certain Russian media outlets.
Non-government reactions to the invasion included widespread boycotts of Russia and Belarus in the areas of entertainment, media, business, and sport.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has asked whether or not "the world really gives equal attention to black and white lives". He then proceeded to list other countries and compared them to the coverage of Ukraine: Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Syria.
There were also immediate worldwide protests against the invasion and daily protests in Russia itself. As well as the demonstrations, petitions and open letters were published in opposition to the war, and public figures, both cultural and political, released statements against the war. The protests were met with widespread repression by the Russian authorities. According to OVD-Info, at least 14,906 people were detained from 24 February to 13 March 2022. The Russian government cracked down on other forms of opposition to the war, including introducing widespread censorship measures and repression against people who signed anti-war petitions. In July 2022, Moscow city councillor Alexei Gorinov was jailed for seven years for criticizing Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the first time someone went to jail under the new Russian 2022 war censorship laws. Meanwhile, other Russians, including Alexandra Skochilenko and Vladimir Kara-Murza, await similar trials. As well as the protests, there were also reported instances of anti-Russian sentiment and discrimination against the Russian diaspora and Russian-speaking immigrants as a result of the war. Ukraine has decided to rename the streets of Ukrainian cities named after Russian historical figures like Tchaikovsky or Tolstoy. In some parts of Ukraine that were newly occupied by Russian armed forces, protests against the occupiers took place.
In China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Serbia, and the Arab regions, many social media users showed sympathy for Russian narratives due in part to distrust of US foreign policy, with Malaysian social media users stated that the MH17 shooting and 2020 Summer Paralympics incidents being the main reasons for supporting Russia. According to the Economist Intelligence Unit, two-thirds of the world's population live in countries that are neutral or leaning towards Russia. In March 2022, 98% of Ukrainians – including 82% of ethnic Russians living in Ukraine – said they did not believe that any part of Ukraine was rightfully part of Russia. At the end of April, a poll conducted in Russia by the Levada Center concluded the following: "74% of Russians support Russia's invasion in Ukraine and the actions of the Russian military. 19% of respondents said they did not support the actions of the Russian Federation. Meanwhile, 39% of respondents said that they were not following the war in Ukraine". Many respondents in Russia do not want to answer pollsters' questions for fear of negative consequences. When a group of researchers commissioned a survey on Russians' attitudes to the war in Ukraine, 29,400 of the 31,000 people they called refused to answer when they heard the question.
Pope Francis said that NATO may have caused Russia's invasion of Ukraine, because the alliance was "barking" at Russia's door. He also warned that the war in Ukraine was becoming like the Spanish Civil War, in which new and more powerful weapons were tested. He later implicitly accused Russia of an "armed conquest, expansionism and imperialism in Ukraine".
In March 2022, Antwerp mayor Bart De Wever said during a radio interview that Russian President Vladimir Putin will not end Russia's invasion of Ukraine, as he is a "psychopath" and a "madman", adding: "[Putin] said: ‘I will squash the Russians who are against me like mosquitoes’. When did I hear that before? I think here, 70 years ago." De Wever had earlier assessed that Vladimir Putin and Adolf Hitler were similarly motivated: "Germany was humiliated after the First World War, Russia after the Cold War. In both countries, an autocratic leader emerged with a clear ambition: to undo the humiliation. In Germany, it was Hitler, in Russia, Putin." De Wever went on to explain that this humiliation was taken personally by both men, who had each professionally represented their respective countries (Hitler as a soldier, and Putin as a KGB agent): “Both then unexpectedly resorted to irrational behavior. What the Sudetenland was to Hitler, Crimea was to Putin. There are many similarities.”
Public reaction
The invasion received widespread public condemnation internationally. Protests and demonstrations were held worldwide including in many post-Soviet countries and some in Russia itself.
Russian monuments across Europe were subject of vandalism with some even demolished.
The Russian ambassador to Poland was pelted with red paint by pro-Ukraine protestors while laying flowers in a Russian military cemetery. The invasion became a viral phenomenon on social media and calls for mass boycotts of Russian culture and goods flooded multiple social media platforms. People from across the world tried to attack and shutdown Russian websites, particularly those operated by the Russian government.
Some Russians living in Europe and the United States reported that opposition to Russia's invasion of Ukraine had subjected them to anti-Russian sentiment including harassment and vandalism.
