 On February 24th, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the launch of a special military operation in Ukraine. Putin claimed that the leaders of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbass region had asked for military assistance against Ukrainian aggression. But the current military operations have spread much beyond the Donbass region. The Russian military claimed on March 2 that it has full control of the city of Kherson in southwest Ukraine, and it is closing in on Mariupol, a major port city in Donetsk. Russian forces have also closed in on Ukrainian capital Kiev and the city of Kharkiv. As of March 1, the United Nations had confirmed 136 civilian deaths and 400 injured. The crisis has caused massive displacement. UNHCR stated on March 1 that around 660,000 refugees have fled Ukraine to neighbouring countries in the past six days. What brought about this situation? In the televised address announcing the special operations, Putin stated that this military intervention is not to occupy Ukrainian land, but to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine and bring to trial those who committed numerous atrocities against civilians in the Donbass region. The attack began just days after Russia announced recognition of the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, people's republics claiming that Ukraine failed to act on the 2015 Minsk Agreement, which promised autonomy to these regions. Putin also drew attention to the unrelenting eastward expansion of NATO, stating that NATO powers have thwarted all attempts at reaching an agreement on this issue, which is critical for Russia. This is an issue which goes back to 1991 to the fall of the Soviet Union. Let's start a story from there. 1990s, fall of the Soviet Union and a new world order. NATO was founded in 1949 by the US and 11 other western countries with the stated purpose of confronting the Soviet Union and the growth of communism in Europe. At the end of the Cold War, NATO's eastern counterpart, the Warsaw Pact, was dissolved. However, NATO continued to exist. In a 1990 meeting, the US had assured Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that not an inch of NATO's present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastward direction beyond the borders of unified Germany. After the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, the US increasingly began attempting to assert unipolar authority over the rest of the world, betraying all promises NATO expanded into former Soviet republics in Eastern Europe, which presented acute security concerns to the newly capitalist Russian Federation. The Northern Atlantic Alliance has expanded from 16 countries in 1991 to a total of 30 countries today. This expansion was in keeping with the US strategy of trying to prevent the emergence of any alliance in Eurasia that could, in the future, threaten US hegemony in the region. At the time, Russia could not resist this expansion. But things changed in 2008 when the US decided to move towards eventual NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine, both of whom sit right at Russia's borders. This was not acceptable to Russia. There was a brief armed conflict between Russia and Georgia, and the membership process stalled for Georgia. Apart from expanding membership, US nuclear weapons are now based in five NATO countries in Europe. US bases, which can fire ballistic missiles and nuclear missiles if needed, are positioned as close as Poland and Romania, including a base in Poland which is only a hundred miles from the Russian border. The US has also over time become an increasingly rogue state, as it has withdrawn from most armed treaties, including the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Open Skies Treaty, etc. In December last year, Russia had submitted a draft proposal for a new mutual security agreement between Russia and NATO. The proposal essentially called for a halt in further expansion and escalation, an exchange of information between the military forces, and that NATO would not accept Ukraine as a member. However, the Biden administration refused to even consider it seriously. 2014, coup in Ukraine. Let's now go to what has been happening inside Ukraine since 2014. Until 2014, Ukraine was essentially neutral and maintained relations with both the EU and Russia, although there were pressures from both directions. In late 2013, then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was looking for a loan, the one offered by the EU involved substantial economic reforms and IMF-mandated austerity measures. On the other hand, Russia offered a $15 billion bailout along with discounted prices of natural gas if Yanukovych would sideline the country's oligarchy-controlled financial networks. Yanukovych chose to go with Russia. However, this decision was not taken well by ultranationalists and Russofoab groups who were leaning towards Europe. It was also not acceptable to Western countries. US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland had previously boasted about the billions of dollars the US spent on democracy promotion in Ukraine, which basically referred to strengthening pro-Western and anti-Russian forces. Far-right nationalists and neo-Nazis tried to turn this dispute into a means for overthrowing the elected government. They staged violent demonstrations known as the Euromaidan protests, with armed neo-Nazis deploying fire-bombs and other weapons. Yanukovych's government collapsed. His violent overthrow was celebrated in the West. He was replaced by US-backed leaders. Ukraine did not officially become a NATO member after the Yanukovych government was overthrown, but it developed much closer relations to NATO, which gave the country access to many membership privileges, including military exercises and training. The same set of ultranationalists and Russofoab political groups that called for closer alignment with the West have been hampering the implementation of the Minsk agreements. The Minsk agreements were signed to quell tensions after a civil war broke out between the ethnically divided East and West Ukraine. Eastern Ukraine, which includes the Donbass region, is dominated by Russian-speaking Ukrainians. The post-Euromaidan government adopted pro-EU and pro-NATO policies, which were widely opposed by the people of Eastern Ukraine. The government moved to crush these protests. Ukrainian forces declared a war on the protesters, following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014. The war lasted for months before the first Minsk agreement was signed in September 2014 between Ukraine, Russia, and the organization for security and cooperation in Europe. It aimed to implement an immediate ceasefire, but it failed to stop the fighting. A revised and updated agreement, Minsk 2, was signed in 2015, which called for an immediate ceasefire in the Donbass region. It also granted greater autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk, the centres of rebellion. But the Minsk agreements were not implemented. Instead, the government passed policies suppressing Russian identity, particularly the use of Russian as a language in the public sphere, including in schools, in the service industry, in media, etc. The continuing violence and these policies have led to what can only be called ethnic cleansing. The crisis in Donbass has caused the deaths of over 14,000 people and displaced over 2.5 million people between 2014 to 2021. According to Russian claims, over 1.2 million residents of the Donbass region have already applied for Russian citizenship out of a total estimated population of 6 million. These measures, along with the empowerment of neo-Nazi elements, has shattered the plurianational character of the country. Biden has called the ongoing Russian intervention unprovoked. However, in the four days leading up to the war, ceasefire monitors recorded almost 6,000 ceasefire violations and over 4,000 explosions in eastern Ukraine, mostly in the Donbass region. The Russian attack on Ukraine cannot be seen in isolation from the decades of expansionist policies pursued by the US and NATO. With the Russian offensive, a massive humanitarian crisis has broken out and two nuclear powers NATO and Russia are confronting each other. The impact of sanctions will be felt by millions of ordinary people. Progressive movements have been calling for an immediate end to all hostilities, negotiations and security guarantees for both Ukraine and Russia. They have also been demanding that NATO be disbanded. As an offensive alliance, NATO does not stop conflict but only fuels it, as can be seen in places like Libya, Iraq, Syria and now as a direct result of its actions in Ukraine.