On February 24 at 4 am CET, Russian troops have crossed into Ukraine at different sections of the border of Ukraine. Since then, there has been fighting in many parts of Ukraine. Russian troops are advancing in many parts of the country, but western military experts think that the advance is slower than Russia anticipated. Today, Russian troops entered the outskirts of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital.

After a slew of economic sanctions by European nations, including the exclusion of some Russians banks to the SWIFT system, it has been reported that [Putin put Russia’s nuclear deterrent on high alert on Sunday](https://www.reuters.com/world/india/war-with-ukraine-putin-puts-nuclear-deterrence-forces-alert-2022-02-27/).

# You can find constant updates in this [live thread](https://www.reddit.com/live/18hnzysb1elcs)

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**Donations:**

If you want to donate to Ukraine, check [this thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/t03lml/want_to_support_ukraine_heres_a_list_of_charities/) or [this fundraising account by the Ukrainian national bank](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/wiki/ukrainewar#wiki_donations).

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**Fleeing Ukraine**

We have set up a wiki page with the available information about the border situation for Ukraine [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/wiki/ukrainewar)

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[‘Dark day for Europe’: World leaders condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine](https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/24/leaders-of-us-uk-eu-and-canada-condemn-russian-invasion-on-ukraine.html)

**Background:**

*For a full background about the events that happened before the Russian-Ukrainian War, check [this post on r/OutOFTheLoop](https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/sqhno0/megathread_whats_going_on_with_ukraine_and_russia/).

In early 2014, unmarked Russian troops invaded Crimea, which was officially annexed by Russia after holding a referendum that is considered invalid by the global community due to voter intimidation, irregularities during the voting process, vote manipulation and other issues. To this day, the annexation of Crimea has not been recognized internationally. Following the annexation, Western powers have implemented sanctions against various sectors of the Russian economy, which were met by Russian counter-sanctions against western goods. More or less simultaneously, pro-Russian separatists, which are assumed to be backed by Russia, started an uprising in the Donbass region . Ever since, the separatists have been engaged in a civil war with the regular Ukrainian forces, aided by a steady supply of Russian equipment, mercenaries and official Russian troops. During the conflict, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down by a Russian BUK M1 missile over the conflict area which resulted in the death of 298 civilians. In 2014 and 2015, there were diplomatic attempts to curb the violence in the region through the ceasefire agreements in the protocol of Minsk and Minsk II, negotiated by Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France in the so-called “Normandy Format”. In early 2021, Russia amassed roughly 100,000 troops near the Ukrainian border, which were withdrawn after a while and ongoing diplomatic criticism by other countries. Since the end of 2021, Russia has started deploying troops to the Ukrainian border again. Currently, there are roughly 115,000 Russian soldiers at the Ukrainian border plus another 30,000 Russian soldiers which are currently conducting a joint exercise with Belarusian troops near the northern Ukrainian border. Western military experts estimate that Russia would need roughly 150,000 Troops to overwhelm the Ukrainian army and successfully annex most of Ukraine, including Kiev. After a few days of uncertainty, Russia decided to recognize the independence of the two breakaway regions and moved troops into the area.

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**Rule changes effective immediately:**

Since we expect a Russian disinformation campaign to go along with this invasion, we have decided to implement a set of rules to combat the spread of misinformation as part of a hybrid warfare campaign.

* No unverified reports of any kind in the comments. We will remove videos of any kind unless they are verified by reputable outlets. This also affects videos published by Ukrainian and Russian government sources.
* Absolutely no justification of this invasion.
* No gore
* No calls for violence against *anyone*. Calling for the killing of invading troops or leaders is allowed. The limits of international law apply.
* No hatred against any group, including the populations of the combatants

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**Current Posting Rules:**

Given that the initial wave of posts about the issue is over, we have decided to relax the rules on allowing posts on the situation a bit.

Instead of fixing which kind of posts will be allowed, we will now move to a list of posts that are not allowed:

* Picture/Video posts about the war, about support/opposition protests in other countries and similar
* Self-Posts (text posts)
* Status reports about the war unless they have major implications (e.g. “City X still holding would” would not be allowed, “Russia takes major city” would be allowed. “Major attack on kiev repelled” would also be allowed.)
* The mere announcement of a diplomatic stance by a country (e.g. “Country changes its mind on SWIFT sanctions” would not be allowed, “SWIFT sanctions enacted” would be allowed)

If you have any questions, [click here to contact the mods of r/europe](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=/r/europe).

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# Please obey the request of the Ukrainian government to [refrain from sharing info about Ukrainian troop movements](https://i.redd.it/5atggucaurj81.jpg)

15 comments

  3. Russia going full Nazi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2AKJJtq8OU

    It’s Sima-Lend. During the pandemic, they made a couple of videos supporting Putin. All of those videos were in fact breaking the law about keeping self distance between people and the amount of people in a building. While Opposition were arrested for breaking covid laws while doing nothing even remotely close to that…

    Now, they’re showing support for Putin and the army…

    The woman that speaks says he child needs some kind of American device to stay alive. She claims that she’s completely aware that current sanctions may pose a risk to her child’s life. But then claims that at least she knows who’s responsible for her child’s death if it was to happen. As if she take full responsibility for it. Nonetheless she want to make this sacrifice for the people of Donbass..

