This seems like a good time to repost this:
I feel like there should be a post here laying out the situation factually.
Here's the source.
1) Ukraine publicly stated they want to join NATO, which was met with Russian aggression. Russia has acted aggressively toward other countries in the area who wanted to join NATO too, like Georgia.
2) Tensions came to a head in 2014 after Ukrainians ousted a Russia-aligned president. Russia – under the dubious claim of protecting ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers from Ukrainian persecution – annexed the Crimea region of Ukraine in a move widely condemned by the international community.
3) At about the same time, Russia fomented dissension in the Donbas area of eastern Ukraine, backing a separatist movement in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk that resulted in armed conflict.
4) Putin
recognized the Russian-backed breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, both located in the disputed Donbas area, as “independent” people’s republics and ordered so-called “peacekeeping” troops into those areas.
5) Russia amassed tens of thousands of troops along the border of Ukraine.
6) Biden talked to Putin twice. NATO and the UN Security Council tried to de-escalate.
7) Putin, specifically, does not want Ukraine to join NATO “not because he has some principled disagreement related to the rule of law or something, it's because he has a might makes right model,” adds Bradley Bowman, the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a non-partisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.
“He believes, ‘Hey, Ukraine, I'm more powerful than you, and because I'm more powerful than you, Ukraine, I can tell you what to do and with whom to associate,’” Bowman says.
8) Russia invades.