On December 26, that the European Union was preparing a backup plan to provide Ukraine with 20 billion euros, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s ability to veto the bailout at a summit scheduled for February 1.
In 2023, Orban is only one among 27 EU member state leaders who remains an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin. On October 17, during a meeting with Putin in Beijing, Orban called the Russian invasion of Ukraine a "military operation," a term used by Russian authorities.
At his annual press conference in Budapest on December 21, Orban it was not by chance that he used the Kremlin’s preferred — and misleading — terminology. Orban said Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is not a war but a military operation because the conflicting countries neither declared war nor carry out general mobilizations:
"I called it a military operation because war is when two countries declare it. Let us be glad that there is no war yet, because war is a general mobilization. Sometimes, I will call it a war, sometimes a military operation, whatever you like."
This is false.
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in its duration, destruction of infrastructure and scope and scale of lethality, fully corresponds to the broadly recognized international consensus definition of "war" and how military experts, diplomats and legal scholars use it.
Most countries in the world and the United Nations consider the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine a war.
According to , in popular understanding, war is “a conflict between political groups involving hostilities of significant duration and magnitude.” Military writers define war as "hostilities in which the contending groups are sufficiently equal in power to render the outcome uncertain for a time. ... Such incidents, if the resistance is sufficiently strong or protracted, may achieve a magnitude that entitles them to the name ‘war.’”
Moscow of Ukrainian territory at the of its advance in March 2022 — including the 6.45% of Ukrainian territory comprising Crimea and part of the Donbas, which it illegally annexed in 2014. Since March 2022, Kyiv has regained control over a significant part of its land.
“To date, Ukraine has liberated over 54% of Russian-occupied Ukraine, and they continue to retain the strategic initiative as of today," U.S. Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley on September 19, 2023.
On February 24, 2022, Putin the start of a “special military operation.” The Russian army acts of war on major Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Mariupol and Kramatorsk, using ballistic cruise missiles and multiple launch rocket systems.
U.S. authorities estimate the losses of military personnel of both sides at approximately , wrote in August 2023, citing unnamed officials.
The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine more than 10,000 civilian deaths and over 18,500 injuries in Ukraine since “Russia launched its full-scale armed attack.” The actual death toll is significantly higher, HRMMU .
According to the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office, up to may have died since the Russian invasion began.
As of December 19, 2023, UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency, said more than from Ukraine were recorded globally, and another are internally displaced within Ukraine.
International human rights have documented numerous cases of international committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine — many that satisfy the legal criterial constituting — including the , torture, sexual crimes and forced displacement.
On March 17, 2023, the International Criminal Court arrest warrants and Russia's children's rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, on charges of involvement in a war crime related to the abduction of children during the invasion of Ukraine.
According to a March 2023 joint assessment by the government of Ukraine, the World Bank Group, the European Commission and the U.N., “direct physical damage to infrastructure and buildings” in Ukraine by the first full year of Russian invasion from February 24, 2022, to February 24, 2023, has grown to .
On February 24, 2022, leaders of the , an informal grouping of advanced democracies, “on the invasion of Ukraine by armed forces of the Russian Federation,” which says that “President Putin has re-introduced war to the European continent.”
The same day, members of the European Council, of the 27 heads of state or governments of the EU member states, said in a that “the EU stands firmly by Ukraine and its people as they face this war.”
U.S. President Joe Biden Russia’s attack on Ukraine a “totally unjustifiable war on Ukraine,” in remarks on February 24, 2022.