Russian President Vladimir Putin has launched a wide-ranging military attack against Ukraine, with explosions and air sirens heard across the country, including in the country’s capital, Kyiv.
When Ukraine’s Moscow-friendly president was driven from office by mass protests in February 2014, Russia responded by annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula. It then threw its weight behind an insurgency in the mostly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine region known as Donbas.
Amid ferocious battles involving tanks, heavy artillery and warplanes, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, killing all 298 people aboard. An international probe concluded that the passenger jet was downed by a Russia-supplied missile from the rebel-controlled territory in Ukraine. Moscow still denied any involvement.
With the Minsk deal stalled, Moscow’s hope to use rebel regions to directly influence Ukraine’s politics has failed but the frozen conflict has drained Kyiv’s resources and effectively stymied its goal of joining NATO — which is enshrined in the Ukrainian constitution. The lower house of the Russian parliament, meanwhile, urged Putin last week to recognize the independence of Ukraine's rebel regions.Putin’s recognition of the rebel-held territories’ independence effectively shatters the Minsk peace agreements and will further fuel tensions with the West. He said that Moscow would sign friendship treaties with the rebel territories, a move that could pave the way for Russia to openly support them with troops and weapons.
The U.S. had predicted Putin would falsely claim that the rebel-held regions were under attack to justify an invasion. that any attempt to interfere in Ukraine would “lead to consequences you have never seen in history" — a dark threat implying Russia was prepared to use its nuclear weapons. In a briefing, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia's attack on Ukraine was"dictated only by our national interests and concern for the future."
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Putin has “unleashed war in our European continent” and Britain “cannot and will not just look away.” Meanwhile, in Illinois, Sen. Dick Durbin, who met with foreign leaders in Lithuania on Wednesday, called the attack a “dire threat to the established international order,” while Gov. J.B. Pritzkerduring a Russian attempt to “undermine democracy” in the region.
Von der Leyen said the “massive and targeted sanctions” she will put to EU leaders “will target strategic sectors of the Russian economy by blocking the access to technologies and markets that are key for Russia.” Another tough measure under consideration would effectively shut Russia out of much of the global financial system.Stocks plunged and oil prices surged by more than $5 per barrel Thursday afterMarket benchmarks in Europe and Asia fell by as much as 4% as traders tried to figure out how large Putin's incursion would be and the scale of Western retaliation. Wall Street futures retreated by an unusually wide daily margin of 2.5%.
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