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The War in Ukraine Is a Colonial War

By Timothy Snyder

When Vladimir Putin denies the reality of the Ukrainian state, he is speaking the familiar language of empire. For five hundred years, European conquerors called the societies that they encountered “tribes,” treating them as incapable of governing themselves. As we see in the ruins of Ukrainian cities, and in the Russian practice of mass killing, rape, and deportation, the claim that a nation does not exist is the rhetorical preparation for destroying it.

Empire’s story divides subjects from objects. As the philosopher Frantz Fanon argued, colonizers see themselves as actors with purpose, and the colonized as instruments to realize the imperial vision. Putin took a pronounced colonial turn when returning to the Presidency a decade ago. In 2012, he described Russia as a “state-civilization,” which by its nature absorbed smaller cultures such as Ukraine’s. The next year, he claimed that Russians and Ukrainians were joined in “spiritual unity.” In a long essay on “historical unity,” published last July, he argued that Ukraine and Russia were a single country, bound by a shared origin. His vision is of a broken world that must be restored through violence. Russia becomes itself only by annihilating Ukraine.

As the objects of this rhetoric, and of the war of destruction that it sanctions, Ukrainians grasp all of this. Ukraine does have a history, of course, and Ukrainians do constitute a nation. But empire enforces objectification on the periphery and amnesia at the center. Thus modern Russian imperialism includes memory laws that forbid serious discussion of the Soviet past. It is illegal for Russians to apply the word “war” to the invasion of Ukraine. It is also illegal to say that Stalin began the Second World War as Hitler’s ally, and used much the same justification to attack Poland as Putin is using to attack Ukraine. When the invasion began, in February, Russian publishers were ordered to purge mentions of Ukraine from textbooks.

Faced with the Kremlin’s official mixture of fantasy and taboo, the temptation is to prove the opposite: that it is Ukraine rather than Russia that is eternal, that it is Ukrainians, not Russians, who are always right, and so on. Yet Ukrainian history gives us something more interesting than a mere counter-narrative to empire. We can find Ukrainian national feeling at a very early date. In contemporary Ukraine, though, the nation is not so much anti-colonial, a rejection of a particular imperial power, as post-colonial, the creation of something new.

Southern Ukraine, where Russian troops are now besieging cities and bombing hospitals , was well known to the ancients. In the founding myth of Athens, the goddess Athena gives the city the gift of the olive tree. In fact, the city could grow olives only because it imported grain from ports on the Black Sea coast. The Greeks knew the coast, but not the hinterland, where they imagined mythical creatures guarding fields of gold and ambrosia. Here already was a colonial view of Ukraine: a land of fantasy, where those who take have the right to dream.

The city of Kyiv did not exist in ancient times, but it is very old—about half a millennium older than Moscow. It was probably founded in the sixth or seventh century, north of any territory seen by Greeks or controlled by Romans. Islam was advancing, and Christianity was becoming European. The Western Roman Empire had fallen, leaving a form of Christianity subordinate to a pope. The Eastern (Byzantine) Empire remained, directing what we now call the Orthodox Church. As Rome and Constantinople competed for converts, peoples east of Kyiv converted to Islam. Kyivans spoke a Slavic language that had no writing system, and practiced a paganism without idols or temples.

Putin’s vision of “unity” relates to a baptism that took place in this setting. In the ninth century, a group of Vikings known as the Rus arrived in Kyiv. Seeking a southbound route for their slave trade, they found the Dnipro River, which runs through the city. Their chieftains then fought over a patchwork of territories in what is now Ukraine, Belarus, and the northeast of Russia—with Kyiv always as the prize. In the late tenth century, a Viking named Valdemar took the city, with the help of a Scandinavian army. He initially governed as a pagan. But, around 987, when the Byzantines faced an internal revolt, he sensed an opportunity. He came to the emperor’s aid, and received his sister’s hand in marriage. In the process, Valdemar converted to Christianity.

Putin claims that this messy sequence of events reveals the will of God to bind Russia and Ukraine forever. The will of God is easy to misunderstand; in any case, modern nations did not exist at the time, and the words “Russia” and “Ukraine” had no meaning. Valdemar was typical of the pagan Eastern European rulers of his day, considering multiple monotheistic options before choosing the one that made the most strategic sense. The word “Rus” no longer meant Viking slavers but a Christian polity. Its ruling family now intermarried with others, and the local people were treated as subjects to be taxed rather than as bodies to be sold.

Yet no rule defined who would take power after a Kyivan ruler’s death. Valdemar took a Byzantine princess as his wife, but he had a half a dozen others, not to mention a harem of hundreds of women. When he died in 1015, he had imprisoned one of his sons, Sviatopolk, and was making war upon another, Yaroslav. Sviatopolk was freed after his father’s death, and killed three of his brothers, but he was defeated on the battlefield by Yaroslav. Other sons entered the fray, and Yaroslav didn’t rule alone until 1036. The succession had taken twenty-one years. At least ten other sons of Valdemar had died in the meantime.

These events do not reveal a timeless empire, as Putin claims. But they do suggest the importance of a succession principle, a theme very important in Ukrainian-Russian relations today. The Ukrainian transliteration of “Valdemar” is “Volodymyr,” the name of Ukraine’s President. In Ukraine, power is transferred through democratic elections: when Volodymyr Zelensky won the 2019 Presidential election , the sitting President accepted defeat. The Russian transliteration of the same name is “Vladimir.” Russia is brittle: it has no succession principle , and it’s unclear what will happen when Vladimir Putin dies or is forced from power. The pressure of mortality confirms the imperial thinking. An aging tyrant, obsessed by his legacy, seizes upon a lofty illusion that seems to confer immortality: the “unity” of Russia and Ukraine.

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In the Icelandic sagas, Yaroslav is remembered as the Lame; in Eastern Europe, he is the Wise, the giver of laws. Yet he did not solve the problem of succession. Following his reign, the lands around Kyiv fragmented again and again. In 1240, the city fell to the Mongols; later, most of old Rus was claimed by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then the largest state in Europe. Lithuania borrowed from Kyiv a grammar of politics, as well as a good deal of law. For a couple of centuries, its grand dukes also ruled Poland. But, in 1569, after the Lithuanian dynasty died out, a Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth was formalized, and the territories of Ukraine were placed under Polish jurisdiction.

This was a crucial change. After 1569, Kyiv was no longer a source of law but an object of it—the archetypal colonial situation. It was colonization that set off Ukraine from the former territories of Rus, and its manner generated qualities still visible today: suspicion of the central state, organization in crisis, and the notion of freedom as self-expression, despite a powerful neighbor.

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, all the forces of Europe’s globalization seemed to bear down on Ukraine. Polish colonization resembled and in some measure enabled the European colonization of the wider world. Polish nobles introduced land-management practices—along with land managers, most of whom were Jewish—that allowed the establishment of profitable plantations. Local Ukrainian warlords rushed to imitate the system, and adopted elements of Polish culture, including Western Christianity and the Polish language. In an age of discovery, enserfed peasants labored for a world market.

Ukraine’s colonization coincided with the Renaissance, and with a spectacular flowering of Polish culture. Like other Renaissance thinkers, Polish scholars in Ukraine resuscitated ancient knowledge, and sometimes overturned it. It was a Pole, Copernicus, who undid the legacy of Ptolemy’s “ Almagest ” and confirmed that the Earth orbits the sun. It was another Pole, Maciej of Miechów, who corrected Ptolemy’s “ Geography ,” clearing Ukrainian maps of gold and ambrosia. As in ancient times, however, the tilling of the black earth enabled tremendous wealth, raising the question of why those who labored and those who profited experienced such different fates.

The Renaissance considered questions of identity through language. Across Europe, there was a debate as to whether Latin, now revived, was sufficient for the culture, or whether vernacular spoken languages should be elevated for the task. In the early fourteenth century, Dante answered this question in favor of Italian; English, French, Spanish, and Polish writers created other literary languages by codifying local vernaculars. In Ukraine, literary Polish emerged victorious over the Ukrainian vernacular, becoming the language of the commercial and intellectual élite. In a way, this was typical: Polish was a modern language, like English or Italian. But it was not the local language in Ukraine. Ukraine’s answer to the language question was deeply colonial, whereas in the rest of Europe it could be seen as broadly democratic.

The Reformation brought a similar result: local élites converted to Protestantism and then to Roman Catholicism, alienating them further from an Orthodox population. The convergence of colonization, the Renaissance, and the Reformation was specific to Ukraine. By the sixteen-forties, the few large landholders generally spoke Polish and were Catholic, and those who worked for them spoke Ukrainian and were Orthodox. Globalization had generated differences and inequalities that pushed the people to rebellion.

Ukrainians on the battlefield today rely on no fantasy of the past to counter Putin’s. If there is a precursor that matters to them, it is the Cossacks, a group of free people who lived on the far reaches of the Ukrainian steppe, making their fortress on an island in the middle of the Dnipro. Having escaped the Polish system of landowners and peasants, they could choose to be “registered Cossacks,” paid for their service in the Polish Army. Still, they were not citizens, and more of them wished to be registered than the Polish-Lithuanian parliament would allow.

The rebellion began in 1648, when an influential Cossack, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, saw his lands seized and his son attacked by a Polish noble. Finding himself beyond the protection of the law, Khmelnytsky turned his fellow-Cossacks toward revolt against the Polish-speaking, Roman Catholic magnates who dominated Ukraine. The accumulated cultural, religious, and economic grievances of the people quickly transformed the revolt into something very much like an anti-colonial uprising, with violence directed not only against the private armies of the magnates but against Poles and Jews generally. The magnates carried out reprisals against peasants and Cossacks, impaling them on stakes. The Polish-Lithuanian cavalry fought what had been their own Cossack infantry. Each side knew the other very well.

In 1651, the Cossacks, realizing that they needed help, turned to an Eastern power, Muscovy, about which they knew little. When Kyivan Rus had collapsed, most of its lands had been absorbed by Lithuania, but some of its northeastern territories remained under the dominion of a Mongol successor state. There, in a new city called Moscow, leaders known as tsars had begun an extraordinary period of territorial expansion, extending their realm into northern Asia. In 1648, the year that the Cossack uprising began, a Muscovite explorer reached the Pacific Ocean.

The war in Ukraine allowed Muscovy to turn its attention to Europe. In 1654, the Cossacks signed an agreement with representatives of the tsar. The Muscovite armies invaded Poland-Lithuania from the east; soon after, Sweden invaded from the north, setting off the crisis that Polish history remembers as “the Deluge.” Peace was eventually made between Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy, in 1667, and Ukraine was divided more or less down the middle, along the Dnipro. After a thousand years of existence, Kyiv was politically connected to Moscow for the first time.

The Cossacks were something like an early national movement. The problem was that their struggle against one colonial power enabled another. In 1721, Muscovy was renamed the Russian Empire, in reference to old Rus. Poland-Lithuania never really recovered from the Deluge, and was partitioned out of existence between 1772 and 1795. Russia thereby claimed the rest of Ukraine—everything but a western district known as Galicia, which went to the Habsburgs. Around the same time, in 1775, the Cossacks lost their status. They did not gain the political rights they had wanted, nor did the peasants who supported them gain control of the black earth. Polish landowners remained in Ukraine, even as state power became Russian.

Whereas Putin’s story of Ukraine is about destiny, the Ukrainian recollection of the Cossacks is about unfulfilled aspirations. The country’s national anthem, written in 1862, speaks of a young people upon whom fate has yet to smile, but who will one day prove worthy of the “Cossack nation.”

