![](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/GettyImages-2245912650-e1771775067296.jpg?w=2048\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
When Russia\u2019s\u00a0full-scale invasion of Ukraine\u00a0surpassed 1,418 days last month, it officially exceeded a historic milestone \u2014 the same span of time it took Moscow to defeat Nazi Germany in World War II.<\/p>\n
And unlike the Red Army that pushed all the way to Berlin eight decades ago in what it called the Great Patriotic War, Russia\u2019s 4-year-old, all-out invasion of its neighbor is\u00a0still struggling\u00a0to fully capture Ukraine\u2019s eastern industrial heartland.<\/p>\n
After Moscow failed to seize the capital of Kyiv and install a puppet government in February 2022, the conflict turned into trench warfare with\u00a0tremendous cost.\u00a0By some estimates, nearly 2 million soldiers are dead, wounded or missing on both sides in Europe\u2019s most devastating conflict since World War II.<\/p>\n
Russia has occupied about 20% of Ukrainian territory since illegally annexing Crimea in 2014, but its gains after the Feb. 24, 2022, invasion have been slow. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte this month likened Moscow\u2019s advance to \u201cthe speed of a garden snail.\u201d<\/p>\n
Russian troops have moved only about 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) into the\u00a0Donetsk region\u00a0of eastern Ukraine in the past two years in a grinding battle for control of a few strongholds.<\/p>\n
Despite the slow pace and high cost, President Vladimir Putin has maintained his maximalist demands in U.S.-mediated peace talks, saying Kyiv must pull its forces from the four Ukrainian regions that Moscow illegally annexed but never fully captured. He has repeatedly brandished his nuclear arsenal to prevent the West from boosting military support for Kyiv.<\/p>\n
Initially involving quick movements of large numbers of troops and tanks in Russia\u2019s opening blitz and Ukraine\u2019s counteroffensive in fall 2022, the fighting morphed into bloody positional warfare along the 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) front line.<\/p>\n
The Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated Russian military casualties at 1.2 million, including 325,000 killed. It put Ukrainian troop casualties at up to 600,000, including up to 140,000 killed.<\/p>\n
\u201cRussia has suffered the highest casualty rate of any major power in any war since World War II, and its military has performed poorly, with historically slow rates of advance and little new territory to show for its efforts over the last two years,\u201d it said, noting Russian troops were advancing an average of 70 meters (76 1\/2 yards) a day in two years to capture the transport hub of\u00a0Pokrovsk.<\/p>\n
For the first time in military history, drones are playing a decisive role, making it effectively impossible for either side to covertly mass significant numbers of troops.<\/p>\n
Since early in the conflict, Ukraine has relied on drones to offset Moscow\u2019s edge in firepower and stem its advances, but Russia has drastically expanded drone operations and introduced longer-range optical fiber-tethered drones to avoid electronic jamming. They widened the kill zone to 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) from the front, leaving the terrain tangled in strands of filament.<\/p>\n
The mixture of high-tech drones and World War I-style trench fighting has seen small groups of infantry \u2014 often just two or three soldiers \u2014 try to infiltrate enemy positions into towns flattened by Russian heavy artillery and glide bombs. Ferrying supplies and evacuating the wounded is a major challenge as drones target supply routes.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian officials described this winter as the most challenging of the war. Russia exponentially increased its strikes on the country\u2019s energy system, causing blackouts in Kyiv where power supplies to many were cut to a few hours a day amid bitter cold.<\/p>\n
Russia also has increasingly targeted power lines aiming to halt energy transfers and split Ukraine\u2019s power grid into isolated islands, increasing pressure on the grid.<\/p>\n
Ukraine retaliated with\u00a0long-range drone attacks\u00a0on oil refineries and other energy facilities deep inside Russia, aiming to drain Moscow\u2019s export revenues.<\/p>\n
