When Did the War in Ukraine Really Begin?

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says the war really began with the occupation of Crimea in 2014. Ukraine regained independence in 1991, and in 2014 people could not believe an occupation of that kind was happening.

The occupation was slow and did not look much like a war, because Ukraine was not fighting back. Shots were fired when Crimea was occupied, but for a long time Russia would not admit the armed men were its people. They looked like regular people and were called little green men, because nobody could tell what the uniform was. They carried weapons on the peninsula while Ukrainian authorities gave no clear order to defend the land as Crimea was seized gradually. Zelenskyy calls it a creeping occupation. Looking back today, and not from 2014 or 2015, he says that is when the war really began.

Ukraine's mistake was not pushing them back. Zelenskyy says he is sure that if there had been an order to defend the country, a full-scale war in the form it has today would not have happened.