The nineteenth century was the age of national revivals. When the Ukrainian movement began in imperial Russian Kharkov—today Kharkiv , and largely in ruins—the focus was on the Cossack legacy. The next move was to locate history in the people, as an account of continuous culture. At first, such efforts did not seem threatening to imperial rule. But, after the Russian defeat in the Crimean War, in 1856, and the insult of the Polish uprising of 1863 and 1864, Ukrainian culture was declared not to exist. It was often deemed an invention of Polish élites—an idea that Putin endorsed in his essay on “historical unity.” Leading Ukrainian thinkers emigrated to Galicia, where they could speak freely.

The First World War brought the principle of self-determination, which promised a release from imperial rule. In practice, it was often used to rescue old empires, or to build new ones. A Ukrainian National Republic was established in 1917, as the Russian Empire collapsed into revolution. In 1918, in return for a promise of foodstuffs, the country was recognized by Austria and Germany . Woodrow Wilson championed self-determination, but his victorious entente ignored Ukraine, recognizing Polish claims instead. Vladimir Lenin invoked the principle as well, though he meant only that the exploitation of national questions could advance class revolution. Ukraine soon found itself at the center of the Russian civil war, in which the Red Army, led by the Bolsheviks, and the White Army, fighting for the defunct empire, both denied Ukraine’s right to sovereignty. In this dreadful conflict, which followed four years of war, millions of people died, among them tens of thousands of Jews.

Though the Red Army ultimately prevailed, Bolshevik leaders knew that the Ukrainian question had to be addressed. Putin claims that the Bolsheviks created Ukraine, but the truth is close to the opposite. The Bolsheviks destroyed the Ukrainian National Republic. Aware that Ukrainian identity was real and widespread, they designed their new state to account for it. It was largely thanks to Ukraine that the Soviet Union took the form it did, as a federation of units with national names.

The failure of self-determination in Ukraine was hardly unique. Almost all of the new states created after the First World War were destroyed, within about two decades, by Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, or both. In the political imaginations of both regimes, Ukraine was the territory whose possession would allow them to break the postwar order, and to transform the world in their own image. As in the sixteenth century, it was as if all the forces of world history were concentrated on a single country.

Stalin spoke of an internal colonization, in which peasants would be exploited so that the Soviet economy could imitate—and then overtake—capitalism. His policy of collective agriculture, in which land was seized from farmers, was particularly unwelcome in Ukraine, where the revolution had finally got rid of the (still largely Polish) landholders. Yet the black earth of Ukraine was central to Stalin’s plans, and he moved to subdue it. In 1932 and 1933, he enforced a series of policies that led to around four million people dying of hunger or related disease. Soviet propaganda blamed the Ukrainians, claiming that they were killing themselves to discredit Soviet rule—a tactic echoed, today, by Putin. Europeans who tried to organize famine relief were dismissed as Nazis.

The actual Nazis saw Stalin’s famine as a sign that Ukrainian agriculture could be exploited for another imperial project: their own. Hitler wanted Soviet power overthrown, Soviet cities depopulated, and the whole western part of the country colonized. His vision of Ukrainians was intensely colonial : he imagined that he could deport and starve them by the millions, and exploit the labor of whoever remained. It was Hitler’s desire for Ukrainian land that brought millions of Jews under German control. In this sense, colonial logic about Ukraine was a necessary condition for the Holocaust .

Between 1933 and 1945, Soviet and Nazi colonialism made Ukraine the most dangerous place in the world . More civilians were killed in Ukraine, in acts of atrocity, than anywhere else. That reckoning doesn’t even include soldiers: more Ukrainians died fighting the Germans, in the Second World War, than French, American, and British troops combined.

The major conflict of the war in Europe was the German-Soviet struggle for Ukraine, which took place between 1941 and 1945. But, when the war began, in 1939, the Soviet Union and Germany were de-facto allies, and jointly invaded Poland. At the time, what is now western Ukraine was southeastern Poland. A small group of Ukrainian nationalists there joined the Germans, understanding that they would seek to destroy the U.S.S.R. When it became clear that the Germans would fail, the nationalists left their service, ethnically cleansed Poles in 1943 and 1944, and then resisted the Soviets. In Putin’s texts, they figure as timeless villains, responsible for Ukrainian difference generally. The irony, of course, is that they emerged thanks to Stalin’s much grander collaboration with Hitler. They were crushed by Soviet power, in a brutal counter-insurgency, and today Ukraine’s far right polls at one to two per cent. Meanwhile, the Poles, whose ancestors were the chief victims of Ukrainian nationalism, have admitted nearly three million Ukrainian refugees , reminding us that there are other ways to handle history than stories of eternal victimhood.

After the war, western Ukraine was added to Soviet Ukraine, and the republic was placed under suspicion precisely because it had been under German occupation. New restrictions on Ukrainian culture were justified by a manufactured allocation of guilt. This circular logic—we punish you, therefore you must be guilty—informs Kremlin propaganda today. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, has argued that Russia had to invade Ukraine because Ukraine might have started a war. Putin, who has said the same, is clearly drawing on Stalin’s rhetoric. We are to understand that the Soviet victory in the Second World War left Russians forever pure and Ukrainians eternally guilty. At the funerals of Russian soldiers, grieving parents are told that their sons were fighting Nazis.

The history of the colonization of Ukraine, like the history of troubling and divisive subjects in general, can help us get free of myths. The past delivers to Putin several strands of colonial rhetoric, which he has combined and intensified. It also leaves us vulnerable to a language of exploitation: whenever we speak of “the Ukraine” instead of “Ukraine,” or pronounce the capital city in the Russian style , or act as if Americans can tell Ukrainians when and how to make peace, we are continuing imperial rhetoric by partaking in it.

Ukrainian national rhetoric is less coherent than Putin’s imperialism, and, therefore, more credible, and more human. Independence arrived in 1991, when the U.S.S.R was dissolved. Since then, the country’s politics have been marked by corruption and inequality, but also by a democratic spirit that has grown in tandem with national self-awareness. In 2004, an attempt to rig an election was defeated by a mass movement. In 2014, millions of Ukrainians protested a President who retreated from the E.U. The protesters were massacred, the President fled, and Russia invaded Ukraine for the first time. Again and again, Ukrainians have elected Presidents who seek reconciliation with Russia; again and again, this has failed. Zelensky is an extreme case: he ran on a platform of peace, only to be greeted with an invasion.

Ukraine is a post-colonial country, one that does not define itself against exploitation so much as accept, and sometimes even celebrate, the complications of emerging from it. Its people are bilingual, and its soldiers speak the language of the invader as well as their own. The war is fought in a decentralized way , dependent on the solidarity of local communities. These communities are diverse, but together they defend the notion of Ukraine as a political nation. There is something heartening in this. The model of the nation as a mini-empire, replicating inequalities on a smaller scale, and aiming for a homogeneity that is confused with identity, has worn itself out. If we are going to have democratic states in the twenty-first century, they will have to accept some of the complexity that is taken for granted in Ukraine.

The contrast between an aging empire and a new kind of nation is captured by Zelensky, whose simple presence makes Kremlin ideology seem senseless. Born in 1978, he is a child of the U.S.S.R., and speaks Russian with his family. A Jew, he reminds us that democracy can be multicultural. He does not so much answer Russian imperialism as exist alongside it, as though hailing from some wiser dimension. He does not need to mirror Putin; he just needs to show up. Every day, he affirms his nation by what he says and what he does.

Ukrainians assert their nation’s existence through simple acts of solidarity. They are not resisting Russia because of some absence or some difference, because they are not Russians or opposed to Russians. What is to be resisted is elemental: the threat of national extinction represented by Russian colonialism, a war of destruction expressly designed to resolve “the Ukrainian question.” Ukrainians know that there is not a question to be answered, only a life to be lived and, if need be, to be risked. They resist because they know who they are. In one of his very first videos after the invasion, when Russian propaganda claimed that he had fled Kyiv, Zelensky pointed the camera at himself and said, “The President is here.” That is it. Ukraine is here.

More on the War in Ukraine

How Ukrainians saved their capital .

A historian envisions a settlement among Russia, Ukraine, and the West .

How Russia’s latest commander in Ukraine could change the war .

The profound defiance of daily life in Kyiv .

The Ukraine crackup in the G.O.P.

A filmmaker’s journey to the heart of the war .

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The consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for international security – NATO and beyond

• Robert Pszczel
• 07 July 2022

February 24, 2022, is likely to engrave itself on the history template of the contemporary world. Russia’s unprovoked, unjustified and barbaric invasion of Ukraine is not only a manifestation of a huge security danger that has shattered peace in Europe.

More structurally, it has broken the entire security architecture built patiently on the continent over many decades, including international commitments agreed in the last 30 years. As the top UK general recently observed, it is dangerous to assume that the war on Ukraine is a limited conflict. This could be “ our 1937 moment “, and everything possible must be done in order to stop territorial expansion by force, thereby averting a war similar to the one that ravaged Europe 80 years ago. Mobilising our resources must start today.

The magnitude of damage resulting from the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is immense and still increasing. Whole cities – like Mariupol – are being razed to the ground. Pictured: City of Mariupol © CNN

This is also a war against the West

The magnitude of damage is immense and still increasing. Ukrainians (military and civilians alike) are being killed simply because they are Ukrainians. Whole cities – like Mariupol – are being razed to the ground. Evident atrocities fitting the criteria of war crimes are being perpetrated and accompanied by genocidal talk on Russian state TV. Hundreds of thousands of people, including children, have been forcefully deported to Russia. Over six million (at the time of writing) have had to flee Ukraine; many more have been internally displaced. Hospitals, infrastructure, cultural treasures, private homes and industrial centres are either destroyed or pillaged , with stolen goods being sent to Russia in an organised manner.

The suffering of Ukraine presents a moral challenge to Europe and the world. Human rights and the UN Charter have been trampled upon and our values mocked. Indifference is simply not an option. As convincingly explained by Nicholas Tenzer: this is a war against the West too.

According to its own terminology, Putin’s regime has chosen confrontation with the “collective West”, irrespective of the costs for Russia itself. All efforts comprising security and confidence-building measures, or institutional arrangements designed to preserve peace, suddenly look very fragile when faced with blunt force. After many months of Moscow engaging in sham dialogue and blatantly lying to other countries and institutions, including NATO and the OSCE, all trust has been eroded. Moreover, by creating economic shocks in the energy markets and weaponising famine as a political instrument, Russia has further globalised the consequences of its war.

Russian threats

Russia has also purposefully raised the level of risk for the possible use of nuclear weapons, the main goal primarily being to discourage Western Allies from offering military support to Ukraine and to instil fear in decision-makers. A long-held taboo that made an actual application of nuclear force unthinkable has been verbally discarded. While many experts calculate that risk to be low - not higher than five percent - Putin and his aides have chosen to abandon the rational caution exercised by the majority of his Soviet predecessors. Compared to Cold War practice, today, Kremlin propagandists and officials engage in highly irresponsible rhetoric advocating for the use of Russia’s nuclear arsenal against Ukraine, and possibly even against NATO states. This is backed by exercises (at least two this year) openly testing the Russian military’s ability to fire nuclear warheads at Western targets and protect Russia from possible counter-strikes. The Russian president has even shown his willingness to bring Belarus into the nuclear equation. Such brinkmanship has contributed to the return of nuclear arms into the power competition on a global stage.