Russian sources reported that Russian students were being expelled by European universities, but the European University Association stated that none of its 800+ members had expelled Russians. A proposal by US Congressman Eric Swalwell to expel Russian students from US universities was not enacted.
In 2022, the Lebanese Foreign Ministry condemned Russia's military invasion of Ukraine and called on Moscow to "immediately halt military operations." Russia's embassy in Lebanon expressed surprise at this condemnation, releasing a statement that "The statement... surprised us [the Russian embassy] by violating the policy of dissociation and by taking one side against another in these events, noting that Russia spared no effort in contributing to the advancement and stability of the Lebanese Republic".
UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson among others has warned of the danger of "Ukraine fatigue" and "stressed the importance of allied nations showing they would stand by Kyiv for the long-term". According to the Rand Corporation, "Russia's strategy seems to be largely based on protraction: Let the war grind on, and eventually the United States and its allies will lose interest, and the Ukrainians will cave." Several European newspapers, working from leaked Russian intelligence documents and social media photos, described Russian efforts to exaggerate anti-Ukraine sentiment by photographing a few protestors holding anti-Ukraine signs against a backdrop of large demonstrations about other matters.
Social media users shared real-time information about the invasion.
Depictions of earlier events or other misinformation, sometimes deliberate, were also shared, in addition to authentic first-hand portrayals. While many outlets tagged these misleading videos and images as false content, other sites did not.
Putin introduced prison sentences of up to 15 years for publishing "fake news" about Russian military operations, and fines or up to three years prison for calling for sanctions, prompting most Russian outlets to stop reporting on Ukraine. The Russian censorship agency Roskomnadzor ordered media to only use information from Russian state sources, and to describe the war as a "special military operation". Roskomnadzor also restricted access to Facebook, after it refused to stop fact-checking posts by state-owned Zvezda, RIA Novosti, Lenta.ru, and Gazeta.Ru. Pro-Kremlin television pundits like Vladimir Solovyov and Russian state-controlled channels like Russia-24, Russia-1, and Channel One follow the government narrative. The state-controlled TV where most Russians get their news presented the invasion as a liberation mission. Echo of Moscow closed down, and Roskomnadzor blocked access to BBC News Russian, Voice of America, RFE/RL, Deutsche Welle, and Meduza, as well as Facebook and Twitter. A Moscow court demanded that Russian-language Wikipedia remove information about the invasion, and it fined the Wikimedia Foundation 5 million rubles for refusing to comply. The foundation was also fined 2 million rubles ($27,000) by a Russian court for failing to remove what was regarded by authorities as "misinformation" about the Russian military.
Ukrainian propaganda focused on awareness of the war and Ukraine's need for weapons. Official Ukrainian social media accounts targeted recruiting and international aid.
State-controlled media in China saw an opportunity for anti-American propaganda, and along with Cuban state media, amplified false claims of "secret US biolabs". Media outlets in Bulgaria, Serbia, and Iran repeated Russian propaganda, as did RT Actualidad in South America. Pro-government Turkish media blamed NATO and the US for the war. Pro-Fidesz media outlets in Hungary claimed that Ukraine provoked the war by becoming "a military base for America". Vietnam told reporters not to say "invasion", and to minimise coverage. South Africa's African National Congress endorsed the denazification narrative. Some Indonesian social media users and academics also spread Russian propaganda.
Some criticised the greater emphasis on events in Ukraine than on those in Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Iraq, Libya, Palestine, Syria, and Yemen, claiming racial bias and a racial "double standard" when it comes to news reporting.
Legal implications
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has been widely regarded as an act of aggression that violated the Charter of the United Nations. In addition, Russia was accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and waging war in violation of international law, indiscriminately attacking densely populated areas and exposing civilians to unnecessary and disproportionate harm. Russian forces used cluster munitions, repudiated by most states because of their immediate and long-term danger to civilians. and fired other wide-area explosives like air-dropped bombs, missiles, heavy artillery shells and multiple launch rockets. Ukrainian forces reportedly also fired cluster munition rockets. Russian attacks damaged or destroyed homes, hospitals, schools and kindergartens the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, and 191 cultural properties such as historic buildings and churches. As of 25 March, the attacks had resulted in at least 1,035 civilian deaths and at least 1,650 civilian injuries. Russian forces were accused of forcibly deporting thousands of civilians to Russia, sexual assaults, and deliberately killing Ukrainian civilians. When Ukrainian forces recaptured Bucha in late March, evidence emerged of war crimes, including torture and deliberate killings of civilians, including children.