Why Russia is waging this war, and why it must not win

Fact: Countries choose to join NATO. Ukraine was not close to joining, and Finland and Sweden only joined after Russia invaded.

Russia signed the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act. In it, Russia accepted every state's "inherent right to choose the means to ensure their own security". In 1994 Russia also promised, in the Budapest Memorandum, to respect Ukraine's borders.

Ukraine was not on a path to membership. In 2008 NATO said Ukraine "will become" a member one day, but it refused to give Ukraine a Membership Action Plan, the formal next step. Ukraine's law made it non-aligned from 2010 until parliament repealed that law in December 2014, after Russia took Crimea. An EU-commissioned report on the 2008 war in Georgia found that much of Russia's response "went far beyond" defence. Finland and Sweden dropped decades of non-alignment and joined NATO in 2023 and 2024, after the full-scale invasion.

On the 1990 "not one inch" talks: US officials did speak informally about NATO not moving east during German unification. Archive editors say this "is written down not in treaties but in multiple memoranda of conversation". Gorbachev said in 2014 that NATO expansion "was not discussed at all" in 1990.

Fact: Russian officials said again and again that they would not invade. Then they invaded.

FactCheck.org collected Russian statements from the weeks before the invasion. On 11 December 2021 Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was asked if Russia planned to attack Ukraine. He said no. On 11 January 2022 Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said: "we have no intention to invade Ukraine". On 28 January 2022 Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: "There won't be a war as far as it depends on the Russian Federation". On 24 February 2022 Russia invaded.

Russia has also broken promises. In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum it promised to respect Ukraine's borders. Fighting went on after the 2015 Minsk agreements.

At Ilovaisk in August 2014, Ukrainian troops were surrounded. On 29 August Putin called on the separatists to open a "humanitarian corridor" so the troops could leave. Ukrainian accounts say the column was then fired on by Russian forces. Ukraine's chief military prosecutor reported 366 Ukrainian troops killed in the Ilovaisk fighting. Russia denies sending its army. A promise from Moscow is worth little without real security guarantees.

Fact: Ukrainians voted for independence in every region in 1991, and Russia later signed treaties that recognised their borders.

In a 2021 essay Putin wrote that Russians and Ukrainians "were one people, a single whole". In February 2022 he said modern Ukraine "was entirely created by Russia". A shared history does not cancel a people's right to decide its own future. Many European nations share long and tangled histories with their neighbours.

On 1 December 1991, 90.32% of voters backed Ukraine's independence. A majority said yes in every region, including Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea. In 1994 Russia promised to respect Ukraine's "independence and sovereignty and the existing borders".

The UN General Assembly rejected Russia's attempts to change Ukraine's borders by force, in 2014 (Crimea) and in 2022 (four more regions).

Fact: Soviet policy moved and killed Ukrainians and changed who lives where. Speaking Russian does not mean wanting Russian rule.

Under Stalin, millions died in the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine, known as the Holodomor (estimates vary). According to researchers at a Holodomor museum, settlers from Russia were later brought in to repopulate emptied villages. In May 1944 Stalin deported the Crimean Tatars from Crimea to Central Asia. They were not allowed to return until 1989.

The 1991 referendum shows what people in Russian-speaking regions chose. Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea all voted for independence.

Today, according to Ukraine's human rights ombudsman, Russia gave Russian passports to Ukrainians who were forced to move to Russia. A UN commission found that Russia's deportation of Ukrainian children was coordinated at the highest level, including by Putin. The ICC has issued an arrest warrant for Putin over this.

Fact: The UN's top court said it had no evidence of genocide. The UN counted 25 civilian deaths in the whole conflict in 2021.

Putin said people in Donbas faced "genocide perpetrated by the Kiev regime". In March 2022 the International Court of Justice said it was "not in possession of evidence substantiating" this claim. It ordered Russia to stop its military operations.

UN monitors recorded 3,404 civilian deaths in the conflict from April 2014 to December 2021, on both sides of the front line. Most were in 2014 and 2015. In 2021 they recorded 25, the lowest number of the conflict.

Since February 2022 the UN has verified more than 17,000 civilian deaths. It says the real number is higher.

Fact: Ukraine has far-right groups, as every country does. They are a small political force. Neo-Nazi groups also fight on Russia's side.

Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish. Members of his grandfather's family were killed in the Holocaust. He won the 2019 run-off with more than 73% of the vote. In the 2019 parliament election the far-right Svoboda party won 2.15%, well below the 5% needed to enter parliament.

The Azov unit began in 2014 as a volunteer battalion. According to the Polish think tank OSW, its core came from far-right activists and football fan groups. It was later made part of Ukraine's National Guard. OSW says its leader has avoided extremist statements since 2022, but that neo-Nazi symbols were used from the start, so Azov remains debated.