Russia tests nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile Sarmat on 20 April 2022. © Reuters

With or without a nuclear threat dimension, Russia’s neighbours already have valid reasons to fear the Russian predator. They feel that, if not stopped in and by Ukraine, Putin may entertain aggression against other territories. The historic decision by both Finland and Sweden to apply for NATO membership points to the gravity of this threat. Small countries, such as Moldova and Georgia, but also Moscow’s formal allies such as Kazakhstan, may fear becoming Putin’s next target. The Kremlin has not made any attempt to assuage these fears, but has instead amplified them via direct menaces, propaganda and intimidation levers. Latest examples include curtailing gas supplies for political reasons, violating the airspace of a NATO country, threatening Lithuania, and using economic blackmail against Collective Security Treaty Organization member, Kazakhstan .

International response – good and not so good news

NATO and the European Union have, to a large extent, responded effectively in the first months of the war. US leadership has once again proven essential in successfully mobilising international efforts, especially in coordinating military support to Ukraine. NATO’s response to the war, balancing increasingly strong support to Ukraine with a justified reluctance to avoid open conflict with Russia, has been more or less vindicated. The majority of European countries turned to the tried and tested protective security umbrella of NATO, backed by American military capabilities. The G7 and EU have proven agile in tightening sanctions.

But, as the aggression continues, with Russia concentrating its efforts on gaining control of eastern and southern Ukraine via a war of attrition, Western unity is being tested. Divergent interpretations over sanctions that affect the transport of prohibited goods to Kaliningrad illustrate this problem.

The United Nations and the OSCE have not been able to offer meaningful responses, mainly due to the paralysing effect of Russia’s veto. Moreover, solidarity with Ukraine is not yet universal among all UN members.

Russia's long-term prospects are dim, but the threat is present

The myth of the invincible Russian military machine has evaporated in the space of a few weeks. The initial goals of the invasion have clearly not been achieved. Russian forces had to withdraw from the vicinity of Kyiv and were beaten off in many other locations. Ukrainian bravery and excellent use of limited resources (reinforced by foreign assistance) have so far proven a strong match against the badly led, poorly motivated and organised opponent, who are also experiencing logistic and technical problems, like faulty equipment. Corruption, a disease at the heart of the Russian state, displayed itself on a grand scale in the conduct of the military operation. Russia’s human losses are enormous and, in spite of censorship, becoming known to the Russian public.

The West can attempt to facilitate the export of grain from Ukraine in order to undermine the Russian blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports. Picture © Euromaidan Press

After more than four months of fighting, it is Russia that is experiencing manpower shortages. Fearing protests, the Kremlin is reluctant to call for mobilisation and is forced to take extraordinary steps (e.g. extending the age limit for volunteers ready to join the war), opting for a covert form of recruitment, like through the use of reservists. Numerous cases of conscription offices being set on fire in Russia suggest strongly that many young people are opposed to being sent to the frontlines in Ukraine. Almost four million Russians have travelled away from Russia so far in 2022, many choosing not to return for the time being. It is the largest such exodus since the Bolshevik revolution and could result in an enormous country-wide brain drain; something that is already being experienced in the IT sector.

Furthermore, the war has proven costly. On 27 May, Finance Minister Siluanov admitted that “money, huge resources are needed for the special operation”. He also confirmed that 8 trillion roubles (USD $120b) were required for the stimulus budget. Sanctions are starting to bite and will set the Russian economy - which is not able to produce a huge range of goods without foreign technology or parts – back for decades. Overall, unemployment is set to rise while GDP is unlikely to grow.

Putin has turned Russia into an international pariah and the country will not recover its reputation for a long time. In spite of the totalitarian nature of the Russian political system today, some signs of dissent (even amongst high ranking diplomats ) show a growing recognition of these facts. As one astute Russian expert put it, Putin has “amputated Russia’s future”. Russia is bound to be a weaker, less influential actor for the foreseeable future.

But barring Putin’s sudden departure - which would trigger a political transformation in Moscow - Russia will still present a dangerous threat to security in Europe. The regime, led by a delusional and ageing dictator, is prone to irrational decision-making. But the ruthless conduct of the military campaign (e.g. indiscriminate use of blanket shelling) means that even incompetent Russian forces can achieve gains against the Ukrainian military , though it is being modernised at record pace.

A transformative Madrid Summit, but the clock is ticking

Ukraine’s ability to contain Russian aggression will shape the security environment for years to come. At its Summit in Madrid in June 2022, NATO recognised this and offered an upgraded package of support. The volume and speed with which more sophisticated weapons systems (including heavy artillery, missile systems, armoured vehicles, and air defence systems) are supplied to Ukraine in the coming weeks will be decisive in preventing Russia from overrunning Ukraine’s defences. The onus is on individual Allies to ensure such help now.

Norwegian troops arrive to reinforce NATO Enhanced Forward Presence in Kaunas, Lithuania, on 27 February 2022. © Reuters

Special funding assistance will be required for long-term training and the modernisation of Ukrainian forces, de facto bringing them to NATO standards. This is necessary, as Ukrainian weapon stocks composed of Soviet-standards equipment are depleted, and availability of such arms outside Ukraine is limited too. Crowdfunding military equipment for Ukraine – already successful in Lithuania – shows that the general international public is sympathetic and wants to play its part in this process. To help Kyiv to counterbalance Russia’s size advantages and scorched earth tactics, Allies should consider more military exercises to show NATO’s readiness and strength. Creative solutions are also quickly needed to undermine the Russian blockade of Ukrainian Black Sea ports, facilitating the export of grain.

While the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997 – though effectively torn to shreds by Russia – was not formally revoked at the Summit, any self-restrictions which NATO took on as part of the agreement should now be considered null and void. Crucially, Allies have finally attributed responsibility where it lies, calling Russia “the most significant and direct threat to Allies’ security” in their new Strategic Concept.

Putin’s war has not yet tested the credibility of NATO’s Article 5 collective defence guarantees. Thus far, the very existence of Article 5, coupled with NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence (which now includes more than 40 000 forces under direct NATO’s operational command), have offered sufficient deterrence. But Putin’s increasingly irrational behaviour together with Moscow’s readiness to use the most destructive missiles and weapons systems against foreign territory targets (something practiced in Syria) in the immediate vicinity of NATO territory creates a new reality. Moscow has shown its readiness to use indiscriminate force for no justifiable military reasons and to engage in war crimes, all while Putin openly discusses the reclamation of lands held by tsarist Russia. Not surprisingly, NATO Allies bordering Russia are concerned by the potential loss – even temporary - of parts of their territory, and having seen the obliteration of Mariupol and Kharkiv, have become alarmed by direct missile threats to their cities and critical infrastructure.

Sanctions are starting to impact the Russian economy. Pictured: Russians queue up to withdraw cash from an ATM in St Petersburg. © Reuters

A more ruthless form of deterrence, by denial rather than punishment, based on a beefed-up forward defence seems the only appropriate response. The new NATO Strategic Concept , which was adopted in Madrid on 29 June, explicitly takes NATO in that direction (para. 21). Substantial and persistent military presence, backed by the prepositioning of equipment and strategic pre-assigning of combat forces is now part of the new NATO Force Model. The goal of massively increasing the availability of troops at high readiness is essential for effective deterrence. But concrete pledges of national contributions, like those announced by US President Biden on 29 June, must follow quickly from all Allies.

The credibility of collective defence will also depend on the quick implementation of already-announced pledges for increased defence spending and the prioritisation of defence planning efforts based on the scenario of large-scale conflict in Europe. In this context, appropriate stockpiles of military equipment are essential. As current levels are eminently insufficient, procurement practices and defence industry production capacity must be adapted, and stocks augmented quickly.

Paragraphs 28 and 29 of the new Strategic Concept leave no ambiguity on the continued role played by nuclear weapons as the ultimate guarantee of Allied security. But to disable the corrosive effect of Moscow’s nuclear blackmail against Allies, a more robust declaratory nuclear policy by NATO is in order. Moreover, the use of nuclear weapons against targets in Ukraine – however improbable - cannot be ruled out. Allies should thus consider, as a matter of urgency, persuasive signalling to Russia about possible conventional military responses (e.g. a disabling of Russian military targets in the Black Sea) that would come as a result of such acts. Only the certainty of retaliation can dissuade the Kremlin from seriously contemplating such an option.

Concrete decisions will matter more than any new organisational organigrams, and sophisticated plans or strategies are valuable only as long as they are made real. Russia has started to relish its role as a predator, and it is using brutal force to achieve its imperialist goals. Even weakened, Russia remains capable of inflicting heavy damage upon others. Only strong deterrence and credible force will be able to stop it. Counter-intuitively, preparing for a possible war with Russia is the best approach to prevent it.

Meeting of the North Atlantic Council at the level of Heads of State and Government – NATO Summit in Madrid, Spain, 29 June 2022. © NATO

The collective West (and specifically NATO) can count on its likely ability to contain an aggressive Russia, at least in the long run. But Ukraine’s defeat of the aggressor is the indispensable goal in this context as it would severely limit Russia’s ability to attack other countries, provide time to augment collective defence and consolidate international unity against aggression. Madrid Summit decisions have supplied key elements of the required strategy. There is no time to lose in implementing them.

Ukraine recap: Russia intensifies its air war as Kyiv begs for western military aid

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The air war in Ukraine has intensified considerably over the past few months, with a dramatic increase in the number of sorties being flown by Russia’s airforce. Some observers believe that, having gained a degree of initiative on the ground – for example, with the capture of the strategically important city of Avdiivka in the eastern Donetsk region – the Kremlin’s war planners want to capitalise on this by maintaining the momentum.

Accordingly, Russia has intensified its assault on Ukraine’s defences, while maintaining the attacks on power infrastructure that have been a key strategy since it launched its invasion in February 2022.

The latest blow was the destruction, on April 11, of the largest power-generating plant in Ukraine’s Kyiv region. The Trypilska thermal power plant (TPP) was the largest supplier of electricity to the Kyiv, Cherkasy and Zhytomyr regions. It was the last of three major plants run by power generation company Centrenergo still in operation – one in the Donetsk region was occupied by Russian troops in the summer of 2022, and the second, in Kharkiv, was destroyed in a Russian attack in March.

There has been little, if any, good news for Ukraine’s war planners in recent months, writes Christopher Morris of the University of Portsmouth. Morris, an expert in military strategy, points to recent Russian advances west of Avdiivka and other pressure points along Ukraine’s frontlines as evidence of increasing Russian confidence that the tide might be turning their way.

Morris believes that now more than ever, Kyiv’s western allies need to heed the pleas of Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as he begs them to send more weapons. Time is not on his side. The Washington Post recently ran a story detailing what it called Donald Trump’s “secret, long-shot plan to end the war in Ukraine”, which would involve “pushing Ukraine to cede Crimea and the Donbas border region to Russia”.

There’s no indication from Zelensky that he’d give any of Trump’s suggestions houseroom – and it also appears extremely unlikely from what Vladimir Putin has said that the Russian president would want to stop there anyway. But if Trump does win the US presidential election in November, it seems very unlikely that Kyiv can continue to count on US help. And that would shift the balance decisively in Russia’s favour.

Read more: Ukraine war: battlefield tipping in Russia's favour as Kyiv begs allies for more arms

As we have noted before in our coverage of the conflict, Russia has successfully transitioned its economy on to a wartime footing, and its armaments industry is now operating to a capacity greater than many experts believed it was capable of two years ago.

Moscow has also proved to be good at adapting and improving its stock of Soviet-era weaponry for use on the modern battlefield. An example of such ingenuity is the way its technicians have adapted its old “dumb bombs”, basically unchanged since the second world war – the sort of munitions you dropped from an aircraft overflying a target – into what are known as “glide bombs”.

