Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine

Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine

Page extended-confirmed-protected
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Areas and  cities occupied by Russia
(for another, semi up-to-date, interactive map, see here)
Territories occupied by Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union
Map showing Russia in dark red with Russian-occupied territories in Europe in light red, as follows:

The Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine are areas of southern and eastern Ukraine that are controlled by Russia as a result of the Russo-Ukrainian War and the ongoing invasion. In Ukrainian law, they are defined as the "temporarily occupied territories". As of 2024, Russia occupies almost 20% of Ukraine and about 3 to 3.5 million Ukrainians are estimated to be living under occupation;[1][2] since the invasion, the occupied territories lost roughly half of their population. The United Nations Human Rights Office reports that Russia is committing severe human rights violations in occupied Ukraine, including arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture, crackdown on peaceful protest and freedom of speech, enforced Russification, passportization, indoctrination of children, and suppression of Ukrainian language and culture.[3]

The occupation began in 2014 with Russia's invasion and annexation of Crimea, and its de facto takeover of Ukraine's Donbas[4] [JB -- pls take a look at this link] during a war in eastern Ukraine.[5] In 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion. However, due to fierce Ukrainian resistance and logistical challenges[6] (e.g. the stalled Russian Kyiv convoy), the Russian Armed Forces retreated from northern Ukraine in early April.[7] In September 2022, Ukrainian forces launched the Kharkiv counteroffensive and liberated most of that oblast.[8] Another southern counteroffensive resulted in the liberation of Kherson that November.

On 30 September 2022, Russia announced the annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts, despite only occupying part of the claimed territory. The UN General Assembly passed a resolution rejecting this annexation as illegal and upholding Ukraine's right to territorial integrity.[9]

As of 2024, Ukraine's peace terms call for Russian forces to leave the occupied territories. Russia's terms call for it to keep all the land it occupies, and be given all of the oblasts that it claims but does not fully control.[10] Several Western-based analysts say that allowing Russia to keep the land it seized would "reward the aggressor while punishing the victim" and encourage further Russian expansionism.[11][12]

--

JB: This is just one section of a lengthy coverage by Wikipedia of past and current events pertaining to Ukraine, but perhaps of interest to non-specialists such as myself who follow recent events there.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ukraine turns the tables on Russia

Image
A bold Ukrainian operation in Kursk has humiliated Russian President Vladimir Putin and upended some of the logic of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine. Column by  Ishaan Tharoor The Washington Post , August 14, 2024 at 12:00 a.m. EDT; see also Ukrainian soldiers pose for a picture as they repair a military vehicle near the Russian border on Sunday. (Viacheslav Ratynskyi/Reuters) Russia’s Kursk oblast is no stranger to war.  In medieval times, the district was overrun by the Mongol horde, and was claimed and ceded down the centuries by Eurasian empires. During World War II, the environs of the city of Kursk became the site of the greatest tank battle in history, as Nazi Germany suffered a grievous strategic defeat at the hands of  the bloodied yet unbowed Soviet Union . This past week, Kursk has been the site of the first major invasion of Russian territory since then. This time, it’s not the Nazi war machine rolling in — no matter what Kremlin propagandists insi...
Read more

News Analysis [:] Russia’s Strategy Against the West: Escalate Slowly and See if It Responds

Image
Ukrainian and European officials say President Vladimir V. Putin has become emboldened by a lack of Western pushback.  The police inspected the damage to a house caused by debris from a shot-down Russian drone in the village of Wyryki-Wola, eastern Poland on Wednesday. Credit... Wojtek Radwanski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images By  Andrew E. Kramer Reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine The New York Times , Sept. 11, 2025 Updated  8:49 a.m. ET An American factory in western Ukraine. Two European diplomatic compounds and a key Ukrainian government building in Kyiv. And now Poland. Over a roughly three-week period, Russian drones and missiles have struck sites of increasing sensitivity for Ukraine and its Western allies, culminating in the volley of Russian drones that buzzed early Wednesday over Poland, a NATO country. For decades, American and European military planners feared something else: a bolt-from-the-blue assault, like an all-out nuclear strike, from the Soviet Union or ...
Read more

Putin just called Trump’s bluff on Ukraine, with the Russian art of the ‘no’ deal

Image
Analysis by  Nick Paton Walsh , CNN   Updated 9:19 PM EDT, March 18  Orig inal article contains additional links and illustrations . See also   Thomas L. Friedman ,   I Don’t Believe a Single Word Trump and Putin Say About Ukraine,  The New York Times , March 18; and also A “no” is not a “yes” when it is a “maybe,” a “probably not,” or an “only if.” This is the painfully predictable lesson the Trump administration’s first real foray into wartime diplomacy with the Kremlin has dealt. They’ve been hopelessly bluffed. They asked for a 30-day, frontline-wide ceasefire, without conditions. On Tuesday, they got – after a theatrical week-long wait and hundreds more lives lost – a relatively small prisoner swap, hockey matches, more talks, and – per the Kremlin readout – a month-long mutual pause on attacks against “energy infrastructure.” This last phrase is where an easily avoidable technical minefield begins. Per US President Donald Trump’s post and that of his ...
Read more