The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine received widespread international condemnation, leading to new sanctions being imposed on Russia, which triggered a Russian financial crisis. Reactions among governments have most often been negative, with criticism and condemnation, particularly in Europe, the Americas, and Southeast Asia.
International organizations such as the United Nations (UN) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have also voiced significant criticism of the invasion, over it not having justifiable precedent. From the early phases of the invasion, the United Nations General Assembly voted to condemn Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called for nations to either establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine or provide Ukraine with air support. Zelenskyy also called for "peace", stating that he does not "want Ukraine's history to be a legend about 300 Spartans." Zelenskyy, in an address to the British House of Commons, also invoked the words of Winston Churchill by saying "We will fight at sea; we will fight in the air; we will protect our land. We will fight everywhere ... and we will not surrender."
Ukrainian officials have published photos and videos of killed and captured Russian soldiers. Some experts have argued that Article 13 of the Third Geneva Convention prohibits videos of captured soldiers.
On 2 April, Zelenskyy warned Ukrainian residents that Russian forces retreating from around Kyiv were "mining the whole territory. They are mining homes, mining equipment, even the bodies of people who were killed", and leaving behind "a lot of trip wires, a lot of other dangers."
Russia On 26 February 2022, the Russian communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, ordered independent media outlets to take down reports that described the Russian invasion of Ukraine as an "assault, invasion, or declaration of war", threatening fines and blocks. From 1 March, Russian schools started war-themed social studies classes for teenagers based on the Russian government's position on history; one teaching manual (publicized by independent media outlet MediaZona) asserted that "genocide" had been occurring in eastern Ukraine for eight years, and that Russia was responding with a "special peacekeeping operation" in Ukraine, which was "not a war".
Russian President Vladimir Putin on 4 March declared that Russia had "absolutely no ill intentions with regard to our neighbors". Putin called for other countries to "think about normalizing relations and cooperating normally", stating there was "no need to escalate the situation, impose restrictions". On 5 March he criticized Ukraine for resisting the invasion, saying, "they are calling into question the future of Ukrainian statehood." Also that day, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs urged the countries of the European Union and NATO to "stop pumping weapons" to Ukraine, claiming that terrorists might use the weapons against airplanes.
On 7 March, the Russian government adopted a list of countries and regions "taking unfriendly actions against Russia, Russian companies, and citizens" – Albania, Andorra, Australia, United Kingdom, all European Union states, Iceland, Canada, Liechtenstein, the Federated States of Micronesia, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, South Korea, San Marino, North Macedonia, Singapore, United States, Taiwan, Ukraine, Montenegro, Switzerland, and Japan.
Putin on 8 March declared that Russian "conscript soldiers are not participating in hostilities" in Ukraine "and will not participate in them". On 9 March, the Russian Ministry of Defense stated that it had "discovered" Russian conscript soldiers participating in the military operation in Ukraine, and that "almost all" of these conscripts had returned to Russia, but some other conscripts had been "captured" in Ukraine.
On 9 March, Russia bombed a maternity hospital in Mariupol; Associated Press journalists on the scene took photos and videos of multiple bloodstained, pregnant mothers leaving the blown-out maternity ward. One pregnant woman and her baby died after the bombing. Russian officials provided different, shifting stances on the bombing. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov initially stated that Russia does "not fire on civilian targets", then later said he lacked "clear information about what happened". Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov criticized "pathetic shouting about so-called atrocities", stating that the hospital had no patients and doctors. According to him, it was controlled by Ukrainian extremists. Russia's Defense Ministry denied bombing the hospital, and accused Ukraine of staging the bombing. Russian officials called images of the attack "fake news" and labelled a pregnant woman pictured fleeing the bombed hospital as an actor.
On 16 March, a Russian airstrike hit a theatre in Mariupol containing hundreds of civilians; satellite pictures three days prior showed large words "DETI" ("children" in Russian) displayed as a signal to Russian forces about those inside the theatre. Russia's military denied bombing the theatre. Russia's foreign ministry said that it was a "lie" that Russia bombed the theatre, insisting that "Russia's armed forces don't bomb towns and cities". During the invasion, Russia used airstrikes against Ukrainian cities including Mariupol, Kyiv and Kharkiv.
On 16 March, Putin gave a speech calling Russian opponents of the war "scum and traitors," saying that "natural and necessary self-cleansing of society will only strengthen our country."
On 25 March, the leader of the Russian military's General Staff Main Operational Directorate, , stated that the first stage of the operation had "generally been accomplished", and the "combat potential of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (was) considerably reduced", allowing Russia "to focus our core efforts on achieving the main goal, the liberation of Donbas" in eastern Ukraine. A day later, Russian forces bombed Lviv, a city in western Ukraine.
On 1 April, Russia accused Ukraine of conducting an airstrike on Russian territory; this was the first such accusation since the start of the Russian invasion. Russia said that an airstrike on a fuel depot in Belgorod had upset the peace negotiations with Ukraine.
After Russian forces occupied Bucha, Kyiv Oblast for five weeks and then withdrew, they were accused by Bucha officials of extrajudicial killings of Bucha residents. Russia's Ministry of Defense responded on 3 April that "not a single local resident suffered from any violent actions" during the Russian occupation of Bucha. This claim was contradicted by many eyewitness accounts by Bucha residents.
The Russian Ministry of Defence suggested that corpses of dead civilians had been placed on the streets of Bucha after "all Russian units withdrew completely" from the city on 30 March, but satellite photos were taken by Maxar Technologies showed that at least 11 body-sized objects on Bucha's Yablonska Street appeared between 9 and 11 March, remaining there for more than three weeks, in the same positions as 11 civilian corpses in a 1 April video. A high-ranking Russian official, Mikhail Ulyanov, claimed that Bucha's mayor Anatoliy Fedoruk did not discuss "dead bodies in the streets" in a 31 March video, but Fedoruk on 7 March had already done so, and on 28 March, accused Russian forces of killings and rapes in Bucha.
RIA Novosti, a media outlet controlled and owned by the Russian government, published an article by Timofey Sergeytsev that declared that "Nazis who took weapons must be killed in numbers as much as possible", while "most of the [Ukrainian] people are guilty, they are passive Nazis, Nazi enablers ... and must be punished". The article also stated that Ukraine "may develop only in dependency to Russia", and that "history has proven Ukraine may not exist as a national state". On 5 April 2022, Russia's opposition politician Alexei Navalny said the "monstrosity of lies" in the Russian state media "is unimaginable. And, unfortunately, so is its persuasiveness for those who have no access to alternative information." He tweeted that "warmongers" among Russian state media personalities "should be treated as war criminals. From the editors-in-chief to the talk show hosts to the news editors, [they] should be sanctioned now and tried someday." In July 2022, Alexei Gorinov, a member of the Krasnoselsky district council in Moscow, was sentenced to seven years in prison after making anti-war comments at a council meeting in March, including stating that "our country has aggressively attacked a neighbouring country" and "kids in Ukraine are dying each day". Lawyer Pavel Chikov said that this was the first jail term under the new Russian 2022 war censorship laws.
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