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Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has claimed huge swaths of land, and hundereds of thousands of civilian lives.
By CORINNE BAUM FEBRUARY 24, 2025 20:25
A view shows service members of pro-Russian troops and tanks during Ukraine-Russia conflict on the outskirts of the besieged southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine March 20, 2022
(photo credit: REUTERS/ALEXANDER ERMOCHENKO)
On this day in 2022, Russia began its full-scale, illegal invasion of Ukraine, sanctioned and approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russia started the war on February 24, 2022, by launching a land, sea, and air invasion after it moved thousands of troops to the Ukrainian border. At the time, Putin justified this in a television address, claiming that Moscow needed to “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine and protect Russians in the separatist Donbas region.
Ukraine had never had its own state, he said, and it had always been part of Russia’s “own history, culture, spiritual space,” echoing Soviet-era claims that delegitimized a sovereign Ukraine.
Now, 1,095 days later, Russia still occupies roughly 20% of Ukraine’s land, 6.8 million civilians have been displaced from Ukraine, and 14 million people need humanitarian assistance, the Council for Foreign Relations reported.
How to count the casualties?
Soldiers and civilians have died in the crosshairs of the conflict at a volume unseen in Europe since World War II.
Ukraine initially lost territory but regained some of it at various points during the war, largely thanks to US-backed military aid.
Reporting the war in numbers has been notably difficult, since both countries keep them under top-secret security levels.
According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had died as of December 2024. Various international organizations with biases toward Ukraine have reported numbers ranging between 62,000 to 100,000 people.
Russia has lost 859,920 troops during the war, according to the Ukrainian army.
Nearly 95,000 Russian troops have died in the war, the BBC recently reported, not including those who serve in militias or those who are from the Russian-backed Donbas region, which the BBC estimates have lost 21,000 people. Russia loses at least 1,500 troops daily, Business Insider reported.
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The Ukrainian Armed Forces had lost about 1.08 million people since the start of the war, Russian state news agency TASS reported.
Did the war start in Crimea?
While Monday marked the three-year anniversary of Moscow’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, many analysts have said the war did not technically begin with the 2022 invasion but with Russia’s 2014 illegal annexation of Crimea.
In 2014, Russian forces invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula with the help of local pro-Russian separatists. Moscow had stationed its Black Sea Fleet in the city of Sevastopol as per a 2010 agreement with former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych.
Throughout February 2014, Russia increased its presence in the region and then blocked regional airports and Ukrainian military bases before helping seat Sergey Aksyonov as “prime minister of Crimea.”
Zelensky promised to retake the peninsula at the onset of the 2022 invasion.
What comes next?
There appears to be no clear path to total victory for either side, given their significant military losses. Both seem unwilling to concede their demands for the other.
Zelensky has said he wants a complete withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukrainian territory, including Crimea.Putin has said he wants to maintain Russian control over four regions in Ukraine and for Ukraine to drop all aspirations of joining NATO.
US President Donald Trump claimed previously that he could end the war in days, which both Kyiv and Moscow have said would be impossible.
“A ceasefire without a long-term settlement is the path to a swift resumption of fighting and a resumption of the conflict with even more serious consequences, including consequences for Russian-American relations,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told RIA news agency on Monday. “We do not want this.”
In a recent push to end the war, US and Russian officials held talks in Saudi Arabia to streamline a position for a potential ceasefire deal. It was the first time officials from the two countries met publicly since the start of the war.Zelensky said there would be no peace deal without Ukraine present at the negotiating table.
“There can be no decision without Ukraine on how to end the war in Ukraine,” he said at a press conference in Ankara last week. “To ensure the war ends with a reliable and lasting peace, no mistakes can be allowed. This is only possible when negotiations are fair and guarantees are developed with the participation of all those who can truly provide them.”
Nearly half of Ukraine’s military aid came from the US, according to CNN. The Biden administration was largely supportive of Ukrainian efforts to remain sovereign. Trump has drastically shifted the US’s foreign policy on this front, however, going so far as to suggest that Ukraine started the war.
“You’ve been there for three years,” he told reporters. “You should have ended it... You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
Trump has repeatedly signaled that he wants what he views as Ukrainian dependence, saying the US would be “stupid” to continue giving the country money “without something in return.”
As such, he proposed a deal for rare minerals that would amount to $500 billion in natural resources, which Zelensky refused to sign, saying it would be “paid by 10 generations of Ukrainians.”
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