As military historian Gerald Hughes of the University of Aberystwyth writes , glide bombs are dumb bombs with wings and a fairly rudimentary guidance system attached. They have a range of about 70km and are much cheaper than other air-launched missiles. Russia’s use of these guided missiles has increased by 1,600% over the past 12 months, with the result that Ukraine’s defences – and cities such as Kharkiv – are taking a pounding.

Meanwhile, Zelensky continues to plead for arms. And if the US politicians dragging their heels over signing Joe Biden’s aid package into law need a really potent message that Ukraine requires more and better air defence systems, then the havoc being caused by these relatively cheap and unsophisticated weapons should be enough.

Read more: Ukraine war: Russia's devastating use of Soviet-era 'glide bombs' shows how urgently Kyiv needs air defence systems

Since Vladimir Putin sent his war machine into Ukraine on February 24 2022, The Conversation has called upon some of the leading experts in international security, geopolitics and military tactics to help our readers understand the big issues . You can also subscribe to our fortnightly recap of expert analysis of the conflict in Ukraine.

Our colleagues in the US have published an article by Tatsiana Kulakevich, a scholar of eastern Europe at the University of South Florida, which delves into the politics being played out in the US over providing arms to Ukraine. Kulakevich believes the US is very unlikely to abandon Ukraine to its fate.

One reason is the increased threat this will pose for Nato, whose member states sharing a border with Russia are already extremely nervous about the prospect of an emboldened Putin, flushed with military success, taking advantage of an isolationist US to indulge in further military adventures.

But Kulakevich also points to the steady and inexorable rise of China as another reason the US can’t afford to assume an isolationist position. Put simply, Washington needs Europe to compete with Beijing. She quotes US Navy admiral Samuel J. Paparo, who said in February 2024 that Russia’s potential loss in Ukraine is “a deterrence in the western Pacific and directly reassures partners”.

Read more: House of Representatives holds off on Ukraine aid package − here's why the US has a lot at stake in supporting Ukraine

Nervous Nato gears up

The possible reelection of Trump as US president is focusing minds across Nato. You may remember Trump quipped back in February that he would “encourage” Russia to attack any of the US’s Nato allies whom he considers not to have paid their fair share of the budget.

While he later dismissed this as campaign hyperbole, most observers believe that Trump is less interested in European security and the fortunes of the Nato alliance – which recently celebrated 75 years without a major war in Europe – than any of his predecessors, and certainly the current incumbent.

Michelle Bentley, a reader in international relations at Royal Holloway University of London, believes that Nato members need to “Trump-proof” their defence policies as a matter of urgency. She says European countries need to increase their defence spending to cold war levels, and that more cooperation to reduce the alliance’s dependence on the US will also be important.

While there are signs this is already happening, Bentley says that, as November approaches, it will increasingly be a priority.

Read more: Waiting for Trump to be re-elected is wrong – Nato leaders need to Trump-proof their policies now

Another sign of how seriously some of Russia’s neighbours are taking the threat of an emboldened Putin is the fact that many countries are either beefing up their conscription policies or thinking about doing so.

Rod Thornton, a defence expert at King’s College London, has been looking at conscription and national service policies across a range of European countries, and writes that the war in Ukraine has served as spur for the reintroduction of the call-up across the continent. France and Germany, which both got rid of conscription (Germany as recently as 2011), are now talking about reintroducing it.

Sweden, which recently joined Nato, dropped conscription in 2018 but has brought it back while introducing what it calls its “total defence service”. This will increase the number of people called into uniform from 4,000 a year to 100,000. The Baltic countries, which feel particularly vulnerable as a result of sharing a border with Russia, are all reviewing their conscription numbers.

There’s even been talk of bringing back national service in the UK, with newspaper columnists citing falling numbers in Britain’s armed forces as an example of how far the country has fallen as a military power. Thus far, though, it remains just that: talk.

Read more: Ukraine war: why many Nato countries are thinking of introducing conscription and the issues that involves

China and Russia cosy up

Days before Putin sent his war machine into Ukraine, he met with Chinese president Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Beijing Winter Olympics, where the pair posed for photos and declared a “no-limits friendship”. Now, we’re told, the two countries have taken this even further (if this were rhetorically possible) after Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, travelled to meet his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, in Beijing this week.

We asked Natasha Kuhrt, an international security expert from King’s College London, what messages the west should draw from what we know about their conversation. Her verdict is that increased cooperation between the two countries, which pointedly talked of the west’s “cold war thinking” and US “bullying”, should be taken very seriously indeed.

She concludes: “At the 2022 Madrid summit, Nato belatedly acknowledged the importance of the Russia-China relationship, and the worst-case scenario of a two-front war. This meeting does not diminish those fears.”

Read more: How have China and Russia beefed up their relationship after Ukraine war wobble? Expert Q&A

Ukraine Recap is available as a fortnightly email newsletter. Click here to get our recaps directly in your inbox.

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EXPLAINER: Why Did Russia Invade Ukraine?

Experts say the cause of the military conflict can be tied to a complicated history, Russia’s tensions with NATO and the ambitions of Vladimir Putin.

Why Russia Invaded Ukraine

ARIS MESSINIS | AFP via Getty Images

A man sits outside his destroyed building after bombings on the eastern Ukraine town of Chuguiv, on Feb. 24, 2022.

Predictions of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine came true in the early morning hours of Feb. 24, 2022.

Russia had amassed up to 190,000 troops – according to reports from the U.S. – on Ukraine’s borders over the course of many months. The buildup of forces around Russia's neighbor and former Soviet Union state started in late 2021 and escalated in early 2022.

Prior to the invasion, Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized the Russian-backed breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, both located in the disputed Donbas area, as “independent” people’s republics and ordered so-called “peacekeeping” troops into those areas.

What started as a concerning situation with hopes for dialogue and diplomacy then evolved into what the Ukrainian foreign minister described as the “most blatant act of aggression in Europe since” World War II.

While the invasion took some leaders by surprise, experts do have insight on the origins of the conflict. They say the roots of the tension can be tied to some combination of the complicated history between the two countries, Russia’s ongoing tensions with NATO and the ambitions of one man: Putin.

What Is the History Between Ukraine and Russia?

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Russia and Ukraine have what either side might describe as a common or complicated legacy that dates back a thousand years. In the last century, Ukraine, known as the breadbasket of Europe, was one of the most populous and powerful republics in the former USSR as well as an agricultural engine until it declared independence in 1991, according to the Council on Foreign Relations . But Russia has kept a close eye on its neighbor to the West, while Ukrainians have found their independence to be tumultuous at times, with periods of protests and government corruption.

Ukraine’s ambitions to align itself more with Western countries – including its publicly stated interest in joining NATO , which itself was founded at least in part to deter Soviet expansion – has been met with aggression from Russia, the council notes. Tensions came to a head in 2014 after Ukrainians ousted a Russia-aligned president. Russia – under the dubious claim of protecting ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers from Ukrainian persecution – annexed the Crimea region of Ukraine in a move widely condemned by the international community.

At about the same time, Russia fomented dissension in the Donbas area of eastern Ukraine, backing a separatist movement in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk that resulted in armed conflict. The regions declared independence as both sides dug in for a protracted standoff. The conflict between the two countries has persisted since, with at least 14,000 people dying, according to the council.

When Did the Current Conflict Between Russia and Ukraine Begin?

Russia started growing its military presence around Ukraine – including in Belarus, a close Russia ally to the north of Ukraine – in late 2021 under various pretenses while remaining vague on its intentions. By December of that year, tens of thousands of Russian troops were hovering on the border, virtually surrounding the country and stoking tensions that led to a call between Putin and U.S. President Joe Biden.

Russia Invades Ukraine: A Timeline

Fears escalated in early 2022 as the number of Russian forces surrounding Ukraine increased. Biden and Putin talked again , U.N. Security Council sessions were called to address the crisis, and numerous leaders from NATO, the U.S. and other countries called on Russia to de-escalate or face retaliation in some form. The most recent estimates – prior to the invasion – put the number of Russian troops on the border at close to 200,000.

What Does Russia Want When it Comes to Ukraine?

A principal demand of Russia is to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO , a military alliance between 29 European countries and two North American countries dedicated to preserving peace and security in the North Atlantic area. Ukraine is one of just a few countries in Eastern Europe that aren’t members of the alliance. The Kremlin in general views NATO expansion as a “fundamental concern,” according to a translated readout of a Jan. 28, 2022, call between Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron.

It’s noteworthy, however, that NATO likely has “no intention right now” to admit Ukraine to the organization, says William Pomeranz, the acting director of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, a non-partisan policy forum for global issues.

“I think NATO, and the invitation for Ukraine to join NATO at some point in the future, is simply just a pretext to potentially invade Ukraine,” he says, referring to Russia. “Ukraine is not a member of NATO, it doesn't have any of the NATO guarantees, and so there is no hint that Ukraine will become a member of NATO soon.”

Putin, specifically, does not want Ukraine to join NATO “not because he has some principled disagreement related to the rule of law or something, it's because he has a might makes right model,” adds Bradley Bowman, the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a non-partisan research institute focused on national security and foreign policy.

“He believes, ‘Hey, Ukraine, I'm more powerful than you, and because I'm more powerful than you, Ukraine, I can tell you what to do and with whom to associate,’” Bowman says.

Beyond the concern around NATO and other demands related to weapons and transparency, Russia’s nature of expansion is also at play when it comes to Ukraine. Some Russians, Putin included, remain aggrieved by the collapse of the USSR, and feel Russia has a claim to the former Soviet republic.

“The imperialistic policy of the Russian Federation requires from us and all the allies complex activities and complex deterrence and defense,” U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said during a Feb. 18, 2022, news conference .

What Does Vladimir Putin Want Out of Ukraine?

The demands of the Russian government are inseparable from those of its authoritarian leader. While analysts are quick to say that they cannot read Putin’s mind – Biden himself admitted as much during remarks on Feb. 18, 2022 – they note his broad ambitions, particularly those tied to his nostalgia for the territorial integrity of the USSR, that have been made clear by his actions.

“We know that Putin views the collapse of the Soviet Union as a disaster,” Bowman says. “We know he resents the success of NATO. We know that he genuinely reviles the expansion of NATO eastward. We know that he has an eye on history, he's getting older, he is mindful of how he's going to look in history books and he sees himself as kind of a neo-czar who would like to reconstitute as much of the Soviet Union as possible.”

Ukraine, in particular, is a “critical element” of this ambition, Bowman adds. Putin has a history of invading and occupying countries that approach NATO membership. Russian armies invaded the former Soviet state of Georgia in 2008 as that country was pursuing membership in the alliance. They briefly pressured the capital Tbilisi before withdrawing to separatist regions they still occupy today. The 2014 Crimea annexation is another example, Bowman notes, and Putin said on Feb. 22, 2022 , that he wants the world to recognize that territory as rightfully Russian. He rationalized in a 2021 essay that a common history and culture – which Ukrainians dispute – entitled Russia to exert its influence there.

“I think Ukraine has always been a sore spot for Vladimir Putin,” Pomeranz says. “He does not recognize its independence and its right to be a country, as he noted in his long article on Ukraine, where he said that, basically, Ukraine and Russia are one people in one country. There is this long-felt resentment about Ukrainian independence and the fact that the Soviet Union just let Ukraine go away, as it were. So I think he wants to end that independence.”

