Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022–)

Before dawn on 24 February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, turning a conflict that had begun with the annexation of Crimea in 2014 into Europe's largest and deadliest war since the Second World War. The fighting has killed or wounded hundreds of thousands of soldiers and tens of thousands of civilians, and displaced millions of Ukrainians. The war is ongoing, and this account summarises events up to September 2026.

Russian troops massed near Ukraine's borders in spring 2021 and again from October 2021, while Russian officials repeatedly denied any plan to invade. In December Russia demanded guarantees that Ukraine and other former Soviet states would never join NATO and that the alliance end its activity in eastern Europe; NATO rejected a permanent bar on Ukrainian membership but offered talks on other issues. On 21 February 2022 Russia recognised the breakaway "people's republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk, whose Russian-backed forces had fought Ukraine since 2014.

Announcing a "special military operation", President Vladimir Putin said its aims were to protect people in the Donbas from what he called genocide and to "demilitarise and denazify" Ukraine, and he questioned the legitimacy of the Ukrainian state. Ukraine and Western governments rejected these claims as baseless. Russian forces advanced on Kyiv from Belarus and the north-east, on Kharkiv in the east, and from Crimea in the south. Meeting fierce resistance and supply problems, Russia failed to take Kyiv and withdrew from the north by early April; the Bucha massacre of civilians was uncovered after the withdrawal. In the south-east, Russian forces took Mariupol after a destructive siege.

In September 2022 Ukraine recaptured most of Kharkiv Oblast, and Russia announced a partial mobilisation. On 30 September Putin declared the annexation of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts after referendums organised by Russian-installed officials; Ukraine, the EU, the United States and the UN denounced the move as illegal. In November Ukrainian troops retook the city of Kherson as Russia withdrew east of the Dnipro.

The front then hardened into a grinding war of attrition. Russian forces, including the Wagner Group, took Bakhmut in May 2023, and a Ukrainian counter-offensive that summer failed to achieve its main objectives. Russia captured Avdiivka in February 2024 and pressed slowly westward. In August 2024 Ukraine made an incursion into Russia's Kursk Oblast, where North Korean troops were sent to fight alongside Russian forces; Ukraine had been mostly pushed out by summer 2025. Russia claimed Pokrovsk in December 2025. In 2026 Ukraine regained some ground, including about 200 square kilometres north of Lyman reported in September.

Casualty figures are uncertain and disputed. In January 2026 the UN human rights office reported 2,514 verified civilian deaths in Ukraine during 2025, the worst annual toll since 2022, while stressing that true totals are significantly higher. In February 2025 the Quincy Institute estimated around 250,000 dead overall, and in February 2026 President Volodymyr Zelenskyy put Ukraine's battlefield deaths at about 55,000. About 6 to 7 million people have fled abroad and some 8 million have been internally displaced.

In March 2022 and again in February 2023, 141 UN member states backed General Assembly resolutions demanding Russia's withdrawal. On 17 March 2023 the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin over the forced deportation of Ukrainian children, followed by warrants for other senior Russian officials; Russia denies committing war crimes. In May 2026, 36 countries formalised a special tribunal to try Putin for aggression against Ukraine. Many states imposed sanctions on Russia and sent aid to Ukraine, while Finland and Sweden joined NATO.

As of September 2026 the war was continuing. According to an August 2026 estimate, Russian forces occupied roughly a fifth of Ukraine's territory. Neither talks in 2022 nor later US-led diplomacy produced a settlement; Ukraine accepted a proposed unconditional ceasefire, which Russia rejected.

Our 1985 map shows Ukraine within the Soviet Union, and our 1994, 2000 and 2010 maps show independent Ukraine beside Russia before the war.