2022 – Present
ONGOINGRussia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 was the largest conventional war in Europe since 1945. The attempt to seize Kyiv in days failed within weeks, and the war became a grinding contest of artillery, drones, and attrition across the east and south. Ukraine's 2022 counteroffensives retook Kharkiv and Kherson; its 2023 offensive failed against prepared Russian defenses; its 2024 incursion into Kursk put a foreign army on Russian soil for the first time since 1941, and collapsed by March 2025. Since then the pattern has held: Russia advances slowly and at enormous cost — taking Pokrovsk in December 2025 after eighteen months and roughly seventy meters a day — while Ukraine strikes deep, most spectacularly in June 2025 when Operation Spiderweb destroyed or damaged 41 aircraft and about a third of Russia's cruise-missile bomber fleet using drones smuggled across Russia in cargo trucks. Diplomacy has run in parallel rather than instead: an Anchorage summit in August 2025, the Paris Declaration on security guarantees in January 2026, and two brief truces in April and May 2026. As of August 2026 the war is in its fifth year, Russia's 2026 offensives have produced no breakthrough, and in May 2026 Russian-held territory shrank for the first time since 2023.
Same Theater
The Eastern Front of WWII raged across the same Ukrainian and Russian territory. Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Crimea were all major WWII battlegrounds. Russia's combined-arms doctrine descends directly from Soviet deep-battle theory; Ukraine's defenses mirror partisan and irregular resistance that proved decisive in 1941–44.
Direct Predecessor
NATO's post-Cold War expansion into Eastern Europe sits at the center of Russia's stated rationale for the invasion. Ukraine's independence in 1991, its drift toward the West, and its aspirations for NATO membership culminated in this war — the Cold War's unresolved tensions made lethal.
Strategic Echo
Napoleon's catastrophic 1812 Russian campaign — overextension, brutal winter, logistical collapse — is a template Russia's generals ignored. The failed initial 3-day blitz on Kyiv in February 2022 echoed that overreach almost perfectly: a rapid capital strike that collapsed under determined resistance.
Chapter-by-chapter narrative with maps, primary sources, and key events.
Explore battles on a live map with a timeline slider and territory overlays.
Deep-dive into every major engagement — commanders, casualties, significance.
Biographical flip cards with real portraits, facts, and full biography pages.
Trace each figure's full life journey — birth, education, battles, and death — on a live map.
Scroll-driven visualization of casualties — each dot a thousand lives.
Weapons, war machines, and the military innovations that defined how this conflict was fought.
Cause-and-effect chains tracing the war's long shadow on history.
War crimes, massacres, and the darkest chapters of this conflict — documented for history.
Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022 was the largest conventional war in Europe since 1945. The attempt to seize Kyiv in days failed within weeks, and the war became a grinding contest of artillery, drones, and attrition across the east and south. Ukraine's 2022 counteroffensives retook Kharkiv and Kherson; its 2023 offensive failed against prepared Russian defenses; its 2024 incursion into Kursk put a foreign army on Russian soil for the first time since 1941, and collapsed by March 2025. Since then the pattern has held: Russia advances slowly and at enormous cost — taking Pokrovsk in December 2025 after eighteen months and roughly seventy meters a day — while Ukraine strikes deep, most spectacularly in June 2025 when Operation Spiderweb destroyed or damaged 41 aircraft and about a third of Russia's cruise-missile bomber fleet using drones smuggled across Russia in cargo trucks. Diplomacy has run in parallel rather than instead: an Anchorage summit in August 2025, the Paris Declaration on security guarantees in January 2026, and two brief truces in April and May 2026. As of August 2026 the war is in its fifth year, Russia's 2026 offensives have produced no breakthrough, and in May 2026 Russian-held territory shrank for the first time since 2023.
Russia-Ukraine War was fought from 2022 to the present day.
Russia-Ukraine War was fought between Ukraine and Russia.
An estimated 387,000 people died in Russia-Ukraine War, including roughly 370,000 military and 17,000 civilian deaths. Figures are scholarly estimates and vary by source.
Major engagements included Battle of Pokrovsk, The 2026 Offensives, Battle of Bakhmut, and Zaporizhzhia Counteroffensive.