Is Russia's invasion of Ukraine justified?

Is Russia's invasion justified? I'll gather the legal and competing perspectives to assess the claims.

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine is considered justified by Russia and unjustified by Ukraine and the vast majority of the international community. Whether it is "justified" depends on whether you mean justified under international law, or justified in terms of Russia's stated political/security reasons.

1. What Russia claims

On February 24, 2022, President Vladimir Putin announced a "special military operation" and claimed intervention was necessary to "protect people who have been subjected to abuse and genocide" by the Ukrainian government and to "protect Russia and our people". The stated aims included the "demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine", after the Russian government had formally recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics two days before and said they had requested assistance.

Other stated and implicit justifications advanced by Russian officials and media include:

2. How international law assesses those claims

The central rule in contemporary international law is in the UN Charter: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state"

Under that framework:

Legal experts have rejected each Russian legal argument:

a) Self-defense / collective self-defense:
The suggestion by President Putin that Russia's use of force is justified under Article 51 "has no support in fact or law" because "Ukraine did not commit or threaten to commit an armed attack against Russia or any other UN member state". Experts also note that even if Ukraine had planned an attack on Donetsk or Luhansk, Russia could not invoke collective self-defense because "these regions are not recognized as separate states under international law" and "Donetsk and Luhansk are not UN member states. Indeed, they do not even qualify as states under international law"

More generally, Russia has attempted to justify its actions by claiming "self-defense" or protection of Russian-speaking minorities, but these arguments have no legal basis, as Ukraine never attacked or threatened Russia before Russia's incursions

b) Genocide / humanitarian intervention:
Putin's statements that Ukraine was committing "genocide" against Russians are "not supported by the facts and would not, in any case, give Russia a right to launch an invasion". Scholars described Putin's allegations of genocide and comparison of Ukraine to a Nazi state as baseless. Even if human rights abuses had occurred, "neither the Genocide Convention nor the UN Charter authorizes... use of force to remedy acts of genocide or serious human rights abuses"

c) NATO expansion:
Western governments reject the claim that NATO expansion threatened Russian interests as justification for invading Ukraine. International law does not recognize a right to use force to prevent another sovereign state from choosing its alliances. Russia's comparison to Western interventions in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya and Syria has also been dismissed as irrelevant because "one illegal act does not make a different act legal"

3. International response

The invasion was also said to violate other agreements Russia had signed, including the 1975 Helsinki Final Act and the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in which Russia agreed to respect Ukraine's existing borders.

In short, while Russia presents its actions as defensive and protective, the prevailing view among international courts, the UN, and legal scholars is that none of the recognized legal exceptions that would permit the use of force apply, and the invasion therefore violates the prohibition on the use of force in international law.