The Russian president, however, might not have predicted the type of strong response from the international community he saw to the buildup on the Ukraine border. Bowman says because of this, Putin “is the most persuasive billboard possible for the value of NATO membership.”

“What we’ve seen from President Putin is basically to precipitate everything he says he wants to prevent,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during a Feb. 16, 2022, “Morning Joe” appearance on MSNBC. “He says he wants NATO further away from Russia. NATO has only gotten more united, more solidified as a result of the threat of Russian aggression, and of course, for defensive reasons, is moving more forces closer to Russia.”

Why Did Russia Invade Ukraine When it Did?

It all could have come down to Russia’s resources at that moment, Pomeranz says. It might have been the “most opportune time” from Putin’s perspective, he adds, because the country had $600 billion in foreign currency reserves and had already put significant resources into reconstructing Russia’s army.

“I think Vladimir Putin thinks this is the best time for him to right what he perceives as a great wrong and reverse Ukrainian independence and sovereignty,” says Pomeranz of the Wilson Center.

Putin likely also viewed the West – including the U.S., specifically – as weak, Pomeranz adds, which could have impacted how much help he thought Ukraine would actually get. Bowman echoes this sentiment and points to how the U.S. handled pulling troops out of Afghanistan in August.

“I don't know how he could have read that as anything other than American weakness,” says Bowman, who served as an adviser to Republican senators for years. “I think he wondered whether, frankly, the Biden administration would be as weak as the Obama administration was in dealing with aggression toward Ukraine.”

Biden administration officials would beg to differ on the U.S. response. Blinken, during a Feb. 23, 2022, appearance on “CBS Evening News” prior to reports of the invasion, said further Russian aggression in Ukraine would lead to “a price that Vladimir Putin and Russia will pay for a long, long time.”

“We’re not standing by and watching,” Blinken said. “To the contrary, we’ve spent months building with allies and partners these very significant consequences for Russia.”

Other reasons for action at the time could have been at play for Putin. A combination of factors – from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s lack of political experience – led to somewhat of a “perfect storm” for the Russian leader to act when he did, says Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon, a presidential doctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.

“I think it's his magnum opus,” she says. “I think this is his crowning achievement of whatever Putinism is.”

How Have the U.S. and Other Countries Responded to Russia’s Invasion?

The response was swift at the outset. The North Atlantic Council, the political decision-making arm of NATO, held an emergency meeting on Feb. 24, 2022, at which it activated its defense plans, which include the NATO Response Force. Biden had said before Russia’s attack that he would be sending more U.S. troops to Eastern Europe to defend NATO allies such as Poland but has repeatedly stated he will not be sending U.S. troops into Ukraine.

Some countries had already responded to Putin’s actions related to the Donbas, which the U.S. called the “beginning of an invasion.”

Biden on Feb. 22, 2022, announced a series of sanctions against Russian financial institutions and the country’s elites. That followed an executive order he issued prohibiting new investment, trade and financing by U.S. persons to, from or in Donetsk and Luhansk. Former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his own country’s sanctions that day, targeted against Russian banks and billionaires, the BBC reported .

The U.S. president also ordered sanctions against the Russian-built Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline company and its corporate officers on Feb. 23, 2022, prior to the invasion. The controversial project, which runs from Russia through Europe, is not yet online but is pivotal to both Moscow and Western Europe, which is becoming increasingly dependent on Russian supply to fulfill its growing energy needs. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had already said before Biden’s sanctions announcement that his country would halt certification of the pipeline due to Russia’s actions. In late 2022, there were explosions at the pipeline under mysterious circumstances .

Biden promised in a statement late on Feb. 23 of that year that he would announce “further consequences the United States and our Allies and partners will impose on Russia for this needless act of aggression against Ukraine and global peace and security.”

That promise was kept. Since the war began, the U.S. has imposed thousands of different sanctions on Russia, according to a tally kept by the Atlantic Council that was last updated in November 2023. And that doesn’t include the 500 new sanctions announced by the U.S. government on Feb. 23, 2024.

Punishments have focused on, for example, Russian oil and gas imports and Russian banks. Many countries, such as Canada, the U.K. and others in Europe, have followed suit. The European Union has also imposed its own sanctions, targeting Russian individuals – including Putin himself – and energy. Countries have also committed about $278 billion in aid to Ukraine collectively, as of Jan. 15, 2024.

Two years in, the sanctions have inflicted some financial pain on Russia but haven’t done much to hinder economic growth. The International Monetary Fund in January 2024 projected Russia’s real GDP to grow 2.6% in 2024, which was up from the 1.1% projection just months prior.

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Ukraine invasion — explained

The roots of Russia's invasion of Ukraine go back decades and run deep. The current conflict is more than one country fighting to take over another; it is — in the words of one U.S. official — a shift in "the world order." Here are some helpful stories to make sense of it all.

The ripple effects of Russia's war in Ukraine continue to change the world

Scott Neuman

Alyson Hurt

A year after Russia's invasion of Ukraine sparked the largest conflict in Europe since World War II, the repercussions continue to reverberate around the world. Not only has the war in Ukraine set off a geopolitical realignment, but it has caused economic hardship far from the epicenter of the fighting.

The Feb. 24, 2022, invasion has touched off a refugee crisis, as Ukrainians flee the conflict in their homeland and many Russian men seek to avoid conscription. Meanwhile, it has spurred a process toward expanding NATO, with Finland and Sweden pursuing membership after decades of official neutrality.

Ukraine and Russia are key exporters of wheat, barley, corn and cooking oil, particularly to African and Middle Eastern countries. Turkey and the United Nations brokered a deal last summer to allow Ukrainian grain to pass through Black Sea ports, but Russia is reportedly still hindering shipments . Russia is also a major producer of fertilizer and petroleum. Disruptions to the flow of these goods are compounding other supply chain and climate challenges, driving up food and gas prices and causing shortages in places such as Chad , Tunisia and Sri Lanka .

More than 8 million refugees have fled Ukraine in what the World Health Organization describes as "the largest movement of people in the European Region since the Second World War." Many have been involuntarily relocated by Russia. Others have put a strain on resources, as well as schools and hospitals, in Poland and Germany .

A 21st century war in Europe — led by a nuclear power — is pushing the world toward realignment. It has rattled NATO, the European Union and the U.N ., forcing countries to take sides in ways that have led to escalating tensions and diplomatic shifts. For example, Turkey , despite being a NATO member, has increased trade with Russia since the start of the war and has thrown up objections to allowing Sweden and Finland into the alliance.

Russia is one of the world's largest producers of oil and fuel. European countries have banned the Russian oil, gas and diesel they relied on, which initially caused a steep spike in prices. However, moves by European nations to lock in alternative sources , along with conservation efforts and a mild winter, have largely alleviated those price hikes. Now prices have returned to pre-invasion levels.

Russia has more nuclear weapons than any other country. Its attack on Ukraine has notably reenergized NATO, with the U.S. and other member states funneling tens of billions of dollars worth of military equipment into Ukraine. Early weapons deliveries included anti-tank rockets such as the U.S.-made Javelin. In the latest moves, the U.S ., Germany and Britain have promised to provide state-of-the-art tanks.

NPR's Will Chase, Alex Leff, Pam Webster, Desiree F. Hicks and Nishant Dahiya contributed to this report. The text and graphics build on previous work by Alina Selyukh, Connie Hanzhang Jin and Nick Underwood.

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Global impact: 5 ways war in Ukraine has changed the world

FILE - A Ukrainian volunteer Oleksandr Osetynskyi, 44 holds a Ukrainian flag and directs hundreds of refugees after fleeing from the Ukraine and arriving at the border crossing in Medyka, Poland, Monday, March 7, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Visar Kryeziu, File)

FILE - Ukrainian military’s Grad multiple rocket launcher fires rockets at Russian positions in the frontline near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Thursday, Nov. 24, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/LIBKOS, File)

FILE - Firefighters extinguish flames outside an apartment house after a Russian rocket attack in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, Ukraine, Monday, March 14, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Pavel Dorogoy, File)

FILE - People lie on the floor of a hospital during shelling by Russian forces in Mariupol, Ukraine, Friday, March 4, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)

FILE - Russian President Vladimir Putin puts on protective glasses as he visits a military training center of the Western Military District for mobilized reservists in Ryazan Region, Russia, Thursday, Oct. 20, 2022. (Mikhail Klimentyev, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File)

FILE - People walk past part of a rocket that sits wedged in the ground in Lysychansk, Luhansk region, Ukraine, Friday, May 13, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Leo Correa, File)

FILE - The dead body of a person lies covered in the street in Mariupol, Ukraine, Monday, March 7, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)

FILE - Sand bags protect the Monument to Princess Olga, St. Andrew the Apostle and the educators Cyril and Methodius in Kyiv, Thursday, June 16, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (Ludovic Marin, Pool via AP, File)

FILE - U.S. President Joe Biden, center, arrives for a round table meeting during an extraordinary NATO summit at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Thursday, March 24, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

FILE - In this photo provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, center, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, left, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, EU and Ukraine official pose for a photo during the EU-Ukraine summit in Kyiv, Ukraine, Thursday, Feb. 2, 2023. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP, File)

FILE - In this image provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, left, and Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson, shake hands during their walk in downtown Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, April 9, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP, File)

FILE - Ukrainians crowd under a destroyed bridge as they try to flee crossing the Irpin river in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Saturday, March 5, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti, File)

FILE - A Ukrainian serviceman smokes a cigarette at his position on the frontline near Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2023. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)

FILE - Ukrainian soldiers fire at Russian positions from a U.S.-supplied M777 howitzer in Kherson region, Ukraine, Jan. 9, 2023. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Libkos, File)

FILE - An abandoned car lies on the ground in a heavily damaged grain factory where Russians forces gathered destroyed vehicles at the recaptured town of Lyman, Ukraine, Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Francisco Seco, File)

FILE - A dump track unloads grain in a granary in the village of Zghurivka, Ukraine, Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

FILE - Jennifer Jones sorts her bills at her small flat in London, Thursday, Aug. 25, 2022. The war’s economic impact has been felt from chilly homes in Europe to food markets in Africa. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Frank Augstein, File)

FILE - A flock of sheep graze in front of a coal-fired power plant at the Garzweiler open-cast coal mine near Luetzerath, western Germany, Oct. 16, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner, File)

FILE - A shopkeeper sells wheat flour in the Hamar-Weyne market in the capital Mogadishu, Somalia Thursday, May 26, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh, File)

FILE - In this photo taken from video released by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Wednesday, Oct. 26, 2022, a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile is test-fired as part of Russia’s nuclear drills from a launch site in Plesetsk, northwestern Russia. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP, File)

FILE - Residents gathering at an aid distribution point receive supplies in downtown Kherson, southern Ukraine, Friday, Nov. 18, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue, File)

FILE - A woman cries in front of the building which was destroyed by a Russian attack in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, Friday, Dec. 16, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)

FILE - Victor Rosenberg, 81, looks out of a broken window in his home destroyed by the Russian rocket attack in the city centre of Bakhmut, Donetsk region, Ukraine, Friday, July 1, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Efrem Lukatsky, File)

FILE - Nila Zelinska holds a doll belonging to her granddaughter, she was able to find in her destroyed house in Potashnya, Ukraine, Tuesday, May 31, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko, File)

File - A Ukrainian serviceman stands amid destroyed Russian tanks in Bucha, on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Wednesday, April 6, 2022. War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. One year on, thousands of civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been killed or wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy. (AP Photo/Felipe Dana, File)

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LONDON (AP) — War has been a catastrophe for Ukraine and a crisis for the globe. The world is a more unstable and fearful place since Russia invaded its neighbor on Feb. 24, 2022.

