Two years of war in Ukraine | The front in four stages

Breakthroughs, setbacks, standing still. Two years after the start of its invasion, the Russian army is painfully eating away at Ukrainian territory, consolidating its gains in the east and south-east of the country. His recent victory at Avdiivka and the possible drying up of Western funding suggest that Vladimir Putin could win his war. Overview in four maps.

Before February 24, 2022

The armed conflict in Ukraine began in earnest in 2014, following the annexation of Crimea by Russia. This crisis will accentuate ethnic divisions in eastern Ukraine, leading to a declaration of independence by the pro-Russian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, which will be recognized by Vladimir Putin three days before his assault on Ukraine. Russia then occupies 7% of Ukrainian territory.

The Russian breakthrough

February 24, 2022. The Russian army enters Ukraine from the north and heads straight for Kyiv. Few believe in the chances of Ukrainian victory, but the Russians, unable to take the capital, retreated at the beginning of April in order to concentrate their forces on the east and south-east of the country, also invaded. In May, the strategic port city of Mariupol fell at the end of a brutal Russian offensive, the images of which went around the world. Fierce fighting is also taking place in the region of Kharkiv, the country’s second city. At this point, the Russian army occupies 20% of Ukrainian territory.

The Ukrainian counter-offensive

Turnaround in the fall of 2022. After the initial shock, Ukrainian forces chase the Russians from the Kherson and Kharkiv regions, regaining some of their lost territory. After conceding Bakhmout, at the end of a bloody battle, the Ukrainian army relaunches its counter-offensive in the summer of 2023, with the objective of cutting off Russian access to Crimea, between Donetsk and Zaporizhia. But the Russian defenses were consolidated and the reconquest did not take place. In five months, the Ukrainians have only regained 400 km² of their territory… which they will lose elsewhere during various Russian counter-offensives.

A frozen forehead

By the end of 2023, the conflict in Ukraine turned into a grinding war (grinding). We are eating away at territory here and there, but there are no notable gains on either side. This stalemate, which some compare to that of the First World War, due to the trenches and heavy losses, is undermining the morale of the Ukrainian troops, who are struggling to compete with an inexhaustible Russian army, both in men and weapons, while the president Volodymyr Zelensky is struggling to find funding abroad, an increasingly difficult political task. As of this writing, Russia occupies approximately 17% of Ukraine’s territory.