The query of the place Ukraine’s borders with Russia ought to be drawn in any peace negotiations got here into sharp focus this week after Pete Hegseth, the U.S. protection secretary, mentioned that it was “unrealistic” for Ukraine to attempt to regain all the territory Russia has seized since 2014.
Ukraine’s authorities has lengthy mentioned that its purpose is to revive its borders to the place they have been earlier than Russia launched its first invasion greater than a decade in the past.
Here’s a take a look at Ukraine’s borders and Russia’s advances into its territory:
Independence borders
Ukraine’s borders have been set when it gained independence in 1991 because the Soviet Union collapsed. It borders Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia and Hungary to the west; and Romania and Moldova to the south. It additionally borders its large neighbor Russia to the east.
2014 invasion and Crimea annexation
Russian forces invaded Ukraine in 2014, seizing Crimea, a peninsula extending from its southern coast. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia annexed the territory, a transfer that’s not acknowledged internationally. Ukraine’s authorities has mentioned that reclaiming Crimea, by pressure or diplomacy, is one in all its most vital targets within the warfare.
In 2018, Russia opened a bridge throughout the Kerch Strait linking its territory with Crimea. Ukraine has bombed the bridge on a number of events.
Navy specialists have lengthy mentioned that profitable again Crimea by pressure shouldn’t be a sensible choice for Ukraine, given Russia’s navy power. Ukrainian forces have made little headway in opening a route towards Crimea.
Within the 2014 invasion, Russian forces and proxy militias additionally seized territory within the Donbas area of japanese Ukraine, together with the capitals of the 2 provinces it includes, Donetsk and Luhansk. Moscow has held these cities and far of the encompassing areas ever since.
Full-scale invasion
The Kremlin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Russian forces failed of their purpose of seizing the capital, Kyiv, however they did seize extra territory in Donetsk and Luhansk, together with the cities of Mariupol and Bakhmut.
Russia additionally gained floor within the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson areas in southern Ukraine, in impact gaining management of a land hall alongside the northern coast of the Sea of Azov. That related Russian forces in Crimea with territory they managed in japanese Ukraine.
Within the fall of 2022, Moscow illegally annexed Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk, simply because it had completed with Crimea, though it didn’t management the whole lot of these provinces. Over the previous yr, the fiercest combating in Ukraine has taken place in Donetsk, the place Russian forces have gained management of a number of cities and towns.
Russia now controls round 20 % of Ukraine’s territory, together with areas within the south and east, Crimea and a few floor north of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest metropolis.
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