As the war in Ukraine enters its fourth year of hostilities, the dynamics on the ground and in the air are shifting. Having traveled to Ukraine on many occasions since the full-scale invasion in 2022, I have witnessed the ebb and flow of the conflict. The war today is markedly different than the war I first reported from the ground in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region in the spring and summer of 2022.
Ukraine’s fortunes have waxed and waned since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022. In a truly David-versus-Goliath moment for the ages, Ukraine’s defenders managed against all expectations to defend Kyiv and push back Russian forces from Ukraine’s north.
With Russia’s hopes for a quick decapitation of Ukraine’s political leadership in Kyiv, Moscow regrouped and focused on expanding their hold on Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region and captured Mariupol in late May. However, Ukraine launched counteroffensives in the fall and pushed the Russians out of Kharkiv, in the northeast, and Kherson in the south.
But Ukraine’s push against Russia stalled and failed to penetrate much deeper into Russian lines. From the fall of 2022 to early summer the following year, the war’s front line was heavily contested.
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