Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24 2022, with western officials initially estimating the capital Kyiv would fall quickly.
But 1,000 days later, Kyiv and most of Ukraine still stand despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goal of capturing the capital and forcing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government and army to surrender.
Ukraine has not fallen due to the grit of its people and unprecedented assistance from its western partners, but it has lost nearly 20 per cent of its territory and tens of thousands of citizens, including soldiers and civilians. And with Russia still on the march, the war is far from over.
This page is updated with the latest maps and charts showing military and humanitarian aspects of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Latest situation
Ukraine struck Russia using US-made long-range Atacms missiles for the first time on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Russian ministry of defence confirmed an attack on its soil had taken place, claiming its air defence systems shot down five of six Atacms missiles over the Bryansk region.
Ukraine’s General Staff did not confirm the use of Atacms but claimed responsibility for the strikes on the Russian arsenal, which it had previously attacked with drones.
The depot is north of the Kursk region, where Russia’s forces are trying to push out Ukrainian troops who occupy about 600 sq km of Russian territory.
The strikes come a day after US President Joe Biden authorised Ukraine to use Atacms missiles in Russia, in a major policy shift before president-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.
The move follows the deployment of thousands of North Korean troops to support Russia and a barrage of recent strikes by Moscow.
Ukraine is in desperate need of new weaponry as its frontline buckles and Russian forces make gains on the battlefield at a faster rate than at any point since 2022.
Kursk incursion
Ukraine seized parts of Russia’s Kursk region in a surprise incursion in August. But after making steady gains in the region, Ukrainian troops began to lose territory there in October. The incursion has come at the cost of territory in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
Russia has mobilised a force of about 50,000 soldiers, including 10,000 from North Korea, in a fresh attempt to push the Ukrainians out of Kursk, according to Zelenskyy and Ukrainian and western intelligence officials.
Losing Kursk would deprive Zelenskyy of a valuable bargaining chip in any upcoming talks with Russia.
The eastern frontline
The Kremlin’s invasion has become a war of attrition, with both sides grinding it out from labyrinth trenches and a frontline stretching more than 1,000km, from southern Kherson region to Kharkiv in the north-east.
Military officials, soldiers and analysts say the next few months will be a critical phase in the war, as Ukraine attempts to stabilise its defences and strengthen its eastern position in case it is forced by Trump into negotiations with Putin.
Ukraine is hoping to slow Russia’s offensive and seize the initiative by the time Trump takes office, as senior officials believe proving they are “fighters” and “winners” will help convince the president-elect to stand by them.
But Ukrainian officials admit that they are struggling to hold back the larger and better equipped Russian army amid manpower shortages and have plans to draft additional troops, though efforts to attract recruits are being hampered by military service being open-ended.
Putin has said he would only be interested in negotiations if Kyiv accepts all his demands, including stretching the Russian occupation to the entirety of four Ukrainian regions.
With momentum in Moscow’s favour and the Ukrainians in retreat, the Kremlin has few reasons to sit for peace talks now.
Since August, Russia has captured more than 1,200 sq km in Ukraine, according to Deep State, a Ukrainian war tracking group close to the defence ministry — double the territory Kyiv’s troops currently hold in the Kursk region.
Attacks on infrastructure
Russia launched about 120 missile and 90 drones at Ukraine on Sunday, in one of the largest air attacks of the war, targeting power facilities across the country that caused severe damage and led to the first emergency blackouts since summer.
Ukrainian air defences — including anti-aircraft missiles, mobile fire units, electronic warfare groups and western-supplied F-16 jets — took down more than 140 of them, said Zelenskyy. But several parts of the country were still left without power as emergency teams worked to restore services.
Drones have played a key role in the war, with both Russia and Ukraine utilising unmanned aerial vehicles as part of their military strategies.
Ukraine has used drones to strike Russian soil this year, including hitting a Moscow suburb, with the aim of disrupting the Kremlin’s war effort and bringing the conflict home to ordinary Russians.
In 2023, Ukrainian used drones to attack military facilities, munitions factories and energy infrastructure in Russia and are estimated to have sunk one-fifth of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
Russian minefields and fortifications coupled with constant drone surveillance and artillery strikes proved insurmountable during the much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive of summer 2023.
Civilian and cultural impact
The number of Ukrainians fleeing the war has made it one of the largest refugee crises in modern history.
A Financial Times investigation found that Ukrainian children who were abducted and taken to Russia in the early months of the Kremlin’s 2022 invasion have been put up for adoption by authorities, in one confirmed case under a false Russian identity.
The war has also led to thousands of cultural, medical and educational facilities across Ukraine being damaged or destroyed.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine
On February 24 2022, the world awoke to news that Russian missiles had struck targets across Ukraine and used tanks to blast through the border.
The invasion came after months of rare public warnings from western intelligence agencies. It would soon escalate into the largest conflict in Europe since the second world war.
Ukrainians call the past 10 years “the great war” because of Russia’s first military invasion of their country in February 2014, when troops without insignia began their takeover of the Crimean Peninsula. Months later, they would spill into the Donbas region, fomenting a war under the guise of a separatist uprising.
March 2022: Russia fails to capture Kyiv
The Russian attempt to take Ukraine’s capital was thwarted by a combination of factors, including geography, the attackers’ blundering and modern arms, as well as Ukraine’s speedy, grassroots effort to mobilise and its ingenuity with smartphones and pieces of foam mat.
May 2023: Battle for Bakhmut
Putin hailed his first major victory after the early days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in May 2023, after his forces captured Bakhmut following a gruelling nine-month battle that reduced the city to ruins.
Many of the estimated to 30,000 men killed were convicts recruited by the Wagner Group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who a month later staged a mutiny against Moscow and then died in a plane crash in August 2023.
Development by Martin Stabe, Alan Smith, Emma Lewis, Joanna S Kao, Sam Learner and Ændra Rininsland
Read the full article here
