Thursday, 24 February. Europe wakes up with an announcement: “Special military operation” in Ukraine.
It was the euphemism used by Russian President Vladimir Putin to refer to the invasion of the neighboring country. After the televised message, the first explosions began to be heard on Ukrainian soil.
The previous weeks were tense . The high point came when Putin recognized the independence of the rebel regions of Donetsk and Lugansk and ordered the dispatch of troops to the area.
The background to this conflict must be found in 2014, when Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea and supported separatist forces in eastern Ukraine. Then fighting broke out between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces in that area. Until then, this conflict had taken its toll 14.05 lives.
During these three months the fire has not ceased in Ukraine.
These are the maps to see how war has evolved in this time.
Days before Putin announced the operation for the “demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine”, the president had sent Russian troops to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
Russia invaded Ukraine on 14 of February and was deployed in the north and in the areas closest to the capital, kyiv, in mid-March.
But then Ukrainian forces recaptured large areas around kyiv in early April, after Russia abandoned its advance on the capital.
Following the withdrawal from northern Ukraine, Russia has refocused its efforts to gain control of the east and south of the country.
In the south, Russian forces initially made rapid advances with the main objective of creating a land corridor between Crimea and the areas held by Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk and Lugansk.
Still, resistance from Ukrainian forces slowed the Russian advance, especially near Mykolaiv in the west and in Mariupol. Finally, Russia managed to take Mariupol.
After a series of defeats near kyiv, Russia withdrew its troops from the capital ukrainian His initial objective seemed to be to sweep the entire country and overthrow the Ukrainian government, but he had to rearrange his strategy.
Thus, directed the weight of his field operations to the east from Ukraine, to Donbas, precisely where the conflict began in February.
Donbas is the former coal and steel-producing area of Ukraine. It comprises the entirety of the two great eastern regions, Luhansk and Donetsk, which stretch from the outskirts of Mariupol in the south to the northern border.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba compared the fighting taking place in Donbas with that which took place during the S
Second World War, with “the participation of thousands of tanks, armored vehicles, planes and artillery”.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg recently said that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not going to go as planned and that the Russian attempt to capture eastern Donbas has “stalled”.
The most visible drama is that of the millions of Ukrainians and residents of the country who, from one day to the next, had to h flee to save their lives.
Among internally displaced persons, who have traveled to safer areas of Ukraine, and those who have left the country, it is estimated that there are 17 millions of people who have abandoned their homes , according to data from the United Nations Organization (UN).
The number of internally displaced persons in the country is close to 8 million.
Around of 6 million people have gone to neighboring countries, especially to the west.
Still, the rate of refugees leaving Ukraine has slowed down in recent days. In fact, the UN assures that as of 14 May, 1.8 million Ukrainians have returned. This is in part because areas of Ukraine such as the capital kyiv, which were threatened by Russian military advances at the start of the war, are now considered safer.
Poland, Romania and Hungary are the countries that have received the most refugees along the western border of Ukraine.
Poland, which has received the largest number of refugees, and Moldova, which has the highest concentration of refugees in proportion to their population, have called for international support to help finance their efforts.
Poland, Hungary and Slovakia have become a transit zone to other parts of the European Union (EU). For example, more than 700. Ukrainians are in Germany, the 40 % of which are children.
The EU has granted Ukrainians the right to stay and work in their 23 member countries for a maximum of three years. They are entitled to social welfare payments and access to housing, medical treatment and schools.
The Czech Republic has granted some 27.000 emergency visas for Ukrainian refugees.
There have also been displacements from the northern part of Ukraine towards Belarus, and to the east, from the pro-Russian separatist regions of Lugansk and Donetsk, towards Russia.
The displacement of Ukrainian refugees both inside and outside the country in these three months represents the largest migratory movement in the region in recent decades, according to UNHCR data.
Behind it is the displacement during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which left more than 2 million displaced in 3 years.
It is closely followed by the war in Syria, where 10 years of conflict have made what 13, 7 million people have had to leave their homes.
In Latin America, the UNHCR figures at 6.1 million refugees and asylum seekers who have left Venezuela in recent years.
No official data
To date, there are no updated figures from independent sources that determine the number of deaths that have occurred during the three months of conflict.
The 13 May, Ukraine claimed to have killed some 20. Russian soldiers. Russia has not updated its death toll since 24 March, when he recognized 1.351 deaths.
The British Ministry of Defense (MoD) estimates that Russia has lost about a third of its ground combat force since the war began in February. He says a combination of factors has led to high casualties, including poor tactics and limited air cover.
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