Russia thought it’d take days to grab Ukraine. 4 years later struggle rages on : NPR

KYIV, Ukraine, and MOSCOW — When the Kremlin launched its all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the assumption in Moscow, and far of the West, was that Russian forces would take the nation in a matter of days.

As a substitute, what the Kremlin calls a “particular army operation” has develop into the largest land struggle in Europe since World Struggle II and has lasted longer than the Soviet military’s combat in opposition to Nazi Germany. Russia’s struggle on Ukraine is a grinding struggle of attrition. Ukraine has managed to carry a a lot bigger military to minimal positive factors whereas adjusting to a life underneath fixed siege and grief. Each nations have suffered huge casualties.

Efforts to discover a negotiated settlement to the battle seem largely at an deadlock. Throughout his marketing campaign within the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump famously claimed he might finish the struggle in a day as soon as he returned to the White Home. A 12 months of U.S. diplomatic efforts have introduced Russian and Ukrainian envoys to the desk however no nearer to a consensus. Sticking factors embody claims over territory, reparations and safety ensures.

With the struggle now getting into its fifth 12 months, here’s a snapshot of its key developments and the place it might be headed sooner or later.

The battlefield image

Dynamic shifts on the battlefield — with giant swaths of Ukrainian land altering arms in offensives and counteroffensives within the early years of the struggle — have since given solution to a battle of inches. On the peak of Russia’s positive factors in 2022, its forces had seized greater than 26% of Ukrainian territory, in line with the U.S.-based Institute for the Research of Struggle. Immediately Russia controls simply over 19% of Ukraine, a determine that features the Crimean Peninsula and elements of japanese Ukraine seized in 2014. Russia continues to have a bonus in males and matériel — components which have led to latest territorial positive factors in opposition to overstretched Ukrainian defenses. But the Russian advance has come at a glacial tempo and with huge losses. For all of the Kremlin’s claims of battlefield momentum, Russian forces have gained lower than 1.5% of further Ukrainian territory since 2023.

Drone struggle

A Ukrainian serviceman operates a drone throughout a racing competitors, which simulates fight circumstances, in Kamianets-Podilskyi, Khmelnytskyi area, on Oct. 5, 2025, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Yuriy Dyachshyn/AFP by way of Getty Photographs

disguise caption

toggle caption

Yuriy Dyachshyn/AFP by way of Getty Photographs

Know-how has shifted the character of the combat since 2022. Drones have been initially used for reconnaissance and recognizing enemy positions. Now practically each Ukrainian and Russian unit makes use of drones fitted with explosives to hold out airstrikes on buildings, tanks and enemy positions — and even to chase down and kill particular person troopers. Russia often launches Shaheds, Iranian-designed assault drones that resemble small planes, at Ukrainian cities — typically hitting properties and civilian infrastructure. Ukraine has additionally turned to air drones to routinely strike deep into Russian territory on the Kremlin’s struggle machine, together with oil refineries, army airfields and ammunition depots. There are fixed improvements. Russia launched fiber-optic drones that overcome Ukrainian digital jamming. Ukraine makes use of unmanned floor autos to evacuate the wounded, plant land mines and even launch assaults, and it has used sea drones to push Russia’s naval fleet out of the Black Sea.

Heavy army losses

A girl holds photographs of her lacking family as Ukrainian troopers return from captivity throughout a prisoner alternate between Russia and Ukraine in Ukraine’s Chernihiv area on Feb. 5.

Sergei Grits/AP

disguise caption

toggle caption

Sergei Grits/AP

Neither Russia nor Ukraine overtly acknowledges the complete extent of their very own struggle casualties — these troopers lifeless, wounded or lacking. In the meantime, exterior analyses recommend staggering losses on each side. Citing British and U.S. sources, the Middle for Strategic and Worldwide Research (CSIS) in Washington, D.C., places Russia’s whole losses at 1.2 million and Ukrainian ones at as much as 600,000 from February 2022 to December 2025. Of these casualties, the lifeless are estimated at as much as 325,000 for Russia and as much as 140,000 for Ukraine. The CSIS examine says Russia has suffered extra losses than any main energy in any battle since World Struggle II.

