Campaign · February 24 – March 30, 2022 · Northern Ukraine Theater

Russia's opening gambit — a rapid armored thrust from Belarus toward the Ukrainian capital, accompanied by an airborne seizure of Hostomel Airport. The plan called for Kyiv's fall within 72 hours. Instead, Ukrainian defenders, armed with Javelin missiles and fierce resolve, halted the advance. Russian columns ran out of fuel and were ambushed on clogged roads. The airborne bridgehead at Hostomel was contested and destroyed. After five weeks, Russian forces withdrew completely, having failed to take Kyiv and abandoned the northern campaign; Russia nevertheless captured major cities elsewhere, including Kherson.

Siege · February 24 – May 16, 2022 · Southern Ukraine Theater

The port city of Mariupol was surrounded within days of the invasion's start. The Ukrainian garrison — primarily the Azov Regiment and marine infantry — withdrew to the vast Azovstal steel plant and conducted a siege-within-a-siege that lasted 82 days. The plant's underground tunnels sheltered fighters and hundreds of civilians. Russia bombarded the complex with artillery, air strikes, and thermobaric weapons. The world watched as the defenders — massively outgunned and out of ammunition — finally negotiated a surrender on May 16.

Battle · February 24 – May 14, 2022 · Northeastern Ukraine Theater

Ukraine's second city — just 40 km from the Russian border — faced intense fighting in the opening weeks of the invasion. Russian forces entered Kharkiv's outskirts and shelled the city center extensively, destroying civilian infrastructure, the central market, and government buildings. However, Ukrainian forces prevented Russian troops from taking the city itself. Sustained artillery bombardment of residential areas produced large civilian casualties. By mid-May, Ukrainian counterattacks had pushed Russian forces back toward the border, out of artillery range of the city.

Battle · February 24 – June 30, 2022 · Black Sea Theater

A tiny Ukrainian island outpost in the Black Sea became the war's first legendary moment. On February 24, the Russian warship Moskva and a border guard vessel demanded the island's small Ukrainian garrison surrender. The garrison's radio response — 'Russian warship, go f**k yourself' — went viral globally and became a rallying cry. The garrison was captured, but the island became a contested symbol. Ukraine launched repeated drone and missile strikes on Russian naval assets supporting the island occupation. On June 30, Russia withdrew from Snake Island entirely, citing 'goodwill gesture' — in reality abandoning an exposed position Ukraine had made untenable.

Battle · May 2022 – May 20, 2023 · Eastern Ukraine (Donbas) Theater

The longest and deadliest battle of the war. The Wagner Group, Prigozhin's mercenary army that recruited convicts from Russian prisons, led the assault on the small city of Bakhmut over ten months of brutal urban and trench warfare. Ukraine chose to fight for every block, turning Bakhmut into an attritional nightmare for both sides. Entire neighborhoods were reduced to rubble. By the time Wagner raised its flag over the city's ruins on May 20, both sides had suffered catastrophic losses estimated at tens of thousands each.

Battle · May 12 – July 3, 2022 · Eastern Ukraine (Luhansk Oblast) Theater

Following the fall of the Kyiv front, Russia concentrated force on capturing the Luhansk Oblast's administrative capital. The city became a miniature Stalingrad — Ukrainian forces clung to the Azot chemical plant and its tunnel system in a familiar pattern of industrial-structure last stands. For weeks, Ukraine controlled only the plant and a single bridge to the sister city of Lysychansk. Despite fierce resistance, Ukrainian forces were ordered to withdraw on July 3 to avoid encirclement, and Russia captured both cities by early July.

Campaign · August – November 11, 2022 · Southern Ukraine Theater

Ukraine's southern counteroffensive methodically cut Russian supply lines to Kherson Oblast, isolating the Russian garrison west of the Dnipro River. Bridges and pontoon crossings were destroyed by HIMARS rocket artillery. Russian General Surovikin — newly appointed as overall commander — made the strategically sound but politically humiliating decision to withdraw across the river to avoid encirclement. On November 11, Ukrainian forces entered Kherson city to jubilant crowds.

Campaign · September 6 – October 2, 2022 · Northeastern Ukraine Theater

One of the most dramatic military operations of the 21st century. Ukrainian forces, having lured Russian attention to the south with a publicized Kherson offensive, secretly massed forces in Kharkiv Oblast and struck with stunning speed on September 6. The Russian line collapsed instantly — Russian troops abandoned equipment, vehicles, and ammunition depots as Ukrainian forces advanced 50–60 km per day in some sectors. The major logistics hub of Izyum, holding the equivalent of a division's ammunition, was abandoned in 24 hours. Ukraine liberated over 8,000 km² in less than two weeks — more territory than Russia had captured in six months of fighting.

