Russia Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine
On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine — the largest land war in Europe since World War II. An initial push on Kyiv failed; fighting concentrated in the east and south. Ukraine received massive Western military and financial support; Russia faced unprecedented economic sanctions. The war mobilized Ukrainian national identity, triggered Finland and Sweden to join NATO, prompted European nations to dramatically increase defense spending, and caused the worst global food and energy crisis in decades. From 2024 through 2025 the front line hardened into a roughly 1,200-kilometre attritional stalemate: Russia made slow, costly gains in the Donbas — including the eventual fall of Avdiivka in February 2024 and continued pressure around Pokrovsk — while Ukraine mounted a limited cross-border incursion into Russia's Kursk Oblast in August 2024 before being largely pushed back over the following months. Both sides increasingly relied on mass drone use, glide bombs, and long-range strikes on energy infrastructure and logistics rather than large mechanized offensives, and Russian losses reached historically extreme levels relative to territory gained. Donald Trump's return to the presidency in January 2025 brought renewed, high-profile US-led diplomacy: envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner shuttled between Moscow, Kyiv, and Washington through the year, Trump met Putin directly in Alaska in August 2025 without a breakthrough, and a controversial 28-point US-Russian-drafted framework leaked in November 2025 — reportedly including caps on Ukraine's military and a freeze on its NATO membership, and requiring Ukrainian territorial concessions — drew accusations from Kyiv and European capitals that it amounted to a capitulation, and was not adopted. By mid-2026 no comprehensive ceasefire or peace settlement had been reached, and the war remained unresolved: Trump secured a brief, partial three-day ceasefire and prisoner exchange in May 2026, but sustained fighting resumed, with Russia relaunching mass missile strikes on Kyiv and other cities in late June and July 2026 and Ukraine expanding a sustained campaign of mid- and long-range drone strikes against Russian military and shipping targets, including a July 2026 campaign against vessels in the Sea of Azov. Analysts described the conflict by mid-2026 as a phase of attritional manoeuvre in which drones, long-range strikes, and logistics interdiction — rather than large territorial offensives — increasingly determined outcomes, with neither side possessing the operational capacity for a decisive breakthrough and the core dispute over Ukrainian territory and security guarantees still unresolved.
- Year: 2022 CE
- Category: Military
