Home › Security › What happened around 20 September 2022 in the war?
What happened around 20 September 2022 in the war?
Summary
A look back at a day when Russian lawmakers rewrote the Criminal Code for wartime, after days of fighting and deadly blasts in Donetsk.
What did the war look like on 20 September 2022? On that day, Russian State Duma deputies approved the introduction of the concepts of mobilization, martial law, wartime and armed conflict into the Criminal Code, along with punishment for desertion. The change formed part of the 2022 Russian mobilization.
Fighting in the east
The vote followed a series of events in the preceding days. On 19 September 2022, the Ukrainian Ground Forces recaptured the village of Bilohorivka in Luhansk Oblast as they advanced on Lysychansk.
The same day, Luhansk People's Republic authorities said Ukrainian shelling had killed seven civilians, including three children, in the town of Krasnorichenske.
In Donetsk, held by the Donetsk People's Republic, explosions on 19 September 2022 killed thirteen people and injured many others. DPR leader Denis Pushilin accused Ukraine of being behind the attacks.
Civilians and a withdrawal
On 18 September 2022, Russian forces shelled a psychiatric hospital in Strelechya, Kharkiv Oblast, killing four medics and injuring two patients.
The same day, Ukraine withdrew its 250 troops from the United Nations peacekeeping force MONUSCO in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A Ukrainian Air Force aviation unit also pulled out its eight helicopters, which made up a third of the UN's fleet in the mission.
A day in context
Taken together, the events of those days showed a war moving on several fronts at once: Ukrainian advances in Luhansk Oblast, casualties on both sides of the front line, and, in Moscow, legal steps tied to mobilization and desertion. Ukraine's pullout from the Congo mission, meanwhile, showed the reach of the war's demands beyond the battlefield.
