In spite of the ceasefire being signed in February of 2015, the situation in Eastern Ukraine remained very tense. Repeated incidents, accusations that Russia was arming the rebels and Ukraine was provoking Russia and the seperatists into an armed response continued for a long while. It was from this situation that the tensest days since the Cuban Missile Crisis would occur.

In March of 2018, Ukraine’s fragile democracy was in dire straits. The government was getting ever less popular. Far-right parties were gaining traction with the government accused of being incapable of dealing with a series of new skirmishes, in which forces of the DPR took the villages of Luhansk’e and Avdiivka. Faced with plummeting poll numbers ahead of elections, far-right thugs and volunteer battalions (with support from within the government) marching through major cities and placing themselves above the law, the areas around Odessa and Kharkov becoming restive, and general fracturing of the electorate a decision was made to respond in force to the creeping-up of separatist forces.

The Russian Army, already on edge due to the situation in Ukraine, went on full alert awaiting the Ukrainian offensive in the Donbass. To the surprise of observers, there was a degree of Ukrainian success as villages in the area of Pervomaisk and Kirovs’k in Luhansk fell, and the Ukrainian army advanced east of Mariupol. This was paired with brutal war crimes by various volunteer battalions and infractions on Russian air space by Ukrainian aircraft. This was looking bad for the Russian efforts to keep Ukraine out of the EU and NATO, and action had to be undertaken somehow. Fortunately for the Kremlin, the perfect excuse was handed to them. On April 1st, 2018, a Russian infantry formation taking part in a training exercise close to the Ukrainian border was attacked by a pair of Ukrainian Su-25s. Moscow’s response was quick – it demanded an apology and immediate stop to the offensives. This Kiev could not or would not do, and so at 5AM, April 2nd 2018, 280,000 Russian soldiers crossed into Ukraine.

While the armies of the Eastern Seperatists were steadily being defeated by the Ukrainian forces, the Russian Army and Air Force made short work of them. In a matter of days, the shocked Ukrainian army was evicted from the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, Kharkov was threatened, and Russian marines from the Crimea were approaching Kherson and Zaporizka oblast. This turn of events alarmed western leaders. Despite NATO not being invoked, the bulk of the Polish army crossed the Ukrainian border in support of the defenders, and not to be outdone the UK and France sent sizeable forces into Ukraine and the US also sent troops to Ukraine, albeit a small number in order to prevent escalation outside of Ukraine’s borders.