    Little did she know that by making those kind of decision. They’re putting the life of all Ukrainian, Russian and people from the Donbass in Jeopardy. The world they’re going to live isn’t worth living in. Russia is going to be put back at least 2 decades in the past and it will be very difficult to recover.

    Those people are completely insane.

    Edit: The speakers aren’t nobody. The woman in question is: [Рябцева, Жанна Анатольевна](https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D1%8F%D0%B1%D1%86%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B0,_%D0%96%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BD%D0%B0_%D0%90%D0%BD%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%BD%D0%B0)

  4. Sociological and economic, grassroots and institutional warfare through economic and online hacking means. The 21st century is fascinating. We’re in an undeclared war with Russia – just no fighting to be expected by any traditional sense. The soviets didn’t have that, they weren’t chained to the west economically.

  5. Can someone who knows explain to me if Russia being proven of committing war crimes changes anything about how Europe/US approaches this in terms of sanctions or intervention?

  7. Polish PM:

    *Sbierbank and Gazprombank are exempt from EU sanctions due to their status as ‘transactions regarding the supply of energy to the EU’. This is unacceptable. Poland demands sanctions to fully encompass all Russian entities via which the war is being financed.*

  8. Is it confirmed that Macron is convening a summit of EU’s 27 heads of government at Versailles? and what could that mean? I’m getting more and more anxious

  11. I’ve seen countless of videos and photos since the start of the war, yet the one that really crushed me was [this guy at 2:55](https://youtu.be/SB1cxIc3qDA). It’s a realization that a generation of young men will be ruined, even their children (something familiar to me, being from the Balkans) all because of a couple of pieces of shit who just can’t let people live due to their fragile egos

  13. **Senior writer @bbcworldnews:**

    Horrible conversation with the deputy mayor of Mariupol. Says residential areas heavily bombed, including his father’s neighbourhood.
    “The situation is awful, we are near to a humanitarian catastrophe. We have been under more than 15 hours of continuous shelling without pause.”

    “One district of the city is nearly totally destroyed … We cannot count the number of victims there but we believe at least hundreds of people are dead. We cannot go in to retrieve the bodies. My father lives there, I cannot reach him, I don’t know if he is alive or dead.”

    “The Russian forces are several kilometres away on all sides. The Ukrainian army is brave and they will continue to defend the city, but Russia does not fight with their army, they just destroy districts.

    “We believe in our Ukrainian army, but we are in a terrible situation.”

    https://twitter.com/joelmgunter/status/1499016901963440128

  14. Whatever happens in Ukraine, the ordinary people of Russia are unfortunately going to have a grim decade ahead of them. Democracies take a long time to anger, but once they do, they are relentless. Punishing Russia will be the easiest way to win votes around the world for years to come.

    The official policy in Europe is now to move to green energy at full speed and cut all economic contacts with Russia. As well as cultural, scientific and tourism contacts. In a few years, Russia might as well not exist on the global stage. Yet the sanctions will continue to exist, as people demand what they see as righteous retribution for the exceedingly well-documented and publicized war crimes Russia committed in plain sight before the entire world.

    Within Russia, you can still continue to live a reasonably modern life, as long as whatever imported technology you depend on continues to function. But as the long years pass, there will be less and less that works, and increasingly you’ll just be drinking vodka, eating cabbage soup, and watching the society around you wither to nothing.

  15. [The Economist: Russia’s attempt to sanction-proof its economy has been in vain](https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/03/02/russias-attempt-to-sanction-proof-its-economy-has-been-in-vain)

    >!On january 29th The Economist wrote that Russia would survive the economic consequences of a war with Ukraine, at least in the short term. Its central bank held $600bn in currency reserves, we noted, “more than enough to weather sanctions”. That now looks much less certain. On February 26th, two days after Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, went to war, Western governments imposed severe measures on Russia. Most painfully, they are cutting off the central bank’s access to that stash of reserves. That will make it harder for the central bank to support the rouble, to offer foreign-currency liquidity to Russian banks under sanctions themselves and to make or receive foreign-currency payments for Russian companies.!<

    >!Over the past five years Mr Putin had moved to insulate the Russian economy against sanctions. As well as building up reserves, he had partly “de-dollarised” them (see chart) by increasing holdings of other currencies. Dollars were sold in favour of the yuan and euro. Moving assets from the sanction-happy America to China, its ally, and to Europe, which depended on it for energy, was one of the main building blocks of Mr Putin’s “fortress economy”.!<

    >!But as well as America, Britain, Canada, the EU, Japan and Switzerland have also agreed to squeeze Russia’s access to its reserves. In June 2021 around 7% of Russia’s foreign currency was stored in America, 12% in France, 10% in Germany and 10% in Japan. Assuming the same proportions now, around $400bn of Mr Putin’s war chest could be subject to sanctions. (Stopping access to the $300bn held in securities will also require the co-operation of financial intermediaries.)!<

    >!So far, China has said it will continue trading with Russia as normal. This means around $87bn of currency reserves are still at Russia’s disposal. But the yuan may be of little use to its faltering economy. Russia remains heavily dependent on commodities, and trade usually rides on the greenback. For the same reason, its $137bn-worth of gold reserves, held in Russian banks, will also be harder to shift. Mr Putin’s fortress is crumbling. ■!<

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