Campaign · June 4 – November 2023 · Southern Ukraine (Zaporizhzhia Oblast) Theater

Ukraine's long-anticipated summer counteroffensive aimed to cut through Russian defenses in Zaporizhzhia Oblast and reach the Sea of Azov, severing Russia's land bridge to Crimea. Equipped with Western tanks including Leopard 2s and Bradley IFVs and months of NATO training, the offensive launched on June 4 into a system of defenses far deeper and denser than Western military planners had anticipated. Extensive minefields, layered anti-tank obstacles, and mutually supporting artillery positions blunted Ukrainian mechanized formations before they could close with the main defensive line. By autumn, Ukraine had liberated only a handful of villages at great cost in men and equipment.

Battle · October 2023 – February 17, 2024 · Eastern Ukraine (Donbas) Theater

Russia encircled and captured Avdiivka — a fortified industrial town that had been a Ukrainian stronghold since 2014 — in a grinding four-month operation. The battle bore close resemblance to Bakhmut: overwhelming Russian artillery, relentless infantry assaults, and Ukraine's decision to defend as long as possible before ordering a tactical withdrawal. Ukraine's ammunition shortage, caused by the stalling of US Congressional aid, was critical. The garrison withdrew on February 17, 2024.

Campaign · August 6, 2024 – March 2025 · Kursk Oblast, Russia Theater

Ukrainian forces crossed into Russia’s Kursk Oblast on August 6, 2024 and seized a substantial salient. Ukraine captured Russian servicemen and sought operational and negotiating leverage. Russian and North Korean forces counterattacked over subsequent months; the principal Ukrainian-held salient contracted sharply in March 2025.

Battle · September 2024 – Early 2026 · Donetsk Oblast Theater

Russia fought toward and through Pokrovsk over an extended campaign. Moscow claimed complete capture in December 2025 while Ukraine continued to dispute control. Independent assessment placed the city’s capture in early 2026 and noted that dispersal and rerouting had already reduced its former logistical importance.

Campaign · January – March 2025 · Kursk Oblast, Russia Theater

Russian and North Korean forces increased pressure on the Kursk salient in early 2025. Ukrainian forces withdrew from most of the salient in March, ending the main phase of the incursion while some cross-border activity continued.

Raid · June 1, 2025 · Russian strategic airbases — Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan, Amur Theater

Ukraine’s Security Service carried out drone attacks against Russian air bases using systems launched from concealed positions inside Russia. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said 41 aircraft were hit and that aircraft representing 34 percent of Russia’s strategic cruise-missile carriers had been affected. Those figures are Ukrainian official claims and do not establish how many aircraft were destroyed.

Political event · August 15, 2025 · Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson, Alaska Theater

The American and Russian presidents met for nearly three hours in Alaska on August 15, 2025 — Putin's first visit to the United States in a decade and the end of his diplomatic isolation over the invasion. Both delegations called the talks constructive. Nothing concrete was agreed. Ukraine was not at the table. Earlier US-led efforts that year to broker limited ceasefires covering the Black Sea and energy infrastructure had already failed on incompatible readings of what each side had agreed to, and the pattern held: negotiations proceeded in parallel with a Russian summer offensive rather than instead of one.

Political event · January 6, 2026 · Paris Theater

Thirty-five countries met in Paris on January 6, 2026 as the 'Coalition of the Willing' and issued the Paris Declaration on Security Guarantees for Ukraine — a commitment to what Ukraine would receive after a ceasefire, given that NATO membership remained unavailable. The declaration addressed the question that has blocked every settlement since 2022: Ukraine will not accept a ceasefire that merely pauses the war and lets Russia reconstitute, and Russia will not accept guarantees that amount to NATO by another name. Paris was an attempt to define a third thing. It committed no one to fight.

Campaign · February – Summer 2026 · Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts Theater

Ukraine launched local counteroffensives on the eastern and southern fronts beginning in February 2026 — the first time since the 2024 Kursk incursion that Ukrainian forces made a monthly net gain of territory over Russia. General Komarenko reported Ukrainian forces restored control over 285 km2 in the Oleksandrivka direction and nearly fully liberated Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, with over 400 km2 cleared since operations began. The offensive disrupted Russian planning for a 2026 spring campaign and marked the largest Ukrainian offensive inside the country since the 2023 counteroffensive.

