According to President Putin, People in Ukraine who speak Russian are a target of the attack and human rights abuse by Ukraine, especially those in the two self-declared “republics” Donetsk and Luhansk that broke away from Ukrainian control in 2014. Putin says the goal of the attack is to protect these people, citing he is stopping human rights abuses by Ukraine.
But Ukraine has said that it doesn’t believe Moscow’s claims that it is trying to force them back.
There are 28 European countries and two North American countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is also called the North Atlantic Alliance. It is a military alliance between the two countries. Ukraine has shown interest in the past.
Confirmed Attacks:
There were a lot of airports and military headquarters in cities across Ukraine that were hit first. The main international airport in Kyiv was one of them.
A city of 1.4 million people called Kharkiv was one of the first places tanks and troops came into Ukraine. They came from nearby Belarus and Crimea. They took over an important airbase outside of Kyiv, and Russian troops also arrived in Ukraine’s big port cities of Odessa and Mariupol.
President Putin said on TV that Russia could not be “safe, grow, or exist” because of what he called a “constant threat” from modern Ukraine. This was just before the invasion began.
