Tuesday is the fourth anniversary of the latest Russian invasion of Ukraine, that started on February 24, 2022, after an eight year respite following the Russian seizure of Crimea and Russian allied sympathizers trying to join Russia in parts of a couple of the far western provinces of Ukraine that were most ethnically and linguistically Russian.
Russia thought it would have a quick and easy triumph, just as it had had in Crimea in 2014. It didn't.
* It has had 1.2 million casualties (including wounds not mortal, captured soldiers, and desertions), which is more than the size of the entire Russian Army it started with, and the losses have extended to officers and even the highest ranking generals. About 325,000 of them were killed.
* It is losing soldiers as fast as it can draft them, at a rate of about a thousand soldiers a day. It is replacing a large share of its seasoned soldiers with green conscripts that are ill-trained, ill-equipped, and ill-treated.
* The vast majority of it tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, artillery, and the like gone. It's soldiers are resorting to using museum pieces and horses. Ukraine's estimates (below) may be slightly high, but they've largely been born out by third-party assessments. Here is there assessment as of yesterday:
Russia's losses in this war have been greater than all but a handful of entire military forces in the world, and greater than the entire amount of its ground forces and ground force equipment that was in active service four years ago.
* It's military tactics sometimes seem similar to the inability of World War I generals to recognize the futility of their approaches, trying the same things over and over to abject failures.
* Its Black Sea fleet suffered heavy casualties and neutered.
* Its air forces have suffered not insignificant losses.
* Its supplies of advanced drones and guided missiles has thinned.
* After the early part of the first year of the invasion, its territorial gains have been minuscule, and have come at immense cost in troops lives and equipment. The most recent assessment I could easily find was as of February 11, 2026:
Since Feb. 24, 2022: Russia: +29,210 square miles. 13% of Ukraine. (Area roughly equivalent to half the U.S. state of Illinois).Total area of all Ukrainian territory Russia presently controls, including Crimea and parts of Donbas, Russia had seized prior to the full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022: Russia: +45,835 square miles. About 20% of Ukraine. (Area roughly equivalent to the U.S. state of Pennsylvania.) . . .
In 2025, the average monthly rate of Russian gains was 171 square miles. . . .
According to RM’s measurements, using ISW data, Russia captured 2,171 square miles—about 0.93% of Ukraine including Crimea—in 2025.
Russia still controls less Ukrainian territory than it did in August of 2022, six months into the war.
Russia has gained 5,200 square miles of territorial control since November 2022, its low point in this four year long war. This is an average gain of 133 square miles a month in a war where it is currently experiencing 30,000 casualties or so per month.
* The territory taken, which was home to the strongest political opposition to Ukraine's government, has strengthened the political backing of Ukraine's government in the territory it still controls. And, Russia has alienated former pro-Russian Ukrainians in territory it does not control.
* Crimea was mostly as a summer resort for Russians and had been a key Black Sea fleet military base for Russia. It is neither of those things now.
* Its oil and gas infrastructure has been seriously ravaged. Its ability to sell its oil and gas abroad is also increasingly restricted.
* Its transportation infrastructure, especially en route to the front and to Crimea, has been seriously damaged.
* It has been isolated internationally and the restrictions have tightened, while the world, and especially Europe has embraced it. It has failed to win military support from any countries except North Korea and Iran. China and India have remained lukewarm towards it.
* It's oligarchs have been pinched and looted as sanctions.
* It's domestic economy has again been squeezed out for military demand.
* An estimated 7,254 Russian civilians have been killed.
* It's best and brightest young men have fled abroad to avoid conscription and likely death or disability in the process. 1,000,000 (0.7% of Russia’s 2022 population) left Russia for economic or political reasons in the first year of the full-scale war. Between 15% and 45% of those who had left have returned since then, so, between 550,000 and 850,000 people have not returned to Russia.
* It has withdrawn from other international military commitments, for example, in Syria (whose regime fell), and in a strip of land in Moldova.
* NATO has expanded and grown stronger.
* It's European neighbors have built up their own military might and military solidarity, at the same time that Russia's military might is a shadow of what it was four years ago.
* It has relied heavily on more or less random attacks with long range drones, glide bombs, and missiles on civilian targets of little tactical value that violate intentional laws of war. Ukraine's air defenses have been about 89% effective, which means that strikes do get through regularly and cause damage, but the air defenses make it about 9 times more expensive for Russia to do so than it would be without them.
In January 2026:
Russia fired:
* 4,838 drones* 14 ballistic missiles* 61 cruise missiles
Ukraine intercepted:
* 4,120 drones (718 not intercepted)* 1 ballistic missile (13 not intercepted)* 38 cruise missiles (23 not intercepted)
* Ukraine has proven to have more military industrial capacity, more allies, more competent troops, and more of a capacity to learn and change their tactics and technologies.
* Ukraine has managed to strike both military and economic targets deep in Russia, but has done so without indiscriminately harming civilians.
* Russia has found that its immense nuclear arsenal has been challenging to turn into practical military gains.
This isn't to say that Ukraine has won. It has had about 600,000 military casualties (including wounds not mortal, captured soldiers, and desertions), of whom about 120,000 have been killed, and lost lots of military equipment too (although Ukraine has faired better at replenishing its equipment losses). An estimated 15,954 Ukrainian civilians have been killed (from the same source).
The vast majority of harm to civilians and the civilian property has been on its territory.
It has lost significant amounts of territory. Millions of Ukrainians have been internally displaced or have become refugees. As the New York Times explains:
At the start of the full-scale invasion, excluding regions that were already occupied by Russia, it had a population of perhaps 36 million people, according to Tymofii Brik, a sociologist and the rector of the Kyiv School of Economics. (Other estimates tend to be higher.) Since then, Brik says, six million have been displaced inside the country and some four million — mostly women and children — have left Ukraine. More than 100,000 Ukrainians, troops and civilians, are estimated to have been killed. Millions of people live under occupation in areas Russia controls.
Ukraine's whole existence has become an existential fight for survival every day, with intense uncertainty.
But, at best, the Russo-Ukrainian war has been a stalemate for the last three and a half years, and Russia's military capacity to challenge anyone is profoundly depleted.
Russia's leaders have seized on the war to exert greater control on its people in an authoritarian style, but the cracks are showing.
The feckless "leadership", or lack thereof, by Trump and the Republicans in Congress has helped encourage Putin and extended the war, given Putin hope that his unilateral adventure unknown outside his inner circle until it happened, can prevail, at least into a treaty that leaves Russia better off. They have also cratered NATO.
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