List of invasions and occupations of Ukraine

"Invasion of Ukraine" redirects here. For the ongoing event, see Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The territory of present-day Ukraine, a large country in eastern Europe north of the Black Sea, has been either invaded or occupied a number of times throughout its history.

List

Conflict	Invasion	Attacking force(s)	Year	Details
Crimean–Nogai slave raids in Eastern Europe		Crimean Khanate	1450–1769	According to Ukrainian-Canadian historian Orest Subtelny, "from 1450 to 1586, eighty-six raids were recorded, and from 1600 to 1647, seventy. Although estimates of the number of captives taken in a single raid reached as high as 30,000, the average figure was closer to 3000...In Podilia alone, about one-third of all the villages were devastated or abandoned between 1578 and 1583."[1]: 105–106  In 1769, the last major Tatar raid, which took place during the Russo-Turkish War, saw the capture of 20,000 slaves.[2]
Russo-Polish War (1654–1667)	Battle of Konotop (1659)	Tsardom of Russia	1659	Ukrainian Cossacks led by Ivan Vyhovsky repelled an invasion by the Russian Tsardom at Konotop.[1]: 144
Ukrainian War of Independence (1917–1921)	First Soviet invasion of Ukraine Battle of Kruty Battle of Kiev (1918)	Russian SFSR	1918	Initial fighting in the war (Ukrainian–Soviet War) lasted from January to June 1918, ending with the Central Powers' intervention.[1]: 350, 403
	Central Powers intervention in Ukraine	Germany  Austria-Hungary		Imperial German and Austro-Hungarian forces entered Ukraine to push out Bolshevik forces, as part of an agreement with the Ukrainian People's Republic.[1]: 351, 357  Occupation: Ukrainian State (1918), a German-installed government of much of Ukraine.
	Allied intervention in Ukraine	France  Greece  Romania	1918–1919	Failure: Allies evacuate
	Second Soviet invasion of Ukraine	Russian SFSR	1919	A full-scale invasion began in January 1919.[1]: 361  Ended with the invasion by the White Army.
	White invasion of Ukraine	South Russia		White Army captures Donbas, Kharkiv, Odesa, Kyiv. Ended with the invasion by the Red Army.
	Third Soviet invasion of Ukraine	Russian SFSR	1919–1920	Red Army captures Kharkiv, Kyiv, Donbas and Odesa.
World War II (1939–1945)	Hungarian invasion of Carpatho-Ukraine	Hungary	1939	The Kingdom of Hungary occupied and annexed the just-proclaimed Carpatho-Ukraine. The Governorate of Subcarpathia (1939–1945) region included her former territory.
	Soviet invasion of Poland (Ukrainian Front)	Soviet Union		The Soviet Union invaded Poland in September 1939, extending into Western Ukraine.[1]: 454  Occupation: After the Soviet annexation of Eastern Galicia and Volhynia, the Soviet Union occupied Western Ukraine until it fell to Nazi Germany in November 1941. They retook the land in 1944.[3]: 625
	Operation Barbarossa	Germany  Romania	1941	Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, including Ukraine,[1]: 453, 460  in June 1941 with assistance from allied Romania.[4] By November they controlled almost all of what had been Soviet Ukraine, including the portion annexed in 1939.[3]: 624  Occupations: Reichskommissariat Ukraine (1941–1944), the German occupation of most of the country.[1]: 468  Transnistria Governorate (1941–1944), the Romanian occupation of Transnistria.[4]
Russo-Ukrainian War (2014–present)	Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation	Russia	2014	Russia invaded and subsequently annexed Crimea, then administered by Ukraine as the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, during February–March 2014,[5][6] and also took control of part of the village of Strilkove in neighboring Kherson Oblast.[7] Occupation: The Republic of Crimea and federal city of Sevastopol (2014–present), claimed by Russia as federal subjects and considered an occupation by the government of Ukraine (as part of the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine) and by the United Nations.[8][9]
	War in Donbas		2014–2022	After a commencement of hostilities in April 2014, Russian forces invaded the Donbas region of Ukraine in August of that year.[10][7] A report released by the Royal United Services Institute in March 2015 said that "the presence of large numbers of Russian troops on Ukrainian sovereign territory" became a "permanent feature" of the war following the invasion,[11] with regular Russian and Ukrainian forces coming into direct conflict at the Battle of Ilovaisk[12][13] and likely the Battle of Debaltseve.[14] Low-intensity fighting continued through 2022, despite the declaration of numerous ceasefires. Occupation: The Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic (2014–2022) were breakaway states in eastern Ukraine that were supported by Russia.
	Russian invasion of Ukraine		2022–present	Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.[15] Occupation: Russia occupied over 25% of Ukrainian territory before being pushed back in counteroffensives. Russia unilaterally declared that the Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts were annexed into the Russian Federation (2022–present).

See also

• Ukraine portal

• List of invasions
• List of wars involving Ukraine

References

1. Subtelny, Orest (1988). Ukraine: A History (3 ed.). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1-4426-8282-5. OCLC 288146960.
2. Kizilov, Mikhail (2007). "Slave Trade in the Early Modern Crimea From the Perspective of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources". Oxford University. 11 (1): 2–7.
3. Magocsi, Paul R. (1996). A History of Ukraine. University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-1-4426-7037-2. OCLC 244764615.
4. Solonari, Vladimir (2019). A Satellite Empire: Romanian Rule in Southwestern Ukraine, 1941-1944. Ithaca, New York. ISBN 978-1-5017-4319-1. OCLC 1083701372.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
5. DeBenedictis, Kent (2021). Russian 'hybrid warfare' and the annexation of Crimea : the modern application of Soviet political warfare. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-7556-4002-7. OCLC 1238134016.
6. Pifer, Steven (18 March 2019). "Five years after Crimea's illegal annexation, the issue is no closer to resolution". Brookings Institution. Retrieved 24 February 2022.
7. Kofman, Michael; Migacheva, Katya; Nichiporuk, Brian; Radin, Andrew; Tkacheva, Olesya; Oberholtzer, Jenny (2017). Lessons from Russia's Operations in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine (PDF). Santa Monica: RAND Corporation. ISBN 978-0-8330-9617-3. OCLC 990544142.
8. "'Няша' Поклонська обіцяє бійцям 'Беркута' покарати учасників Майдану" ["Nasha" Poklonsky promises to the "Berkut" fighters to punish the participants of the Maidan]. Segodnya (in Ukrainian). 20 March 2016. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
9. United Nations. "71/205. Situation of human rights in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol (Ukraine)". undocs.org. Retrieved 26 February 2022.
10. Snyder, Timothy (3 April 2018). The road to unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America (First ed.). New York, NY. p. 191. ISBN 978-0-525-57446-0. OCLC 1029484935.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
11. Igor Sutyagin (March 2015). "Briefing Paper: Russian Forces in Ukraine" (PDF). Royal United Services Institute. Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 May 2015. Retrieved 11 March 2015.
12. Tim Judah (5 September 2014). "Ukraine: A Catastrophic Defeat". The New York Review of Books. Retrieved 31 March 2022.
13. "Thousands of Russian soldiers fought at Ilovaisk, around a hundred were killed". KyivPost. Retrieved 31 March 2022.
14. Ivan Katchanovski (2016). "The Separatist War in Donbas: A Violent Break-up of Ukraine?". European Politics and Society. 17 (4): 473. doi:10.1080/23745118.2016.1154131. S2CID 155890093.
15. "Ukraine conflict: Russian forces invade after Putin TV declaration". BBC News. 24 February 2022. Retrieved 24 February 2022.