(NewsNation Now) — President Joe Biden said this week that a Russia invasion on Ukraine “remains distinctly possible.” It’s not the first time the country has encroached on its neighbors’ borders during the Olympics.
Three times in the last 20 years, Russia has invaded a neighboring country during the games.
In 2008, Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia, a country in the Caucasus region, during the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. Russia occupied the region with 40,000 soldiers and it lasted five days.
In 2014, Russia struck again. Putin invaded Crimea, just three days shy of the end of the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Since then, the country has supported rebels in a war against Ukrainian forces in the eastern Donbas region.
The Georgia invasion resulted in the capture of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Crimea was formally acquired after the 2014 invasion of Ukraine.
Now, for the third time, Russia has used the Olympics as a cover for its efforts to expand its borders. The country hopes to acquire the Ukraine cities of Luhansk and Donetsk, a region known as the Donbass, where separatists have been fighting the Ukrainian army since 2014, according to Reuters.
Reuters contributed to this article