The toll on civilians

Individuals who don’t have any energy at house following Russia’s air assaults wait in line to obtain free sizzling meals in a residential neighborhood in Kyiv on Jan. 30.

Dan Bashakov/AP

disguise caption

toggle caption

Dan Bashakov/AP

The U.N. Human Rights Monitoring Mission has confirmed by way of documented proof that Russia’s struggle on Ukraine has killed greater than 15,000 Ukrainian civilians and injured one other 41,000. The actual rely is probably going greater as a result of U.N. human rights employees haven’t been capable of entry Russian-occupied areas just like the southern port metropolis of Mariupol, the place human rights teams say 1000’s have been killed, to independently affirm deaths.

Within the 12 months the Trump administration has sponsored talks to finish the struggle, U.S. support to Ukraine declined dramatically — by 99%, in line with the Kiel Institute for the World Economic system in Germany. Ukraine can safe U.S. weapons solely by shopping for them from Europe. Although the Europeans have stepped as much as some extent, the lack of army support — particularly air protection provides — have affected Ukrainian life. In 2025, extra Ukrainian civilians have been killed and injured by Russian assaults than in 2024. Russian missile strikes have additionally destroyed most of Ukraine’s power grid, leaving Ukrainian cities with out electrical energy and warmth for weeks through the coldest winter in years. Russia’s border areas have additionally confronted hardships, as Ukrainian drone assaults knocked out warmth and energy for native residents in reciprocal assaults.

Struggle refugees

Members of the Ukrainian neighborhood and their supporters collect at Dam Sq. in Amsterdam on Feb. 22, marking 4 years of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Georgios Kostomitsopoulos/NurPhoto by way of Getty Photographs

disguise caption

toggle caption

Georgios Kostomitsopoulos/NurPhoto by way of Getty Photographs

The combating has additionally displaced about 3.7 million Ukrainians internally and compelled greater than 5.3 million to depart Ukraine as refugees, in line with the Worldwide Group for Migration. In the meantime, Russia skilled its personal exodus, with younger Russian males particularly fleeing the nation to keep away from conscription into the struggle. Whereas estimates fluctuate, research say between 500,000 and 1 million individuals have left Russia since 2022, seemingly the most important inhabitants migration in another country because the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.

The lacking Ukrainian youngsters

Kids from japanese Ukraine’s Donetsk area, the location of heavy battles with Russian troops, wait to evacuate at a railway station in Lozova, Kharkiv area, on Sept. 26, 2025.

Andrii Marienko/AP

disguise caption

toggle caption

Andrii Marienko/AP

Ukraine says some 20,000 Ukrainian youngsters have been deported or forcibly moved from occupied territories by Russian authorities. An initiative led by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Carry Youngsters Again UA, says it has managed to repatriate about 2,000 of them. Zelenskyy stated late final 12 months that Ukraine has recognized 400 places in Russia with kidnapped Ukrainian youngsters.

Investigators with Yale College’s Humanitarian Analysis Lab revealed final September that Russia is routinely stripping these youngsters of their Ukrainian identification and even forcing some to endure army coaching. Russia has argued it merely eliminated youngsters from the entrance traces of the struggle to security. However in March 2023, the Worldwide Prison Courtroom (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin and his commissioner for kids’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, on prices of struggle crimes. Russia has rejected the ICC order, noting that it isn’t a signatory to the ICC constitution and doesn’t acknowledge the court docket’s authority.

Repression in Russia

A portrait of late Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny at a makeshift memorial arrange at Amsterdam’s Frederiksplein sq. on Feb. 16 marks two years since his dying in jail. 5 European nations, together with the U.Okay., France and Germany, stated that Navalny was killed by a uncommon toxin from a dart frog and that the Russian state was the prime suspect.

