The invasion of Ukraine started on February 24th, 2022. Russia and Ukraine had been at war since 2014, but the invasion was a step further than Russia had taken in the past 8 years. What started in 2022 and is continuing to this day can only be described as horrifying. Thousands dead, millions displaced, the largest European refugee crisis since World War 2, food shortages and more. Despite the reassurances or Russian officers that they would not invade Ukraine, they had had for nearly a year 190,000 troops on the border of Ukraine. 

But on the morning of February 24th, Vladmir Putin made the announcement that a”special military operation” for the “demilitarization and denazification” would occur in Ukraine. It didn’t take long for missiles, airstrikes and rockets to light up the Ukrainian sky, setting buildings ablaze. Suddenly, a ground invasion was taking place. Fast forward to the present day. With no specific number of casualties and no end in near sight, the war has only continued to worsen. Yet now there is another issue. On September 30th, Russia declared its annexation of Ukraine’s oblasts. An oblast is like a province or region. The oblasts that Russia declared annexed were Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhiza and Kherson. 

The announcements of annexation are extraordinarily significant due to the fact that it is the largest annexation in Europe since World War 2. They came after the Ukrainian counter offensive around Kharkiv, and 7 months after the initial invasion of Ukraine. While Ukraine, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations don’t recognize the annexation, the president of Ukraine said he would join NATO on an expedited basis. Just a few hours after the declaration of annexation was made, Ukrainian forces took back many towns in the Donetsk oblast. On October 3rd, a spokesperson for Putin stated that the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts would be confined or annexed to their 2014 borders, when the war officially started, the other two oblast’s annexed areas have not been defined yet, as the spokesperson stated they were working with residents to make a decision about borders.

 The United States and its European allies could be dragged into this conflict if Russia was to annex a larger chunk of Ukraine. This could result in direct military confrontation. In such an event, the current ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine would only escalate. Nearly 2 months ago the president of Ukraine had stated that if Russia continued on this pathway, they would block themselves from any possibility of talking with Ukraine and other countries, forgoing an opportunity the Russians would eventually need.