After weeks of rising tensions between Russia and Ukraine over Moscow’s build-up of armed forces along their shared border, war finally returned to Europe in February.
Russian president Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation” in a televised address to his citizens in the early hours of Thursday 24 February, explaining that he hoped to “de-Nazify and demilitarise” Ukraine’s government, a spurious rationale that only served to draw a line under the West’s diplomatic efforts to avert calamity.
