Ukraine Timelapse Map Shows Ground Lost, Retaken in 18 Months of War

Russia's "special military operation" was supposed to be a lightning conclusion to two decades of undulating conflict with Ukraine, and the final chapter of a hot war that began with Moscow's annexation of Crimea and invasion of the Donbas in 2014.

Vladimir Putin is the midwife for a new era of European conflict. His military gamble has cemented Ukraine's decades-long westward drift and revitalized dormant European Union-NATO security and enlargement debates. At home, the Russian president has tightened his autocratic noose and put Russia's isolated economy on a war footing.

Both Russia and Ukraine appear confident that they can still win on the battlefield despite rising losses. Neither side releases detailed casualty figures, but U.S. officials told The New York Times this month that the cumulative number of military killed and wounded is now approaching 500,000.

Ukrainian troops are pushing hard in the southeast of the country while Russian forces attack in the northeast. Both Kyiv and Moscow hope to make gains before the fall mud and winter freeze force a pause in major operations until 2024.

Ukraine has shown the ability to win back land, even though some 20 percent of the country remains occupied by Moscow's soldiers, including the so-called "land corridor" connecting Crimea to Russia's western border.

Kyiv's forces have liberated around 50 percent of all territory captured by Russia since the full-scale invasion began on February 24, 2022.

The humiliating collapse of Russia's offensive north of Kyiv in April 2022, the lightning counteroffensive push into occupied Kharkiv Oblast in September, and the slow but successful southern drive to liberate Kherson and push Russian troops back across the Dnieper River—called the Dnipro in Ukrainian—have all been major victories for Ukraine.

Russian efforts to seize back momentum have been costly and achieved little. Where Russian units have advanced, they have destroyed everything in their path. The city of Bakhmut now stands—though barely—as a testament to Russia's devastation doctrine.

But despite the endemic corruption, morale issues, and institutional brutality of Russia's armed forces, its troops are offering a stout defense of occupied areas behind fearsome defensive lines.

Both sides are making fresh offensive efforts through the summer. Ukraine launched its long-awaited counteroffensive operation in early June, its focus on the southeastern Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk fronts.

A clear breakthrough remains elusive, but Kyiv has reported local success that is reportedly unsettling the Russian defenders. Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry by email to request comment.

Ukraine's overall goal is to break into and sever Russia's land corridor, isolating occupied southern Ukraine and Crimea; the jewel in Putin's re-fashioned crown. The slow progress of Kyiv's troops has raised concerns this might not be possible, though Ukrainian civilian and military officials have repeatedly urged patience.

The degradation of Russia's forces, they have said, is as important as territorial gains. Still, Western political and media pressure—plus reported strategic disagreements within President Volodymyr Zelensky's top team—are raising the stakes.

Moscow's troops, meanwhile, are pushing again in the Kharkiv and Luhansk regions in the northeast. The drive—intended to distract resources and attention from Ukraine's counteroffensive—has precipitated a major battle in the Serebryansky forest, which separates the Russian-held town of Kreminna and the Ukrainian-held city of Slovyansk.

But Pavel Luzin, a Russian political analyst and visiting scholar at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, told Newsweek that Russia's forces have been badly degraded in their unexpectedly long and costly war.

"Russia has lost its professional army," Luzin said. "Russia lost the most of its advanced arms and systems aimed for the ground forces, and the organizational structure of the Russian ground forces is degrading, the motor-rifle units mostly look like a conglomerate of irregular combat formations."

Russian commanders are still ordering offensives, but Moscow has fewer tanks, artillery pieces, and aircraft to support them. "Russia lost the ability to conduct combined offensive operations," Luzin said.

Renewed peace talks are highly unlikely 18 months into the full-scale war. The two sides appear to be living in parallel political realities. Kyiv has vowed to liberate all territory per its 1991 borders—including Crimea and the Donbas—and is demanding reparations and war crime trials for Russian leaders.

The Kremlin says it is open to renewed negotiations, but only those reflecting the "new territorial reality" of its occupation of swaths of Ukrainian land. Moscow is still clinging to its false narrative of "de-Nazifying" Ukraine, while Putin and his top officials now frame the war as an existential crusade against the "degenerate" West.

Ukraine is bruised but unbroken. Zelensky has been transformed from a leader struggling with the demands of high office to an international resistance icon. Surveys indicate continued public support for full liberation of all occupied land, and little support for a hypothetical peace that few Ukrainians believe would last given Moscow's past conduct.

"The Russians seem to have believed that by targeting civilians and civilian objects they would manage to break us down psychologically," Oleksandr Merezhko—a member of the Ukrainian parliament and chair of the body's foreign affairs committee—told Newsweek.

"Instead, we have become more angry, fearless and determined to fight until victory. The spirits of Ukrainians are still high," he said. "Of course, it's difficult to fight, and people get tired of living in constant stress. But despite all this we continue to be resilient and have adjusted to the abnormal conditions of war."

"There is no depression," Merezhko added. "After all, strategically we have already won the war because we have survived and continue to liberate our territories. I see that the Russians are demoralized, and they don't have strong desire to continue a senseless war. They don't want to die for their dictator, and [Wagner Group financier Yevgeny] Prigozhin's mutiny demonstrated that."

"The dominating thought among our people is what should be done for our victory," Merezhko said.