Laurens Niezen/ANP/AFP by way of Getty Photographs

disguise caption

toggle caption

Laurens Niezen/ANP/AFP by way of Getty Photographs

Following the 2022 invasion, the Kremlin handed an internet of repressive legal guidelines successfully outlawing criticism of the struggle effort or authorities. The legal guidelines pressured the closure and exile of main impartial media retailers and have had a profound affect on what data Russians entry and share on-line and of their every day lives. Main social media platforms, like Fb and YouTube, at the moment are blocked. Authorities have additionally tarred important voices as “overseas brokers” and civil society teams as “undesirable,” successfully criminalizing their work in Russia.

Main opposition figures have additionally been detained. In a very searing second, Russian opposition chief Alexei Navalny died in a distant Arctic jail underneath mysterious circumstances in February 2024. A latest report issued by 5 European nations claims that analyses of Navalny’s stays “conclusively confirmed” traces of epibatidine, a lethal frog toxin native to Latin America. The Kremlin continues to keep up that Navalny died from pure causes.

Western sanctions

The container terminal on the Vladivostok Industrial Sea Port within the Pacific metropolis of Vladivostok, in japanese Russia, on April 7, 2025.

AP

disguise caption

toggle caption

AP

4 years of unprecedented Western sanctions have bent however not damaged the Russian financial system. An exodus of Western manufacturers, together with McDonald’s, Starbucks and Apple, allowed Russian firms to mop up market share. The Kremlin has pivoted its financial system away from Europe and towards Asia and the World South. Russian power gross sales to China and India, particularly, have buoyed the Russian struggle machine. Some items getting into from neighboring states corresponding to Kazakhstan have meant that even manufacturers that deserted Russia can nonetheless be discovered.

But sturdy progress through the early years of the struggle, fueled by army expenditures, seems to be more and more in jeopardy. Development dropped off considerably in 2025 to 1%, with a contraction potential this 12 months. The Trump administration has imposed sanctions on two of Russia’s high oil exporters and threatened tariffs on Indian imports if India continues shopping for Russian crude.

The Trump issue

President Trump greets Russian President Vladimir Putin on Aug. 15, 2025, at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska.

Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

disguise caption

toggle caption

Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP

President Trump returned to workplace promising he might negotiate a fast finish to the battle. It has proved, by his personal admission, more difficult than he anticipated. Trump has often expressed frustration with Putin for persevering with to pummel Ukrainian cities, and he additionally authorised sanctions on Russian power giants Lukoil and Rosneft. The U.S. president and his envoys, nonetheless, have typically parroted Russian speaking factors whereas repeatedly pressuring Zelenskyy for main concessions. The Kremlin has additionally instructed that the U.S. stands to realize trillions of {dollars} in funding returns in Russia as soon as a peace settlement is reached and Western sanctions are lifted.

Peace negotiations

Delegations from america, Ukraine and Russia attend trilateral talks on the Russia-Ukraine struggle in Geneva on Feb. 17.

Ukrainian Nationwide Safety and Protection Council press workplace/AP

disguise caption

toggle caption

Ukrainian Nationwide Safety and Protection Council press workplace/AP

Trump has gotten the 2 sides to the negotiating desk, however months of those U.S.-led talks have been slowed down by Kremlin ultimatums that Ukraine give up territory, together with land not managed by Russia. Kyiv has refused these calls for. Zelenskyy says he is open to U.S. proposals to create a demilitarized zone, if Russia agrees to withdraw some forces and the U.S. and European allies provide Ukraine ironclad safety ensures. The Kremlin has equated European presents to ship peacekeepers as akin to Ukraine receiving NATO-like ensures, considered one of Putin’s acknowledged justifications for launching the invasion within the first place. Kremlin negotiators routinely seek advice from NATO’s enlargement eastward as one of many “root causes” of the battle that should be addressed for any lasting peace to emerge.