Russo-Ukrainian War: Days after recognising Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states, Russian president Vladimir Putin orders a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014 and is ongoing. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia occupied and annexed Crimea from Ukraine. It then supported Russian paramilitaries who began a war in the eastern Donbas region against Ukraine's military. In 2018, Ukraine declared the region to be occupied by Russia. These first eight years of conflict also included naval incidents and cyberwarfare. In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and began occupying more of the country, starting the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II. The war has resulted in a refugee crisis and hundreds of thousands of deaths.

"Address concerning the events in Ukraine" was a televised address by Russian President Vladimir Putin on 21 February 2022, announcing that the Russian government would recognise the Ukrainian separatist regions of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic as independent. During the speech, Putin also made a number of claims regarding Ukrainian history and Ukrainian domestic politics. Genocide experts, historians and other experts have shown these claims to be false and possibly justifying a genocide. The speech, which marked a significant escalation in the culminating Russo-Ukrainian crisis, was followed three days later by another speech declaring "a special military operation" in Ukraine—announcing the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The Donetsk People's Republic is occupied territory in Ukraine that the Russian Federation has claimed to annex and declared as a republic of Russia, comprising parts of eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, with its capital in Donetsk.

The Luhansk People's Republic is a disputed territory administered as a republic of Russia in the occupied parts of eastern Ukraine's Luhansk Oblast, with its capital in Luhansk. The LPR was proclaimed by Russian-backed paramilitaries in 2014, and it initially operated as a breakaway state until it was annexed by Russia in 2022. The entire territory of LPR is viewed as sovereign territory of Ukraine by nearly all UN member states. It has a population of 2,102,921.