Misinformation

The prevailing belief that the Russia-Ukraine war began in 2022 is a striking case of misinformation. In truth, the evidence establishes that the war started in 2014 and has continued unabated since.

 

It may seem obvious to some that the facts need to be correct, and indeed, understanding whether the Russia-Ukraine war began in 2014 or 2022 is more than a semantic debate. The start date of the war directly shapes public understanding of the conflict and impedes self-governance if misunderstood. 

 

Recognizing the conflict as a decade-long struggle acknowledges not only the victims of the conflict from 2014 to 2022 but also the long arc of resistance by the Ukrainians, the sustained nature of Russian aggression, and the years of strategic failure of global institutions to effectively de-escalate the conflict.

 

Recognizing an accurate timeline for the war is especially crucial for the peacemaking process. In the immediate term, ending the war requires a fundamental understanding of the issues at stake. Long-term, even after the war ends, global relationships may never fully heal, and a thorough and accurate understanding of the conflict is necessary to pacify the fractured societies.

 

Additionally, the rabid spread of misinformation raises serious doubts about the ability of the mainstream media to accurately report events in an era of overly sensationalized journalism. The stakes for journalists are therefore particularly high. 

 

So, what happened in Ukraine from 2014 until today, and how has the media botched the story?

 

Historical Timeline

 

In late 2013 and early 2014, the Ukrainian people took to the streets to protest systemic corruption and to show their support for joining the European Union (EU). There were dozens of factors contributing to these protests, but the core issues were an EU trade deal and corruption, with corruption ultimately being viewed as the gateway for Russian interference in Ukraine. 

 

As a result of these protests, which brought millions of people to the streets, Ukraine succeeded in ousting its Russian-friendly and corrupt president, Viktor Yanukovych. Russia became fearful that Ukraine was moving away from its sphere of influence, and in response to losing its access to Ukraine’s president, Russia invaded Crimea. According to most theories and definitions of war, the invasion of Crimea on February 27, 2014, represents the start of the Ukraine-Russia War.

 

While Russia seized Crimea without much violence, armed fighting erupted in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, which borders Russia. Russia and Ukraine have been fighting ever since, though the fighting has waned and waxed with various ceasefire attempts and escalations. 

 

The war fundamentally changed in 2022 when Russia sent its full force into Ukraine and expanded the war to new parts of Ukraine as it attempted to re-establish a Russia-friendly government there. While Russia’s 2022 invasion marked a significant escalation, Russia and Ukraine have been at war with one another since 2014. The goals, scale, and global perception of the conflict have changed, but none of these facets is sufficient to establish that a new war began in 2022. 

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Defining Terms

Much of the confusion about when the Russia-Ukraine War began stems from a failure to distinguish between several closely related but fundamentally different terms: war, invasion, full-scale invasion, and escalation. These are not interchangeable, and understanding the differences is essential to understanding the conflict itself.

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• War refers to a sustained and organized conflict between two or more political entities, typically states, involving military force. Wars often span years, with periods of low and high intensity, and can involve various forms of combat, diplomacy, and proxy engagements.

• Invasion is a specific act within a war. It involves the entry of a nation’s military forces into another nation’s territory, usually to initiate or expand hostilities. A war can occur without invasion, as with an aerial or naval bombardment.

• Full-scale invasion refers to a massive, coordinated, and often multi-front military campaign that deploys a significant portion of a nation’s armed forces. As the term suggests, full-scale is a matter of scope and intensity, not a legal or temporal marker of when a war begins.

• Escalation describes a significant intensification of an existing conflict. This can involve expanded territorial ambitions, greater use of force, targeting new types of infrastructure, or the use of more destructive weapons or tactics.

In the case of Ukraine, Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 was both an invasion and the beginning of the war. The armed conflict that followed in the Donbas region further solidified that status. In 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion, which was a severe escalation of the existing war, but not the start of a new one. The events of 2022 marked a new phase of the war, not a new war altogether.

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Failing to use these terms precisely has enabled the spread of misinformation, distorted historical memory, and undermined efforts to hold aggressors accountable.

 

Official Acknowledgements of 2014 Origins

 

Governments from Russia and Ukraine, as well as third-party supporters like the United States, have all acknowledged their involvement in the conflict dating back to 2014, making the 2022 narrative a readily identifiable piece of misinformation. 

 

While Ukraine has at times been happy to play along with the 2022 narrative, Ukraine has consistently maintained that the war began in 2014, as reflected in both official statements, national memorials, and its media. 