One year on , thousands of Ukrainian civilians are dead, and countless buildings have been destroyed. Tens of thousands of troops have been killed or seriously wounded on each side. Beyond Ukraine’s borders, the invasion shattered European security, redrew nations’ relations with one another and frayed a tightly woven global economy.

Here are five ways the war has changed the world:

THE RETURN OF EUROPEAN WAR

Three months before the invasion, then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson scoffed at suggestions that the British army needed more heavy weapons. “The old concepts of fighting big tank battles on European landmass,” he said, “are over.”

Johnson is now urging the U.K. to send more battle tanks to help Ukraine repel Russian forces.

Despite the role played by new technology such as satellites and drones, this 21st-century conflict in many ways resembles one from the 20th. Fighting in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region is a brutal slog , with mud, trenches and bloody infantry assaults reminiscent of World War I.

The conflict has sparked a new arms race that reminds some analysts of the 1930s buildup to World War II. Russia has mobilized hundreds of thousands of conscripts and aims to expand its military from 1 million to 1.5 million troops. The U.S. has ramped up weapons production to replace the stockpiles shipped to Ukraine. France plans to boost military spending by a third by 2030, while Germany has abandoned its longstanding ban on sending weapons to conflict zones and shipped missiles and tanks to Ukraine.

Before the war, many observers assumed that military forces would move toward more advanced technology and cyber warfare and become less reliant on tanks or artillery, said Patrick Bury, senior lecturer in security at the University of Bath.

But in Ukraine, guns and ammunition are the most important weapons.

“It is, for the moment at least, being shown that in Ukraine, conventional warfare — state-on-state — is back,” Bury said.

ALLIANCES TESTED AND TOUGHENED

Russian President Vladimir Putin hoped the invasion would split the West and weaken NATO. Instead, the military alliance has been reinvigorated . A group set up to counter the Soviet Union has a renewed sense of purpose and two new aspiring members in Finland and Sweden, which ditched decades of nonalignment and asked to join NATO as protection against Russia.

The 27-nation European Union has hit Russia with tough sanctions and sent Ukraine billions in support. The war put Brexit squabbles into perspective, thawing diplomatic relations between the bloc and awkward former member Britain.

“The EU is taking sanctions, quite serious sanctions, in the way that it should. The U.S. is back in Europe with a vengeance in a way we never thought it would be again,” said defense analyst Michael Clarke, former head of the Royal United Services Institute think tank.

NATO member states have poured weapons and equipment worth billions of dollars into Ukraine. The alliance has buttressed its eastern flank, and the countries nearest to Ukraine and Russia, including Poland and the Baltic states, have persuaded more hesitant NATO and European Union allies, potentially shifting Europe’s center of power eastwards.

There are some cracks in the unity. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Putin’s closest ally in the EU, has lobbied against sanctions on Moscow, refused to send weapons to Ukraine and held up an aid package from the bloc for Kyiv.

Western unity will come under more and more pressure the longer the conflict grinds on.

“Russia is planning for a long war,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said at the end of 2022, but the alliance was also ready for the “long haul.”

A NEW IRON CURTAIN

The war has made Russia a pariah in the West . Its oligarchs have been sanctioned and its businesses blacklisted, and international brands including McDonald’s and Ikea have disappeared from the country’s streets.

Yet Moscow is not entirely friendless . Russia has strengthened economic ties with China, though Beijing is keeping its distance from the fighting and so far has not sent weapons. The U.S. has recently expressed concern that may change.

China is closely watching a conflict that may serve as either encouragement or warning to Beijing about any attempt to reclaim self-governing Taiwan by force.

Putin has reinforced military links with international outcasts North Korea and Iran, which supplies armed drones that Russia unleashes on Ukrainian infrastructure. Moscow continues to build influence in Africa and the Middle East with its economic and military clout. Russia’s Wagner mercenary group has grown more powerful in conflicts from the Donbas to the Sahel.

In an echo of the Cold War, the world is divided into two camps, with many countries, including densely populated India, hedging their bets to see who emerges on top.

Tracey German, professor of conflict and security at King’s College London, said the conflict has widened a rift between the “U.S.-led liberal international order” on one side, and angry Russia and emboldened rising superpower China on the other.

A BATTERED AND RESHAPED ECONOMY

The war’s economic impact has been felt from chilly homes in Europe to food markets in Africa.

Before the war, European Union nations imported almost half their natural gas and third of their oil from Russia. The invasion, and sanctions slapped on Russia in response, delivered an energy price shock on a scale not seen since the 1970s.

The war disrupted global trade that was still recovering from the pandemic. Food prices have soared, since Russia and Ukraine are major suppliers of wheat and sunflower oil, and Russia is the world’s top fertilizer producer.

Grain-carrying ships have continued to sail from Ukraine under a fragile U.N.-brokered deal, and prices have come down from record levels. But food remains a geopolitical football. Russia has sought to blame the West for high prices, while Ukraine and its allies accuse Russia of cynically using hunger as a weapon.

The war “has really highlighted the fragility” of an interconnected world, just as the pandemic did, German said, and the full economic impact has yet to be felt.

The war also roiled attempts to fight climate change, driving an upsurge in Europe’s use of heavily polluting coal. Yet Europe’s rush away from Russian oil and gas may speed the transition to renewable energy sources faster than countless warnings about the dangers of global warming. The International Energy Agency says the world will add as much renewable power in the next five years as it did in the last 20.

A NEW AGE OF UNCERTAINTY

The conflict is a stark reminder that individuals have little control over the course of history. No one knows that better than the 8 million Ukrainians who have been forced to flee homes and country for new lives in communities across Europe and beyond.

For millions of people less directly affected, the sudden shattering of Europe’s peace has brought uncertainty and anxiety.

Putin’s veiled threats to use atomic weapons if the conflict escalates revived fears of nuclear war that had lain dormant since the Cold War. Fighting has raged around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, raising the specter of a new Chernobyl.

Patricia Lewis, director of the international security program at think-tank Chatham House, said Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling had provoked “more anger than fear” in the West. But concerns about nuclear escalation were heightened by Putin’s Feb. 21 announcement that he was suspending Russia’s participation in its sole remaining nuclear arms control treaty with the U.S.

Putin stopped short of withdrawing completely from the New START treaty and said Moscow would respect the treaty’s caps on nuclear weapons, keeping a faint glimmer of arms control alive.

Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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• The dangerous new phase of Russia’s war in Ukraine, explained

Vladimir Putin’s war is still raging, signaling a frightening escalation on the ground.

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Share All sharing options for: The dangerous new phase of Russia’s war in Ukraine, explained

Russia’s war in Ukraine has stretched on for more than three weeks, a relentless bombardment of the country’s cities and towns that has led to more than 800 civilian deaths , destroyed civilian infrastructure , and forced more than 3.3 million people to flee Ukraine, creating a new humanitarian crisis in Europe.

The devastation is far from over.

Get in-depth coverage about Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Why Ukraine? 

Learn the history behind the conflict and what Russian President Vladimir Putin has said about his war aims .

The stakes of Putin’s war

Russia’s invasion has the potential to set up a clash of nuclear world powers . It’s destabilizing the region and terrorizing Ukrainian citizens . It could also impact inflation , gas prices , and the global economy. 

How other countries are responding

The US and its European allies have responded to Putin’s aggression with unprecedented sanctions , but have no plans to send troops to Ukraine , for good reason . 

How to help

Where to donate if you want to assist refugees and people in Ukraine.

The scale of the Russian invasion — the shelling of major cities like Kyiv, the capital, and Kharkiv, in the east — hinted at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s larger aims: Seizing control of Ukraine, with the goal of regime change. Though its military is far bigger than Ukraine’s, Russia’s apparently confounding strategic decisions and logistical setbacks , combined with the ferocity of Ukraine’s resistance , have stymied its advance.

That has not stopped a catastrophe from unfolding within Ukraine, even as it has prompted Western allies to effectively wage economic warfare against Moscow with unprecedented sanctions .

It will only get worse as this war grinds on, experts said. “Despite the surprisingly poor military performance of the Russian military to date, we’re still in the early opening phase of this conflict,” said Sara Bjerg Moller, an assistant professor of international security at Seton Hall University.

This toll is expected to climb, especially as the Russian offensive intensifies around Ukrainian cities, where shelling and strikes have hit civilian targets , and as efforts at high-level Ukraine-Russia negotiations have so far failed . All of this is happening as Russian forces appear to be preparing to lay siege to Kyiv .

“This war is about the battle of Kyiv,” said John Spencer, a retired Army officer and chair of urban warfare studies at the Madison Policy Forum.

Taking Kyiv would mean taking control of Ukraine — or at least deposing the government of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian president whose defiance has galvanized the Ukrainian resistance. Most experts believe Russia will prevail, especially if it can cut off Kyiv, and the Ukrainian resistance, from supplies.

Just because Russia may ultimately succeed militarily does not mean it will win this war. A Ukrainian insurgency could take root. The political, domestic, and international costs to Russia could challenge Putin’s regime. The West’s sanctions are throttling Russia’s economy, and they could do lasting damage. Russia’s war has strengthened the Western alliance in the immediate term, but that political will could be tested as energy prices spike and as the war and refugee crisis wear on.

“War is never isolated,” Zelenskyy said in a video address Thursday. “It always beats both the victim and the aggressor. The aggressor just realizes it later. But it always realizes and always suffers.”

The war in Ukraine is likely going to become more violent

Russia’s strategic setbacks have undermined its mission to take Ukraine, but it has only exacerbated the brutal and indiscriminate war, not even a month old.

The longer and harder the Ukrainian resistance fights, the more likely Russia may deploy more aggressive tactics to try to achieve their aims. “This is what we would call a war of attrition. They are trying to grind down the Ukrainian people’s morale, and unfortunately, that includes the bodies of Ukrainians,” Moller said.

Urban warfare is particularly calamitous, as civilians who have not evacuated are often caught in the middle of battles that happen block-by-block. Russia’s military tactics in cities — witnessed in places like Syria and Grozny in Chechnya in 1999 — have shown little regard for civilian protection. Spencer, the urban warfare specialist, said even Putin is limited, to a degree, by the rules of war, and so he is likely to claim that civilian infrastructure — like hospitals — are also military targets.

NEW campaign update from @TheStudyofWar and @criticalthreats : #Russian operations to continue the encirclement of and assault on #Kyiv have likely begun, although on a smaller scale and in a more ad hoc manner than we expected. https://t.co/tt5uYJacyg pic.twitter.com/ZoQRaOwNHF — ISW (@TheStudyofWar) March 9, 2022

But urban warfare is, by nature, murky and complex and often far more deadly. Even if Russia attempts precision attacks, it can have a cascading effect — Russia bombs alleged military targets, those operations move, Russia bombs again. “You’re going to use so many of them, the end result is the same as if you just used indiscriminate, mass artillery barrage,” said Lance Davies, a senior lecturer in defense and international affairs at the UK’s Royal Military Academy.

Even in the early days of this war, Russia’s efforts are already having this effect. “They’re causing tremendous damage to civilian infrastructure,” said Rachel Denber, the deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia division at Human Rights Watch. “They’re taking many, many civilian lives.” Denber pointed to the use of weapons in heavily populated areas, including those that are explicitly banned, like cluster munitions. Human Rights Watch documented their use in three residential areas in Kharkiv on February 28. “You put that in a city like Kharkiv, and if it’s a populated area, no matter what you were aiming at, no matter what the target, it’s going to hurt civilians,” she said.

