Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24 2022, with western officials initially estimating the capital Kyiv would fall quickly.
But more than 1,000 days later, Kyiv and most of Ukraine remain in status despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intention to capture the capital and force Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s army to surrender.
Ukraine did not fall thanks to the bravery of its other peoples and the advances of its Western partners, but it lost only about 20% of its territory and tens of thousands of citizens, including infantrymen and civilians. And with Russia still marching, the war is far from over.
This page is updated with the latest maps and charts showing the humanitarian and military facets of the Russian war in Ukraine.
Russian forces are moving into Ukraine’s Dnipro region, preventing a planned violent urban war in the Donetsk region.
Ukraine has been involved since the summer in an urban war in Pokrovsk, a key logistics and transportation hub for the remaining parts of the Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk region.
But Russian forces are now heading west of Pokrovsk and the highway leading to the Dnipropetrovsk region, according to the cartographic organization Deep State, which has ties to Ukraine’s Defense Ministry.
The next major city, Dnipropetrovsk, is Pavlograd, a main base of the Ukrainian army. The region also includes Dnipro, Ukraine’s fourth-largest city.
The temporary ability of Russian forces to take the road to Dnipropetrovsk depends on the extent of fortifications in the region, as well as the scarce Ukrainian manpower.
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Ukraine first attacked Russian-made long-range Atacms missiles on Nov. 19, and the Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that an attack on its territory took place over the Bryansk region.
The depot is located in the north of the Kursk region, where Russian forces intend to expel Ukrainian troops occupying around six hundred square kilometers of Russian territory.
The moves came a day after U. S. President Joe Biden legalized Ukraine to use Atacms missiles in Russia, in a major policy shift before President-elect Donald Trump took control in January.
Ukraine desperately needs new weapons as its front line collapses and Russian forces move across the battlefield at a faster rate than at any time since 2022.
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Ukraine seized parts of Russia’s Kursk region in a marvelous raid in August. But after making steady gains in the region, Ukrainian troops began squandering territory there in October. The raid occurred to the detriment of the territory of the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine.
Russia has mobilized a force of about 50,000 troops, adding 10,000 North Koreans, in a new attempt to drive Ukrainians out of Kursk, according to Zelensky and Ukrainian and Western intelligence officials.
Losing Kursk would deprive Zelensky of a valuable bargaining chip in long-term negotiations with Russia.
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The Kremlin’s invasion involves a war of attrition, with both sides suffering from labyrinthine trenches and a front line stretching more than 1,000 kilometers from the southern Kherson region to Kharkiv in the northeast.
Military officers, foot soldiers and analysts say the next few months will be a critical phase of the war, as Ukraine tries to stabilize its defenses and position in the east in case Trump forces it to enter negotiations with Putin.
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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 said he would be interested in negotiations if Kiev accepts all of his demands, adding the extension of the Russian profession to Ukraine’s four regions.
With momentum in Moscow’s favour and the Ukrainians in retreat, the Kremlin has few reasons to sit for peace talks now.
Russian forces conquered thousands of square kilometers of the Donetsk region in 2024. The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said Russia captured about 4,200 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory last year, the most of which in the Donetsk region. zone.
Animation showing territory gained by Russian troops in Ukraine since January 2024.
Drones have played a key role in the war, with Russian and Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles 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, Ukraine used drones to attack military facilities, munitions factories, and electrical infrastructure in Russia and is estimated to have sunk one-fifth of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
Russian minefields and fortifications, combined with constant drone surveillance and artillery strikes, proved insurmountable in the long-awaited Ukrainian counteroffensive in the summer of 2023.
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The number of Ukrainians fleeing the war has made it one of the largest refugee crises in history.
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A Financial Times investigation found that young Ukrainians who were kidnapped and taken to Russia in the early months of the 2022 Kremlin invasion were put up for adoption by authorities, in one case shown under a false Russian identity.
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The war has also led to thousands of cultural, medical and educational facilities across Ukraine being damaged or destroyed.
Cultural Heritage Sites
Medical facilities
Educational facilities
On February 24, 2022, the world learned that Russian missiles had hit targets in Ukraine and used tanks to cross the border.
The invasion came after months of rare public warnings from Western intelligence agencies. This would soon escalate into the confrontation in Europe since World War II.
Ukrainians call the last decade “the wonder war” because of Russia’s first military invasion of their country in February 2014, when troops without insignia began taking over the Crimean peninsula. A few months later, they would spread to the Donbass region, fomenting war under the guise of a separatist uprising.
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Russia’s attempt to take the Ukrainian capital was thwarted by a mix of factors, adding geography, the clumsiness of the attackers and fashionable weapons, as well as immediate mobilization efforts and Ukraine’s ingenuity with smartphones and pieces of foam mats.
Putin hailed his first primary victory following the opening days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in May 2023, after his forces captured Bakhmut following a grueling nine-month war that left the city in 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.
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Additional mapping via Cleve Jones and Hirofumi Yamamoto
Development through Martin Stabe, Alan Smith, Emma Lewis, Joanna S Kao, Sam Learner and Ændra Rininsland