 

For example, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the UN in 2022 that “Russia – instead of stopping the crime of aggression, which it started back in 2014 – turned it into a full-scale invasion." Most recently, Zelenskyy hinted to American President Donald Trump that the war has been ongoing since 2014. Beyond President Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s memorial wall commemorates the soldiers who died in 2014 as part of the Russo-Ukrainian War. Ukraine’s position that the 2014 origin is crystal clear. 

 

Russia’s acknowledgement of its involvement in the conflict is more obscured but clear to a careful listener. Russia’s participation in the 2014 Minsk Agreement – the first attempt to end the war between Russia and Ukraine through diplomacy – ought to clarify their involvement in the war, however, it could be argued that Russia was merely funding and supplying the Donbas war and therefore not a direct belligerent. 

 

Contrary to this potential defense of misinformation, Russian President Vladimir Putin has acknowledged Russia’s involvement dating to 2014. First, as early as April 2014, Putin acknowledged Russian involvement in Crimea (Ukraine), saying "the Russian servicemen did back the Crimean self-defence forces." In the same speech, he acknowledged the wider role of Russia in Ukraine, saying, "Our task was not to conduct a full-fledged military operation there, but it was to ensure people’s safety and security and a comfortable environment to express their will."

 

Finally, in 2015, Putin essentially confessed to Russia’s full-fledged involvement in the war, making Russia a belligerent and not merely a supporter of separatists. "We’ve never said there are no people there who deal with certain matters, including in the military area, but this does not mean that regular Russian troops are present there. Feel the difference."

 

Third parties like the United States have similarly acknowledged the war beginning in 2014. The US Ambassador to Ukraine, for example, declared on November 29, 2018, that, "For almost five years, Russia has fomented a war that has had more than 10,000 casualties."

 

Media Narrative Analysis

 

The media, too, were happy to cover the war in Ukraine from 2014 until 2022, when declaring the start of a new war and erasing the events of 2014 became the easier option. Reuters, for example, has been selling photos of the “war” in Ukraine for a decade, yet now declares the war has lasted just three years. 

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In February 2024, more than 25 major outlets—including The Washington Post, The Guardian, CNN, Reuters, EuroNews, and Voice of America—marked “two years” of war in Ukraine. Headlines across the spectrum echoed that framing, implicitly setting the war’s start date in February 2022—even though many of these same organizations had reported on Russian military activity and conflict in Ukraine as early as 2014. This subtle shift is more than editorial laziness; it’s a factual revision that contradicts the public record, Ukraine’s stated timeline, and the outlets’ own archives.

 

At the same time, not every media outlet has gotten the story wrong. In the West, PBS deserves praise for its careful reporting. In 2024, for example, PBS reported that “This Saturday marks two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in a war that started nearly ten years ago.” 

 

Ukrainian media is more united and universally stands by the 2014 start date. Kyiv Post, for example, declared that “[The war] did not begin in February 2022 but 10 years ago with the events of the Revolution of Dignity when millions of Ukrainians took to the streets, refusing to live in a corrupt satellite state of Russia.” In a different article, the Kyiv Post declared that it’s been “3 years since the start of the full-scale Russian invasion on Ukraine. 11 years since the start of the Russian war against Ukraine.”

 

Kyiv Independent, Pravda Ukraine, EuroMaidan Press, Interfax Ukraine, Ukrainian Weekly, and Bergen Global – the largest English-language media outlets in Ukraine – all report that the war has lasted a decade. 

 

Counterarguments

 

Some may argue that referring to 2022 as the start of a “new war” is not misinformation, but rather a reflection of the conflict's dramatic escalation and transformation. The full-scale invasion launched by Russia in February 2022 involved a coordinated, nationwide military offensive unprecedented in scope compared to the more localized and hybrid warfare seen in the Donbas and Crimea between 2014 and 2022. 

 

This shift altered the legal, humanitarian, and geopolitical dimensions of the conflict. Additionally, 2022 marked a turning point in the global response, including sweeping sanctions, massive arms transfers, and a level of international media coverage not seen in the earlier years. 

 

From this perspective, referring to 2022 as the "start" of the war may not deny the 2014 origins, but rather signify a reclassification of the war’s nature, similar to how World War II is distinguished from the interwar conflicts that preceded it, despite continuity in political tensions.

 

All told, however, this narrative has little merit and no hard evidence supporting it. The international perception and response to the conflict do not alter the dates when the homicide started, especially considering the belligerents have been consistent since 2014, as established by Putin’s admission. Moreover, the escalation of the Russia-Ukraine War is not at all like the escalation that transformed interwar conflicts into World War II in that no new belligerents have joined this war. 