On Russia's side, the Rusich unit has neo-Nazi roots, according to historian Mark Galeotti. He also wrote that Wagner's commander Dmitry Utkin is "tattooed with Nazi iconography". In 2020 the US designated the Russian Imperial Movement, a far-right group, as a terrorist organisation.

Fact: A country under attack may defend itself. Ukraine says it targets military and oil sites, and the UN cannot verify reports of civilian harm in Russia.

Article 51 of the UN Charter says nothing impairs the "inherent right of individual or collective self-defence" if an armed attack occurs. The UN General Assembly voted 141 to 5 in March 2022 to demand that Russia withdraw its forces from Ukraine.

Ukraine says Russian oil refineries are legitimate military targets because they fuel Russia's army and pay for the war. Reports describe strikes on refineries, radar stations and airfields.

Russian authorities report civilian deaths from Ukrainian strikes, for example in Belgorod. The UN Human Rights Office says it records such reports but has no access to Russia, so verifying them is hard. Any attack on civilians would be a violation, whoever carries it out. The sources here do not show a pattern of deliberate attacks on civilians like the one the UN has documented in Russia's war.

Fact: The UN has verified more than 17,000 civilian deaths. It reports that Russian forces repeatedly hit energy sites and hospitals.

The UN verified 17,257 civilians killed and 53,693 injured from 24 February 2022 to 31 August 2026. It says most civilian casualties far from the front line come from Russian missiles and long-range drones. It also reports that Russian forces "systematically and repeatedly" hit electricity and heating sites in the winter of 2025-2026.

On 8 July 2024 a missile strike hit Okhmatdyt, Ukraine's largest children's hospital, in Kyiv. The UN's human rights mission said there was a "high likelihood" of a direct hit by a Russian missile. The Kremlin said, without giving evidence, that Ukrainian air defence caused the damage.

The European Court of Human Rights found in 2025 that Russia was responsible for a "pattern or system" of violations, including indiscriminate attacks.

Fact: Ukraine accepted a 30-day ceasefire in 2025. Russia added conditions and still demands land it has not captured.

In March 2025 Ukraine said it was ready for a 30-day ceasefire proposed by the US. Putin said there were "nuances". The Kremlin then named a "complete cessation" of foreign military aid to Ukraine as the "key condition". Russia agreed only to a 30-day pause in strikes on energy sites.

In June 2024 Putin demanded that Ukraine leave four whole regions, including cities Russia does not hold, and accept "demilitarisation and denazification". At the 2026 talks in Abu Dhabi, Moscow still asked Ukraine to leave the rest of Donbas. In October 2025 the US Treasury cited Russia's "lack of serious commitment to a peace process" when it sanctioned two Russian oil companies.

Talks continue. In October 2026 Ukraine said it was ready for new talks, while Russia increased its attacks on cities.

Fact: Russia could end the war by leaving. Without weapons and air defence, Ukraine would face occupation, not peace.

The UN General Assembly demanded in March 2022 that Russia withdraw. The European Court of Human Rights found that Russian-controlled areas saw a "pattern or system" of summary executions, torture and forced transfers of civilians.

Russia has widened the war itself. In April 2025 Putin thanked North Korea for the "active role" of its troops in Kursk. Russia also named an end to Western military aid as the "key condition" for a ceasefire.

According to the UN, most civilian casualties far from the front line come from Russian missiles and long-range drones. Air defence is therefore one of the most direct ways to protect civilians.

Fact: Sanctions have not stopped the war, but they are costing Russia money. Oil income and the budget are under strain.

Sanctions alone have not ended the war, and Russia still gets oil income. But the numbers show strain. Russia's federal deficit through August 2026 was 5.8 trillion roubles, 2.5% of GDP. The plan for the whole year was 3.8 trillion roubles. In the first quarter of 2026 oil and gas revenue fell 45% compared with a year earlier.

Russia's Finance Ministry blamed mostly low oil prices. An official also pointed to the discounts and shipping problems that sanctions cause. In October 2025 the US sanctioned Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia's two largest oil companies.

Fact: The 2014 vote took place after Russian soldiers took control of the peninsula. The UN General Assembly said it was not valid.

Armed men took over key buildings in Crimea on 27 and 28 February 2014. A "referendum" followed on 16 March. In April 2014 Putin said that "Russian servicemen did back the Crimean self-defence forces". On 27 March the UN General Assembly said the vote had "no validity".

Some people call the change of government in Kyiv in February 2014 a coup. In fact parliament voted to remove President Yanukovych after he left the capital, and set an election for May 2014. Whatever one thinks of those events, they gave Russia no right to take Crimea.