The United Nations has confirmed at least 2,149 civilian casualties, including 816 killed as of March 17, though these numbers are likely undercounts, as intense fighting in some areas has made it difficult to verify statistics.

All of this is exacerbating the humanitarian catastrophe on the ground in Ukraine, as shelling cuts off power stations and other supply lines, effectively trapping people within war zones in subzero temperatures without electricity or water, and with dwindling food, fuel, and medical supplies. In Mariupol, a city of 400,000 that has been under Russian siege for days, people were reportedly melting snow for drinking water . Humanitarian groups say the fighting is making it difficult to deliver aid or to reach those civilians left behind — often elderly or disabled people, or other vulnerable populations that didn’t have the ability to flee.

Ukrainian and Russian officials agreed to a temporary ceasefire to establish humanitarian corridors out of six cities on March 9, but the enforcement of those safe passages has been spotty, at best. According to the United Nations, on March 9, evacuations did happen in some places, but there was “limited movement” in the vulnerable areas, like Mariupol and the outskirts of Kyiv. Ukrainian officials have accused Russia of shelling some of those routes , and have rejected Russia’s calls for refugees to be evacuated to Russia or Belarus. Russian officials have blamed disruption on Ukrainian forces .

The fighting across Ukraine has forced about 9.8 million people to flee so far, according to the United Nations . Nearly 6.5 million people are internally displaced within Ukraine, although tens of thousands of Ukrainians were already forcibly displaced before Russia’s invasion because of the eight-year war in the Donbas region. Many have taken refugee in oblasts (basically, administrative regions) in western and northwestern Ukraine.

Another 3.3 million Ukrainians have escaped, mostly to neighboring countries like Poland, Romania, and Moldova. It is Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II, and host countries and aid agencies are trying to meet the astounding needs of these refugees, most of whom are women and children.

“They need warmth, they need shelter, they need transportation to accommodations,” said Becky Bakr Abdulla, an adviser to the Norwegian Refugee Council who is currently based in Poland. “They need food, they need water. Many need legal aid — their passports have been stolen, they’ve forgotten their birth certificates.”

How the war in Ukraine began, and what’s happened so far

For months, Russia built up troops along the Ukrainian border , reaching around 190,000 on the eve of the invasion. At the same time, Russia issued a series of maximalist demands to the United States and NATO allies, including an end to NATO’s eastward expansion and a ban on Ukraine entering NATO, among other “security guarantees.” All were nonstarters for the West.

But the short answer to why Russia decided to follow through with an invasion: Vladimir Putin.

From Putin’s perspective, many historians of Europe have said, the enlargement of NATO , which has moved steadily closer to Russia’s borders, was certainly a factor. But Putin’s speech on the eve of his invasion offers another clue: the Russian president basically denied Ukrainian statehood , and said the country rightfully belongs to Russia.

But Russia’s history of incursions, invasions, and occupations under Putin — including Chechnya, Georgia, and Crimea — have foreshadowed a new, even more brutal war. Seen through this lens, he is not a madman, but a leader who came to power with the lethal siege of Grozny in Chechnya in 1999, who has pursued increasingly violent policy, and who has been willing to inflict civilian casualties to achieve his foreign policy goals.

In 2014 , Russia launched an invasion of Ukraine that culminated in the occupation of the Crimea peninsula in the south. Later that year, Russia deployed hybrid tactics, such as proxy militias and soldiers without insignia, to attack the Donbas region, where 14,000 people have died since 2014. On February 22, in the days before Putin launched a full-fledged war on Ukraine, he sent Russian troops into Donbas and declared two provinces there independent.

This time, according to former State Department Russia specialist Michael Kimmage, Putin miscalculated the difficulty of taking over Ukraine. Still, as the days go on, this war could escalate to unimaginable levels of violence. “If Putin really is feeling very threatened, it’s possible that he will dig in his heels, double down and take a lot of risks in order to prevent any potential loss of power,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former intelligence officer who’s now a senior fellow and director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.

Russia is committing possible war crimes in Ukraine, and Ukrainians are responding with their full military force. They have also developed a strong civil resistance enabled by volunteers of all stripes. “All the nation is involved, not only the army,” said a Ukrainian person who has been supplying medicines.

According to a conservative estimate by US intelligence , around 7,000 Russian personnel have died so far — more troops than the US lost over two decades of fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But Russia’s initial setback could lead to increasingly brutal tactics. “We’re looking at World War II kinds of atrocities. Bombing of civilians, rocket fire and artillery, smashing cities, a million refugees; that what looked impossible before now looks within the realm,” said Daniel Fried, a former ambassador to Poland and current fellow at the Atlantic Council.

How the West has responded so far

In the aftermath of Russia’s Ukrainian invasion, the United States and its allies imposed unprecedented sanctions and other penalties on Russia, acting with a swiftness and cohesion that surprised some observers, including, most likely, Putin himself .

“The US and the Western reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is essentially blowing the lid off of sanctions,” said Julia Friedlander, director of the Economic Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council. “Never in the past have we accelerated to such strong sanctions and economic restrictions in such a quick period of time — and also considered doing it on one of the largest economies in the world.”

There’s a lot of sanctions, and the US and its partners have only increased the pressure since. President Joe Biden announced on March 8 that the US would place extreme limits on energy imports from Russia — the kind of last-resort option that few experts thought might happen because of the shock to energy prices and the global economy. (Europe, far more dependent on Russian energy imports, has not joined these sanctions.) On March 11, Biden pushed Congress to strip Russia of its “most favored nation” status, which would put tariffs on Russian goods, though it’s likely to have limited impact compared to the slew of sanctions that already exist.

Ukraine’s resistance in the face of Russian aggression helped push Western leaders to take more robust action, as this fight became framed in Washington and in European capitals as a fight between autocracy and democracy. A lot of credit goes to Zelenskyy himself, whose impassioned pleas to Western leaders motivated them to deliver more lethal aid to Ukraine and implement tougher sanctions.

Among the toughest sanctions are those against Russia’s central bank. The US and European Union did this in an effort to block Russia from using its considerable foreign reserves to prop up its currency, the ruble, and to undermine its ability to pay for its Ukraine war. Russia had tried to sanction-proof its economy after 2014, shifting away from US dollars, but the EU’s decision to join in undermined Russia’s so-called “ fortress economy .”

The US and the EU also cut several Russian banks off from SWIFT, the global messaging system that facilitates foreign transactions. As Ben Walsh wrote for Vox , more than 11,000 different banks use SWIFT for cross-border transactions, and it was used in about 70 percent of transfers in Russia . Even here, though, certain banks were excluded from these measures to allow energy transactions, and EU countries, like Germany, are so far blocking efforts to expand these penalties .

The US has targeted numerous Russian banks, including two of Russia’s biggest, Sberbank and VTB . The US, along with other partners, have put bans on technology and other exports to Russia, and they’ve placed financial sanctions on oligarchs and other Russian officials, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Putin himself . Russian oligarchs have had their yachts seized in European vacation towns because of these sanctions, and the US has launched — and, yes, this is real — Task Force Kleptocapture to help enforce sanctions, although oligarchs’ actual influence on Putin’s war is limited .

These penalties are widespread — besides Europe, partners like South Korea and Japan have joined in. Even neutral countries like Switzerland have imposed sanctions ( though there are loopholes .) Big Tech companies, cultural institutions , and international corporations , from Mastercard to McDonald’s , are pulling out of the country.

Experts said there are still some economic penalties left in the toolbox, but what’s already in place is massively damaging to the Russian economy. Russia’s economy is expected to dramatically shrink; its stock market remains closed . And even if these sanctions are targeted toward Russia’s ability to make war, the damage done to the Russian economic system will inevitably trickle down to ordinary Russians.

The fallout will not be limited to Russia. Biden’s announcement of an oil embargo against Russia has increased energy prices ; what Biden, at least, is calling “Putin’s price hike.” And Russia may still engage in some sort of countermeasures, including cyberattacks or other meddling activity in the West.

How we get out of this

The US is doing almost everything it can without officially being a party to the conflict. The US has funneled 17,000 anti-tank missiles so far, including Javelins missiles , to Ukraine. On March 16, the US announced $800 million in additional military aid , including thousands of anti-armor weapons and small arms, 800 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, and millions of rounds of ammunition.

Biden rejected the US enforcement of a no-fly zone in Ukraine , a military policy that polls surprisingly well among Americans but essentially means attacking any Russian aircraft that enters Ukrainian airspace. Seventy-eight national security scholars came out against a no-fly zone, saying that scenario would edge the US too close to a direct conflict with Russia.

So far, negotiations between Russia and Ukraine have faltered . Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, has said that the fighting could stop if Ukrainians agreed to neutrality (and no NATO membership), and agreed to recognize Crimea as Russian and the Donbas region as independent. “Is this a serious offer?” said Fried, the former ambassador who had experience working with Peskov. “It could be posturing. The Russians are liars.”

Zelenskyy has signaled some openness to neutrality , but Ukraine is going to want some serious security guarantees that it’s not clear Russia is willing to give.

The US’s absolutist rhetoric has complicated those efforts. Biden, in his State of the Union address , framed this conflict as a battle between democracy and tyranny. Even if a strong argument can be made in favor of that, given Putin’s actions, such language poses challenges for Western diplomats who must forge an off-ramp for Putin to end this war.

“If it’s good against evil, how do you compromise with evil?” said Thomas Graham, a Russia expert at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Putin does need a face-saving way to back down from some of his demands. But if we have a compromise solution to this conflict, we’re going to need off-ramps as well, to explain why we accept that less than a total defeat for Putin.”

In a Politico essay , Graham and scholar Rajan Menon proposed a framework for a negotiated outcome that begins with confidence-building measures between the US and Russia, rebuilding arms control treaties. The US and NATO would pledge that neither Ukraine nor Georgia will join NATO in the next several years or decades, though the possibility may be open someday. This would culminate in a “new security order for Russia,” they write . Russian academic Alexander Dynkin circulated a similar idea in the lead-up to the war.

Gavin Wilde, a former director for the National Security Council who focused on Russia during the Trump administration, says the opportunities for a diplomatic resolution have not yet been exhausted. “The conundrum we found ourselves in quite a lot with Russia is, you have to talk to them. Because lives are at stake. These are two nuclear powers, and you have to keep talking,” he said.

What a Russian victory would mean for the world

The world has been galvanized by Ukraine’s small victories in this conflict.

Still, Ukraine faces long odds. By the numbers , the Russian military budget is about ten times that of Ukraine. The Russian military has 900,000 active troops, and the Ukrainian military has 196,000. Ukrainians may have the tactical advantage and the spirit to persevere, but structural factors weigh in Russia’s favor.

This all presages what could be a long, drawn-out war, all documented on iPhones. “It’s not going to be pretty,” says Samuel Charap, who studies the Russian military at RAND. A siege of major Ukrainian cities means “cutting off supply lines to a city and making it intolerable for people to resist — to engender surrender by inflicting pain.”

Still, Russia’s performance so far has been so poor that the scales may ultimately tip toward Ukraine. Mark Hertling, who was the top commander of the US Army’s European forces before retiring in 2013, says that the corruption within the Russian military has slowed down the advance.

“Unless it’s just a continuous shelling — but I don’t think Russia can even sustain that with their logistics support. They have already blown their wad quite a bit in terms of missiles and rockets,” Hertling said. “They’re having trouble moving, they’re having trouble resupplying. And when you have those two things combined, you’re going to have some big problems.”