 

From this perspective, calling 2022 the beginning of the war reflects not an intent to erase history, but lazy and over-simplified storytelling.

 

Misinformation vs. conspiracy 

 

The idea that most of the mainstream media has butchered their reporting of the Ukraine War may seem conspiratorial, but nothing could be further from the truth. There is simply no evidence whatsoever of conspiracy – acting in harmony to achieve a wrongful end – among the media, governments, and politicians worldwide. 

 

The evidence, with some media outlets reporting 2014 and most reporting 2022, strongly suggests that the widespread mischaracterization of the conflict’s timeline appears to stem from systemic journalistic weaknesses: the economic pressures to simplify narratives, the prevalence of poorly resourced newsrooms, and a media ecosystem increasingly driven by engagement metrics over historical precision. 

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The Toronto Star embodies the nature of this error with its publication of an article titled “Two years in, Ukraine-Russia conflict brings hard choices, fractured families,” which corrected its own mistake: “the war is not really two years old but an extension of the conflict that began in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea.”

 

These dynamics don’t excuse the error, but they do explain it—and they point to a structural failure, not a malicious plot. Recognizing this distinction is crucial; it shifts the conversation from paranoid speculation to a more productive critique of how modern media environments oversimplify complex international issues for mass consumption.

 

A Historic Journalistic Failure

 

When placed alongside other major media failures—such as coverage of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, or early reporting on the Rwandan genocide—the mishandling of the Ukraine war’s timeline stands apart for one critical reason: this wasn’t a case of journalists being misled by governments. 

 

It was a failure to accurately report facts that were already public. The 2014 invasion of Crimea, the outbreak of war in the Donbas, and direct acknowledgments from Russian, Ukrainian, and Western leaders have been widely available for years. Unlike past journalistic failures where governments manipulated intelligence or restricted access, the timeline of this war has been in plain sight. 

 

The press, in this case, had access to the facts, but in many instances, chose a narrative that was simpler, more dramatic, and easier to sell: that the war began with Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. That choice—whether driven by editorial pressure, misunderstanding, or convenience — has distorted public understanding of the war, erased years of suffering, and undermined the possibility of accurate historical memory.

 

In this sense, this may be one of the most clear-cut, avoidable, and consequential errors in modern war reporting that also made the peacemaking process that much harder.

 

Truth and Consequences

 

The facts are clear. Russia and Ukraine began fighting in 2014. The changing global perception, size, scale, and location of the war are insufficient to establish that a new war began in 2022. It’s therefore misinformation – incorrect or misleading information – to declare that the war began in 2022

 

The truth is often sacrificed for war, and all sides have an interest in obscuring the truth, but none more than Russia. Russia has sought to obscure its involvement in the war from the start, arguing that the separatists in Eastern Ukraine required their assistance and initially denying its involvement. 

 

Similarly, Ukraine has been successful at extracting support from the West by leaning into the false 2022 war narrative. A sudden and unexplainable invasion is an easier way to garner support than a decade-long struggle. At the same time, Ukrainians are not willing to entirely erase the earlier phases of the war, which cost them dearly. 

 

The West, regardless of political orientation, has been happy to sensationalize the 2022 invasion to the point of absurdity. Whether garnering support for Ukraine or against Ukraine, the misinformation, 2022 narrative has been easier to digest and manipulate. 

 

With the facts and misinformation now clear, it’s time to set the record straight. As policymakers, media outlets, and global citizens continue to shape their actions based on partial truths, it is vital to correct the record. Only by acknowledging the war’s true origins can we pursue lasting peace and accountability.

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Summary & Key Takeaways

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• The Russia-Ukraine war did not begin in 2022; it started in 2014 with Russia’s invasion of Crimea and subsequent conflict in the Donbas region.

• The terms war, invasion, full-scale invasion, and escalation describe related but distinct concepts. Confusing them contributes to widespread misinformation.

• The 2014 annexation of Crimea was an invasion that marked the beginning of the war, while the 2022 invasion was a full-scale escalation, not a new war.

• Official statements from Russia, Ukraine, and third parties like the United States acknowledge the war’s origins in 2014.

• Many media outlets have inaccurately framed the conflict as starting in 2022, which distorts historical understanding and impedes peace efforts.

• The persistent misinformation is largely due to journalistic simplification and sensationalism rather than conspiracy.

• Accurate use of terms and timeline is crucial for holding aggressors accountable and supporting lasting peace.