'Ukraine Started the War': A False Narrative Debunked

In a televised address broadcast at 5:30 a.m. Moscow time on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin announced: "I have decided to conduct a special military operation" ^[4]. He framed the invasion as self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter and said it was meant to protect Russian speakers in Donbas from what he falsely called genocide, while describing the campaign's aims as the "demilitarization and denazification" of Ukraine ^[4][1]. CSIS analyst Jeffrey Mankoff notes the speech's deeper premise was that Putin does not consider Ukraine a legitimate, separate nation ^[5].

Putin publicly claimed responsibility for launching the operation himself, in his own words, hours before the first strikes landed [4].

Proponents of the "Ukraine provoked Russia" narrative point to NATO's eastward expansion and the alliance's 2008 Bucharest Summit pledge that Ukraine would eventually join ^[2]. But Ukraine was never offered a Membership Action Plan before the 2022 invasion, and NATO did not waive that requirement until 2023 — well after Russia's full-scale attack ^[2]. CSIS finds that while NATO expansion was one of Putin's stated grievances, his February 2022 speech centered on denying Ukrainian national identity altogether, and that the 2013–14 crisis which preceded Russia's first invasion was triggered by Ukraine's proposed EU association agreement, not a NATO bid ^[5].

NATO membership for Ukraine was not a near-term prospect in 2022, undercutting the claim that NATO expansion forced Russia's hand [2][5].

The International Court of Justice is hearing Ukraine's case against Russia under the 1948 Genocide Convention; in a February 2, 2024 judgment, the Court affirmed it has jurisdiction over Ukraine's claim that it never committed genocide in Donbas, rejecting Russia's bid to have the case dismissed ^[6]. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin on March 17, 2023, over the alleged unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia — only the second time the ICC has indicted a sitting head of state ^[7]. The UN General Assembly voted 141–5–35 on March 2, 2022 to adopt Resolution ES-11/1, deploring Russia's invasion "in the strongest terms" and demanding the full withdrawal of Russian forces ^[8].

Multiple international bodies — the ICJ, the ICC, and the UN General Assembly — have each taken formal action treating Russia, not Ukraine, as the aggressor [6][7][8].

Russia's aggression against Ukraine predates 2022 by eight years. After President Viktor Yanukovych fled Ukraine in February 2014 amid protests over his rejection of closer EU ties, Russian special forces seized Crimea in March 2014, which Moscow then annexed following a disputed referendum ^[3]. Pro-Russian separatists, backed by Russian troops and equipment despite Moscow's denials, declared independence in Donetsk and Luhansk in May 2014, igniting a war in the Donbas that simmered for eight years before Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion ^[3]. NATO suspended practical cooperation with Russia in response to the 2014 annexation ^[2].

Russia's war against Ukraine did not begin in 2022 — it began with the seizure of Crimea in 2014 [3].

The claim that "Ukraine started the war" gained prominence after President Trump said at Mar-a-Lago on February 18, 2025 that Ukraine "should have never started" the war and "could have made a deal" ^[1][9]. PolitiFact rated the claim "Pants on Fire," its lowest rating, noting the White House provided no evidence when asked ^[1]. FactCheck.org included the claim in its "Whoppers of 2025" year-end roundup, under a section titled "Russia, not Ukraine, started the war," reiterating that the war began when Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022 ^[9]. The Annenberg Public Policy Center, which publishes FactCheck.org, singled out the Ukraine-origin claim as one of the year's leading pieces of misinformation, alongside false claims about autism and inflation ^[10].

Fact-checkers across multiple outlets have identified "Ukraine started the war" as a false claim amplified in 2025, not an established fact [1][9][10].