Friday marked 1,500 days since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Moscow assumed an easy victory achieved within days - but it faced a heroic resistance, and its total war of aggression has become a prolonged high-intensity conflict with massive losses on both sides, which significantly impacted the geopolitical situation in Europe.
Russia first illegally invaded modern-day Ukraine in 2014 - following the so-called Revolution of Dignity and the flight of President Viktor Yanukovych. Taking advantage of the power vacuum moment, Moscow seized control over the entire region of Ukraine's Crimea, as well as large chunks of Donbass and Luhansk regions (around 6,5% of the country in total). It was the first time since World War II that a European country annexed the territory of another.
Rigged referendums were quickly staged to claim the illegal annexation, which violated international law and was not recognized by the global community. Numerous human rights violations targeting Ukrainians who remained in Crimea followed - persecution, repressions, baseless arrests, torture, murders, forced displacement, economic violence and more.
In February 2022 Moscow took things further - mounting an unlawful and unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and starting the largest military campaign in Europe since World War II. Putin's forces crossed into the country from Belarus in the north, Russia in the east and Crimea in the south - eying an effortless victory achieved in days.
The invaders were met with heroic resistance, however - and although Russia initially managed to take over more than a quarter of Ukraine (previously occupied lands included), it failed to take Kyiv and overthrow the government. Furthermore, the Ukrainians pushed back, within a year they retook ~7% of the country - and the front line established in early 2023 mostly holds till today, with Russia occupying roughly 20% of Ukraine’s territory on the war’s fourth anniversary, and currently losing more land than it gains.
As per Ukraine's MFA data, over the 1,500 days of the full-scale invasion, Russia’s total losses have exceeded 1.2 million service members killed and wounded - and countless pieces of military equipment. In 2025 alone, Putin's army lost 418,000 personnel. Meanwhile, according to CSIS, between February 2022 and December 2025 Ukrainian forces likely suffered somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000 casualties, including killed, wounded, and missing - and between 100,000 and 140,000 fatalities.
Numerous reports from a variety of reliable sources clearly confirm that, from the start of their full-scale invasion, Russians have been committing countless war crimes in Ukraine - breaking the Geneva convention on a daily basis and harming tens of thousands of civilians, both in the occupied areas and through daily missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian cities.
The list of well-documented Russian transgressions includes regular missile, drone and glide bomb attacks on non-military targets - notwithstanding hospitals, cultural institutions and housing. Moscow's troops have been found to be murdering and torturing both war prisoners and civilians en masse, also kidnapping thousands of Ukrainian children into Russia and using internationally forbidden weapons on a regular basis.
For his alleged war crimes, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants against Russian president Vladimir Putin.
Saturday is day 1501 of Ukraine's heroic resistance against Russia's full-scale war of aggression.
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Source: PAP, IAR, Ukraine's MFA and MOD, Commons Library, ISW, CSIS