Its drones and missiles sank several Russian warships in the Black Sea, forcing Moscow to redeploy its fleet from Russia-occupied Crimea to Novorossiysk. And in an audacious attack code-named\u00a0\u201cSpiderweb,\u201dUkraine used drones from trucks to hit several air bases hosting long-range bombers across Russia in June, a humiliating blow to the Kremlin.<\/p>\n
U.S. President Donald Trump, who once promised to end the war in a day, has pushed to end the fighting, but\u00a0mediation efforts\u00a0have run into sharply conflicting demands.<\/p>\n
Putin wants\u00a0Ukraine to pull its troops from the part of the Donetsk region it still controls, abandon its bid to join NATO, curb its military and grant official status to the Russian language, among other demands Ukraine has rejected.<\/p>\n
Russia left the door open to Kyiv\u2019s prospective European Union membership, but it firmly ruled out any European peacekeepers deployed to Ukraine as part of a settlement.<\/p>\n
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants a ceasefire along the existing line of contact, but Putin rules out a truce, demanding a comprehensive peace agreement.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe territorial issue is important to the Kremlin, but the war has a more ambitious goal: to create a Ukraine that would be entirely within Russia\u2019s sphere of influence and not perceived by Moscow as \u2018anti-Russia,\u2019\u201d observed Tatiana Stanovaya of Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.<\/p>\n
Ukraine and its allies accuse Putin of dragging out talks while he seizes more territory. The Kremlin accuses Kyiv and its European supporters of trying to undermine\u00a0a tentative agreement\u00a0reached by Trump and Putin at their\u00a0Alaska summit.<\/p>\n
While sticking to their positions, Putin and Zelenskyy have praised U.S. mediation and tried to curry favor with Trump.<\/p>\n
After a disastrous White House meeting a year ago, Zelenskyy has adopted a more practical negotiating stance, emphasizing Ukraine\u2019s goodwill.<\/p>\n
After Trump called for a presidential election in Ukraine, Zelenskyy signaled readiness for it even though it\u2019s banned under martial law. The election could be coupled with a referendum on a peace deal, he said, but insisted the vote was only possible once a ceasefire is established and Ukraine gets\u00a0security guarantees\u00a0from the U.S. and other allies.<\/p>\n
Zelenskyy said the White House has set a\u00a0June deadline\u00a0for the war\u2019s end and will likely pressure both sides to meet it. But even as Trump appears eager for a peace deal before the U.S. midterm elections, challenges remain.<\/p>\n
With Putin insisting on Ukraine\u2019s pullback from Donetsk and Zelenskyy ruling it out, a quick deal appears unlikely. Zelenskyy also expressed skepticism about a compromise U.S. proposal to turn the eastern region into a free economic zone.<\/p>\n
The Kremlin expects its attacks eventually will force Kyiv to accept Moscow\u2019s terms. Ukraine hopes it can hold on until Trump loses patience and increases sanctions on Russia, forcing Putin to halt his aggression. But Trump often appears to be losing patience with Zelenskyy instead.<\/p>\n
The war and Western sanctions have increasingly strained Russia\u2019s economy. Growth has slowed to a near halt, due to persistent inflation and labor shortages. The latest U.S.\u00a0sanctions on Russian oil exportshave added to the strain.<\/p>\n
But even with the economic challenges, Russia\u2019s defense plants have increased weapons output and its government has shielded key social groups like soldiers and industrial workers from hardship.<\/p>\n
\u201cIts economy is poorer, less efficient and less promising than it might otherwise have been,\u201d wrote Richard Connolly of the Royal United Services Institute. \u201cBut it remains capable of sustaining the war. Its elites are more dependent on the regime, not less. Its political system is insulated from the transmission of economic discontent into pressure for regime change.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
#years #Russia #invaded #Ukraine #million #soldiers #dead #wounded #missing<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Russia\u2019s\u00a0full-scale invas… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[3532,14059,913,2675,3452,14060,3453,3454,14061,84],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24152"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}