Ask most people when did the war on Ukraine start and they’ll point straight to February 24, 2022. It makes sense. That was the morning the world woke up to grainy footage of cruise missiles hitting Kyiv and columns of Russian tanks rolling across the border from Belarus. It felt like a sudden, seismic shift in history. But if you talk to anyone in Mariupol, Donetsk, or Luhansk, they'll tell you a very different story. For them, the war didn't start with a "special military operation" announcement on TV. It started years earlier, in the cold mud of 2014.
History is messy.
It doesn't always have a neat "Day One" that everyone agrees on, even if the history books try to force it. To really understand the timeline, you have to look at three distinct "starts." There's the 2022 full-scale invasion, sure. But there’s also the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the subsequent hybrid war in the Donbas.
The 2014 Pivot: Where the Shooting Actually Began
Let’s go back. February 2014.
Ukraine was in the middle of the Maidan Revolution, also known as the Revolution of Dignity. Protesters had occupied the center of Kyiv for months, demanding closer ties to the European Union and the ousting of the pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych. When Yanukovych fled to Russia, the power vacuum was immediate.
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Russia didn't wait.
By late February 2014, "little green men"—soldiers in Russian combat gear but without insignia—began appearing at strategic points across the Crimean Peninsula. They took over the regional parliament. They surrounded Ukrainian military bases. By March, Russia had formally annexed Crimea. This was the first time since World War II that one European state had forcibly seized territory from another.
So, did the war start then? For many historians and the Ukrainian government, the answer is a firm yes.
Immediately following the Crimea grab, the fire spread to eastern Ukraine. Pro-Russian separatists, heavily backed by Russian intelligence and "volunteers," seized government buildings in the Donbas region. This wasn't just a local riot. It was a calculated military effort. By April 2014, the Ukrainian government launched an "Anti-Terrorist Operation" (ATO) to take back the east.
The casualties started mounting fast.
We saw the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 in July 2014, killing 298 civilians with a Russian-made BUK missile. We saw the brutal battles of Ilovaisk and Debaltseve. By the time 2022 rolled around, over 14,000 people had already died in a conflict that many in the West had simply labeled a "frozen" or "low-intensity" dispute.
It wasn't frozen. It was a slow bleed.
Why February 24, 2022, Changed the Definition
If the war was already happening, why do we treat February 2022 as the beginning?
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Scale. Honestly, that’s the biggest factor.
Before 2022, the fighting was largely contained to a specific line of contact in the east. Life in Kyiv or Lviv felt relatively normal, albeit shadowed by the ongoing conflict. When Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion, the nature of the war transformed from a regional hybrid conflict into a total war of national survival.
The intent changed, too.
In 2014, the goal seemed to be destabilization and the seizure of specific chunks of land to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. In 2022, the goal was the decapitation of the Ukrainian state. The objective was to take the capital, remove President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and effectively end Ukraine as a sovereign entity.
That shift in ambition is why when did the war on Ukraine start is a question with two answers depending on who you ask.
Misconceptions and the "Hidden" War
There's this weird idea floating around that Ukraine was at peace for 30 years and then suddenly, out of nowhere, Russia attacked. It’s a convenient narrative, but it ignores the reality of "Hybrid Warfare."
Before the first shots were fired in 2014, there was a massive cyber and economic offensive.
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- Energy as a weapon: Russia repeatedly cut off gas supplies to Ukraine during the dead of winter in 2006 and 2009.
- The 2013 Trade War: Months before Maidan, Russia slapped massive "customs delays" on Ukrainian goods to pressure them away from a trade deal with the EU.
- Information Operations: The Kremlin spent years seeding narratives that Ukraine wasn't a real country, trying to erode national identity from the inside out.
If you view war as purely kinetic—bullets and bombs—then 2014 is your start date. But if you view war as the use of any means to destroy a neighbor's sovereignty, you could argue it started even earlier.
The Human Cost of the "Early" Years
We often forget the people caught in the 2014–2021 gap.
There were nearly 1.5 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Ukraine before the 2022 invasion ever happened. These were people who had lost their homes in Donetsk or Luhansk and had to restart their lives in central or western Ukraine. The world mostly looked away. The Minsk I and Minsk II agreements were supposed to bring peace, but they were essentially band-aids on a gunshot wound.
The ceasefire violations were constant.
Snipers on the line of contact were active almost every single day for eight years. Trench warfare, reminiscent of World War I, became the norm for a generation of Ukrainian soldiers. So, when the 2022 invasion happened, Ukraine wasn't actually "unprepared" in the way some experts thought. They had been in a state of active combat for nearly a decade. They had a battle-hardened core of veterans who knew exactly what Russian tactics looked like.
Fact-Checking the "Provocation" Narrative
You’ll often hear the argument that the war started because of NATO expansion.
It’s a popular talking point, but the timeline doesn't really support it as a "start" trigger. In 2010, the Ukrainian parliament actually passed a law explicitly forbidding the country from joining any military bloc. They were officially non-aligned. It was only after the 2014 invasion and the seizure of Crimea that public opinion in Ukraine shifted drastically toward wanting NATO protection.
The war caused the NATO interest, not the other way around.
Russia’s own stated justifications have also shifted wildly. Initially, it was about protecting Russian speakers. Then it was "denazification." Then it was stopping NATO. This shifting of goalposts suggests that the "start" of the war was less about a specific policy and more about a long-term geopolitical desire to re-establish a sphere of influence.
How to Track the Timeline Moving Forward
If you're trying to keep the facts straight, it helps to categorize the conflict into these phases:
The First Phase (Feb 2014 - April 2014): The covert invasion of Crimea and the subsequent annexation. This was largely bloodless but set the stage for everything that followed.
The Second Phase (April 2014 - Feb 2022): The War in the Donbas. This was a "limited" war characterized by trench lines, heavy artillery, and the involvement of Russian-backed separatist proxies.
The Third Phase (Feb 24, 2022 - Present): The Full-Scale Invasion. This is the conventional, high-intensity war we see on the news today, involving air strikes, naval blockades, and massive ground offensives across multiple fronts.
Understanding this distinction is vital for anyone following the news or studying international relations. If you only look at 2022, you miss the context of why Ukrainians are so resilient. They didn't just start fighting two years ago; they've been defending their borders for twelve.
Essential Steps for Verifying Conflict Information
In an era of deepfakes and aggressive propaganda, knowing where to get your info is just as important as knowing the dates.
- Check the Source Mapping: Use organizations like the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) or the DeepStateMap project. They provide daily, evidence-based updates on territorial changes that go beyond headlines.
- Verify via International Bodies: Look at reports from the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe), which had monitors on the ground in eastern Ukraine from 2014 to 2022. Their archives are a goldmine of factual, day-to-day data on how the war actually progressed.
- Differentiate Between "Annexation" and "Occupation": These terms are often used interchangeably, but they have different legal meanings. Russia "annexed" Crimea in 2014 (a claim not recognized by most of the world), but it "occupied" parts of the Donbas without claiming them as Russian territory until late 2022.
- Follow Primary Accounts: Look for journalists who have been on the ground since the beginning, like Christopher Miller or Natalia Antelava. Their long-term reporting provides a bridge between the events of 2014 and the reality of today.
The war on Ukraine is a tragedy that has redefined the 21st century. While the world may mark its calendar by the sirens heard in Kyiv in February 2022, the true starting point remains 2014—a year that changed the map of Europe and the lives of millions forever. Knowing the difference isn't just about being a history buff; it's about respecting the reality of those who have been living through this conflict for over a decade.