However this plays out, the cruel effects of this war won’t just be felt in Ukraine. It’s truly a global crisis . The comprehensive sanctions on Russia will have massive implications for the Russian economy, hurting citizens and residents who have nothing to do with their autocratic leader. There will also be vast knock-on effects on the world economy, with particularly frightening implications for food security in the poorest countries. Those effects may be most visceral for stomachs in the Middle East; Egypt and Yemen depend on Russian and Ukrainian wheat.

The unprecedented sanctions may have unprecedented impact. “We don’t know what the full consequences of this will be, because we’ve never raised this type of economic warfare,” Graham said. “It’s hard to overestimate the shock that the Russian military operation has caused around the world and the fears that it has stoked about wider warfare in Europe.”

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Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 776

As the war enters its 776th day, these are the main developments.

Here is the situation on Wednesday, April 10, 2024.

• The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission said it verified at least 604 civilians killed or injured in Ukraine in March, a 20 percent increase from February.  The toll included at least 57 children killed or injured, double the number from February, it said.
• Alexander Bogomaz, the governor of Russia’s Bryansk region, said a woman and a child were killed when Ukrainian shelling hit the village of Klimovo, about 10km (six miles) from Russia’s border with Ukraine. Bogomaz said three people were injured.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy inspected fortifications and trenches in the northeastern Kharkiv region and issued a new appeal for military support to protect the country’s second-largest city from Russian attacks. Russia fired a guided bomb at the city just as Zelenskyy announced his visit, injuring at least three people.
• Ukrainian Air Force Commander Mykola Oleshchuk said Ukraine’s air defence systems destroyed 20 attack drones launched by Russia overnight aimed at critical infrastructure and power facilities in seven Ukrainian regions. Damage was reported in Lviv, Odesa and Poltava.
• Russia and Ukraine continued to trade accusations over attacks on the Russian-occupied Zaporizhizhia Nuclear Power Plant, Europe’s largest nuclear power station. Moscow claimed Kyiv struck the site with a drone for a third day. Kyiv reiterated that it does not take any military action against nuclear facilities.
• The International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors will hold an emergency meeting on Thursday at the request of both Ukraine and Russia to discuss the Zaporizhzhia plant. The atomic watchdog earlier said the situation was “extremely serious”.

Politics and diplomacy

• Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov wrapped up a two-day visit to Beijing where he met China’s President Xi Jinping and top diplomat Wang Yi. Lavrov and Wang said the two countries aimed to deepen security cooperation. China and Russia declared a “no-limits” partnership just before Moscow invaded Ukraine and have deepened their relationship since. Beijing says it is neutral in relation to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
• United Kingdom Foreign Secretary David Cameron met United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken and urged members of the US Congress to pass a $60bn aid package for Ukraine, which has been blocked by right-wing Republicans. He also travelled to Florida for talks with presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump. Trump’s office said the two discussed “ending the killing in Ukraine” among other issues.
• The US military said it transferred weapons to Ukraine, including more than 5,000 AK-47 assault rifles, machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, as well as more than 500,000 rounds of ammunition that were seized as they were being shipped by Iran to Houthi forces in Yemen.
• The US State Department approved $138m to provide critical repairs and spare parts for Kyiv’s HAWK air defence missile systems.

• International edition
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Ukraine war briefing: Kyiv electricity plant destroyed by Russian missiles and drones

Ukraine parliament passes controversial mobilisation bill to boost troop numbers; Japan’s prime minister calls on US to continue supporting Ukraine. What we know on day 779

• See all our Ukraine war coverage

Ukraine’s parliament passed a controversial bill on Thursday that will change the rules on civilian military mobilisation in an effort to address fledgling manpower among its forces. The legislation, which must be signed by the president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy , is seen as crucial for Ukraine to address what military analysts say are major manpower problems as it fights a better armed and larger foe.

Russian forces outnumber Ukrainian troops seven to ten times in eastern regions, Ukraine’s Gen Yuriy Sodol told parliament on Thursday. “The enemy outnumbers us by 7-10 times, we lack manpower,” said Sodol, who is commanding the troops in Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine.

Russian missiles and drones destroyed a large electricity plant near Kyiv and hit power facilities in several regions of Ukraine on Thursday , officials said. The major attack destroyed the Trypilska coal-powered thermal power plant near the capital, a senior official at the company that runs the facility told Reuters.

Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, on Thursday called on Americans to overcome their “self-doubt” and referenced the war in Ukraine , as he offered a paean to US global leadership before a bitterly divided Congress. While Kishida was careful not to touch on US domestic politics, the address comes amid a deadlock in Congress on approving billions of dollars in additional military aid to Ukraine , due to pressure from hard-right Republicans aligned with Donald Trump. “Without US support, how long before the hopes of Ukraine would collapse under the onslaught from Moscow?” Kishida asked.

The mass use of “drop-and-forget” guided bombs containing foreign components is driving Russian advances in Ukraine , with up to 500 now being fired a week, according to a Ukrainian government analysis. High explosive and cluster bombs fitted with “UMPC” guiding systems with a range of 40-60km (25-37 miles) are now said to be a central threat on the frontline, forcing back Ukrainian forces.

A Russian missile attack on Ukraine’s southern city of Mykolaiv on Thursday killed two people. At least four more were injured, the regional governor said.

Ukraine and Latvia signed a bilateral security agreement, Volodymyr Zelenskiy announced during a visit to Vilnius. Zelenskiy said: “It envisages Latvia’s annual military support for Ukraine at 0.25% of GDP. Latvia also made a 10-year commitment to assist Ukraine with cyber defence, demining, and unmanned technologies, as well as support for Ukraine’s EU and Nato accession.”

Drone attacks on the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine must stop as they could pose “a new and gravely dangerous” stage in the war, the UN nuclear watchdog chief, said on Thursday, Reuters reported . Moscow and Kyiv have repeatedly accused each other of targeting the plant since Russia seized it weeks after invading Ukraine. Both countries requested an emergency meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)‘s board after an attack on Sunday . “It is of paramount importance to ensure these reckless attacks do not mark the beginning of a new and gravely dangerous front of the war,” IAEA director general Rafael Grossi said, adding: “Strikes must cease.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday that any negotiations on Ukraine without Russia were meaningless , Reuters reported. “We have repeatedly said that negotiations without Russia were meaningless … President Putin has repeatedly emphasised that we remain open to the negotiation process,” Peskov said. The Swiss government will host a two-day high-level conference in June aimed at achieving peace in Ukraine, it said on Wednesday, although Russia has made clear it will not take part in the initiative.

• Russia-Ukraine war at a glance

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When Home Is Now the Front Line

As war beat a path through southern and eastern Ukraine, most of the population fled. But other residents have hunkered down, unable — or unwilling — to leave.

Rescue workers surveying a damaged residential building in the eastern Ukrainian town of Selydove. Credit...

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Photographs by Emile Ducke

By Oleksandr Naselenko and Thomas Gibbons-Neff

Emile Ducke spent a week traveling through Ukraine’s east and south, interviewing and photographing soldiers on the front line and citizens who stayed in the nearby towns and villages.

• April 8, 2024

Two years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the hourly artillery duels, airstrikes and pitched fighting in the country’s east and south have turned the more than 600-mile front line into a scarred frontier. Parts of it may be uninhabitable for years, if not decades. Villages and towns are destroyed. Fields are mined. Roads are barely recognizable.

But clinging to the wreckage of their homes, and hometowns, are residents who refuse to leave. Buoyed by volunteers who deliver aid and their own battle-hardened survival instincts, they carry on with their lives in an unending test of endurance. The reasons they stay are many: to care for disabled family members, to look after pets or livestock or, plainly, their love of home.

But in enclaves where the thuds of artillery serve as white noise, war is never far away.

In the southern port city of Kherson and the villages around it, residents have endured months of Russian occupation, a cold winter without electricity and an unending barrage of artillery shells.

Some left after the initial Russian occupation and returned in November 2022, after Ukraine’s military retook the city, but weekly evacuations continue. Kherson’s current population is around 60,000. Before the war, almost five times that many people lived there.

Hundreds of miles east of Kherson, in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, a stretch of land is defined by rolling hills and the slag heaps from the mines that dot the landscape. Despite the echo of war, the coal mines in the area continue to operate, just as they have since the 19th century.

Deep in a mine near the city of Pokrovsk, 21 miles from the front, Volodymyr Kyrylov had the war on his mind even though he could no longer hear the shelling 2,000 feet below ground.

“How could I forget about the war down there, if I have my family, children and my mother, who is on her own, up there?” he said. “I try to finish my work as quickly as possible and then return to the surface again and call to check in with them.”

To the north near Kharkiv, six miles from the front line, residents live in range of Russia’s lethal artillery. Last fall, Halyna Stychnykh, 78, waited for the Red Cross team in front of her house in the village of Iziumske. Bundled in a thick coat, she held tight to an envelope holding her personal documents.

With the war on her doorstep, she had made the decision that some Ukrainians living between the guns are still unable to make: to leave. “We took four bags,” she said of the day she fled the town that had been her home for 50 years. “We only took clothes. Everything else is left behind.”

Ukrainian soldiers refer to some of the civilians who remain, visible from the slits of their armored vehicles and trench lines, as “those who wait.” The phrase is seen as a dig at the possibility these lonely residents are actually waiting for Russian troops to arrive.

In Ukraine’s south, where hopes of a Ukrainian counteroffensive ended in failure, the front line is only four miles from the town of Huliaipole. Around 1,500 residents remain, and on a cold day late last year, Halyna Lyushanska, 79, was the only patient at the town’s battered hospital.

Ms. Lyushanska said that her only income is her pension, roughly $100 a month. She once worked on a horse farm, but now she and her 50-year-old daughter, who looks after her, have lost most of their animals and livestock. Unwilling to leave, they grudgingly rely on assistance from the government and volunteers to stay warm.

“The mayor had promised pallets for us to warm up during the winter,” she said from her hospital bed. Officials always promise aid, she said, but “I was never expecting any help; I know that’s just lies.”

As the war in Ukraine enters its third year, she knows that daily life for her, and for other civilians who remain in the shadow of the front line, will only grow more desperate.

But residents said that no matter how long it lasts, how many shells are fired, how many cold winters pass, there will always be those who stay, tethered to home.

Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a Ukraine correspondent and a former Marine infantryman. More about Thomas Gibbons-Neff

Our Coverage of the War in Ukraine

News and Analysis

The top American military commander in Europe warned that Ukraine could lose the war with Russia  if the United States did not send more ammunition to Ukrainian forces, and fast.

Ukrainian lawmakers passed a mobilization law aimed at replenishing the nation’s exhausted and depleted fighting forces .

China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, met in Beijing . The visit came days after the United States threatened new sanctions against Chinese companies if they aided Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Hollowing Out a Generation:  Ukraine desperately needs new recruits, but it is running up against a critical demographic constraint long in the making: It has very few young men .

Conditional Support: Ukraine wants a formal invitation to join NATO, but the alliance has no appetite for taking on a new member  that would draw it into the biggest land war in Europe since 1945.

‘Shell Hunger’: A desperate shortage of munitions in Ukraine  is warping tactics and the types of weapons employed, and what few munitions remain are often mismatched with battlefield needs.

How We Verify Our Reporting

Our team of visual journalists analyzes satellite images, photographs , videos and radio transmissions  to independently confirm troop movements and other details.

We monitor and authenticate reports on social media, corroborating these with eyewitness accounts and interviews. Read more about our reporting efforts .

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