Political event · April 11, 2026 · Front line Theater

A thirty-two-hour truce for Orthodox Easter — proposed by Zelenskyy, with the duration set by Putin — began on April 11, 2026. Both sides reported that the other continued operations throughout; Ukraine logged 469 Russian violations, most of them drone attacks. It was the first agreed pause of the war, and it demonstrated the problem with all the larger proposals: neither army trusted the other enough to actually stop, and neither wanted to be the one that had stopped when the other did not.

Campaign · Spring – Summer 2026 · Donetsk Oblast — Kostiantynivka, Huliaipole, Zaporizhzhia axis Theater

Russia's bet on a decisive winter and spring breakthrough after Pokrovsk did not pay. Fighting ran at over two hundred clashes a day along the Pokrovsk, Kostiantynivka, and Zaporizhzhia axes — infiltration fights inside Kostiantynivka itself, sustained pressure toward Huliaipole — without producing an operational rupture anywhere. Over the year from July 2025 to July 2026, Russia took territory amounting to roughly half a percent of Ukraine's area. In May 2026, for the first time since autumn 2023, the monthly change in Russian-occupied territory turned negative: Russia lost more ground than it gained. Putin's own account in March put Ukrainian control of Donetsk Oblast at 15–17 percent, down from about 35 percent six months earlier — an advance real enough to matter and far too slow to end the war.

Political event · May 9 – 11, 2026 · Front line Theater

A second truce covered May 9–11, 2026, timed to Russia's Victory Day commemorations, and included a prisoner exchange — the one form of cooperation that has continued more or less uninterrupted since 2022. Like the Easter truce it was short, unmonitored, and expired into resumed fighting. The prisoner exchanges, by contrast, have run to tens of thousands of people and constitute the only functioning channel between the two governments.

Political event · September 5–6, 2026 · Moscow and Kyiv Theater

US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Putin at the Kremlin for more than three hours on September 5, 2026, then travelled to Kyiv to meet Zelenskyy on September 6 — their first visit to the Ukrainian capital since Trump returned to office. Putin's aide Yuri Ushakov called the Moscow meeting 'constructive, frank and useful' but announced no outcome, and a White House official said only that next steps would be announced 'in the coming weeks.' The trip came after six months in which the Iran war had absorbed Washington's attention and its Ukraine diplomacy had lost momentum.

Campaign · September 15 – October 14, 2026 · Northern Donetsk Oblast — Lyman sector Theater

Ukraine's 3rd Army Corps, commanded by Andriy Biletsky, publicly announced Operation Vivaldi on September 15, 2026, after weeks of strict information silence. Its aim was to stop a Russian approach to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk from the north, through the Lyman sector. In four phases the corps cleared infiltration pockets and retook villages including Serednie, Shandryholove, Derylove, Drobysheve, Karpivka, Ridkodub, Katerynivka and Nove, a key point on the Russian bridgehead; Biletsky reported the fourth phase complete in mid-October. Ukrainian figures for the ground recovered vary widely — 176 km² claimed in late September, a more conservative 125–140 km² from Zelenskyy on October 4, and 277 km² across sixteen settlements in Biletsky's final tally. The Institute for the Study of War assessed that Russia lost about 256 km² in September while capturing about 176 km², a net loss of roughly 81 km²; Finland's Black Bird Group called the month Russia's largest net territorial loss since June 2023. Putin, by contrast, claimed 1,301 km² captured in September, a figure independent maps did not support. Lyman itself did not change hands.

Political event · October 20 – 21, 2026 · Oslo and St Petersburg Theater

On October 20, 2026, Steve Witkoff met Zelenskyy in Oslo alongside Norway's prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre and Finland's president Alexander Stubb, with Jared Kushner joining remotely; a US official said the talks covered 'key elements of a comprehensive peace framework.' The next day Witkoff spent more than three hours with Putin at the Konstantin Palace outside St Petersburg, his ninth in-person meeting with the Russian leader. Ushakov said Moscow was 'in principle' ready to resume trilateral talks with Ukraine and the United States, possibly in Abu Dhabi in mid-November; Zelenskyy wanted them no later than early November. The diplomacy ran alongside the worst strain in US–Ukrainian relations of the war. Trump had waived new sanctions to secure a deal to buy Russian diesel, which Zelenskyy called a 'reward' for Putin, and had said it was 'time for somebody else to negotiate on behalf of Ukraine,' while Zelenskyy accused the Pentagon of holding up interceptor missiles European countries had already paid for. Russia freed the American Stephen Hubbard as Witkoff landed. Russian strikes killed two people in a Kyiv high-rise the same day.