Previous Subchapter → 2.5 Two Hours to Moscow
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The Russian invasion was split into 2 phases:
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- Occupying Ukraine
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- Annexing Donbas into Russia
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The Russian leadership expected to accomplish both phases in only a few days or weeks
- Instead, Ukrainian forces held on to most of their territory, while Russian forces gained territory in the South and East of the country, Ukrainian forces pushed them back in the North and West
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As a result of their losses, the Russians chose to drop Phase 1 and retreat from Northern and Western Ukraine
- Phase 2 was expanded to compensate, including the Kherson, Zaporizhia and Kharkiv regions
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From this point the conflict fell into a stalemate of WW1 style trench warfare, with neither side making rapid gains
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The stalemate ended when Ukraine’s September 2022 counter-offensive retook the Kharkiv region from Russian control
- Russia then annexed the Zaporizhia, Kherson and Donbas regions to try and secure the remaining regions they controlled
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Russian authorities then declared a mobilisation of their population to compensate for their losses
- The response was split between hundreds of thousands enlisting and hundreds of thousands fleeing the country to avoid the draft
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Since September 2022, the war has returned to stagnation