(CNN Spanish) --
After months of escalation and troop buildup, Russian forces invaded Ukraine on February 24, and since then the country has been embroiled in a war on a scale not seen in Europe since World War II, and which is causing enormous suffering to the civilian population.
This has been, day by day, the war in Ukraine: data and chronology about the Russian invasion
Ukraine, an independent former Soviet republic in 1991 that has been drawing closer to Europe and NATO, had a difficult historical relationship with its neighbor Russia.
In 2014 Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean peninsula, part of Ukraine's territory, and months later pro-Russian rebels rose up in the east of the country in Donetsk and Luhansk, starting the civil war that still rages eight years later.
In the early hours of February 24, already two weeks ago, the first tanks and soldiers of the Russian army crossed the border with Ukraine and began shelling the cities.
The current war is the latest and most violent chapter in this story.
Ukraine is not part of NATO, and for this reason the Atlantic alliance has not responded militarily.
But the United States and Europe reacted to the invasion by sending weapons and launching a battery of sanctions against Russia, including the expulsion of certain banks from SWIFT and the prohibition of energy imports from Russia carried out by the United States.
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The suffering of civilians caught up in the conflict continues to mount, with the UN reporting that more than two million Ukrainians have left the country since the start of the war.
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