"Europe’s deadliest war since World War II drags on"

Four years ago today, Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin expected his “special military operation” to last days, with the Russian army quickly seizing its neighbor. He was wrong. Ukrainians fought back, conducting strikes deep inside Russian territory and holding the front line against a vastly larger force while pioneering new drone innovations.

For the past two years, Russia’s gains have been incremental and limited to the eastern Ukrainian Donbas region; analysis from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) shows that Russian forces have advanced over only about 4,700 square kilometers in the last year. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) last month assessed that, since 2024, Russian forces have averaged gains “at an average rate of between 15 and 70 meters per day in their most prominent offensives, slower than almost any major offensive campaign in any war in the last century.”

In recent weeks, Ukrainian forces have gained a slight upper hand: According to ISW, Ukrainian troops recaptured about 200 square kilometers of territory in just five days in mid-February—their largest gains since the 2023 counteroffensive—exploiting a Starlink shutdown that disrupted Russian battlefield communications.

But over four years of war, Ukraine has borne the immense costs of defending itself. The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) verified this month that 15,172 civilians have been killed since 2022, including at least 4,762 women and 766 children; or about 10 civilian deaths per day. Some 41,378 others have been injured, including 13,464 women and 2,540 children.

The war has displaced more than one-third of Ukraine’s population, and 5.9 million Ukrainians have fled the country, with 5.3 million settling in Europe, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency. On the battlefield, CSIS estimated in January that Ukrainian forces have suffered between 500,000 and 600,000 total casualties—including between 100,000 and 140,000 killed—since the invasion began, though precise figures remain contested and classified. Ukrainian officials have always provided lower numbers than such estimates, though; President Volodymyr Zelensky said last February that more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and 380,000 wounded.

Amid halting peace negotiations, Europe’s deadliest war since World War II drags on. But how will Ukraine rebuild from years of fighting? And how different will the plucky country be in the aftermath?

The Morning Dispatch