Daily Junction.mobi portalWorld · February 24, 2025 · Liam Chen · 11 min
As Russia's invasion of Ukraine passes its third anniversary, neither side has achieved a decisive breakthrough. The conflict has settled into a war of attrition with entrenched positions, mounting casualties, and no clear path to resolution—whilst Western support shows signs of fatigue.
On 24 February 2025, Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine will mark its third anniversary. What began as a shock assault aimed at toppling the Ukrainian government within days has become the largest conventional war in Europe since 1945—a grinding, attritional conflict with no end in sight. The front lines have barely moved in 18 months. Casualties mount into the hundreds of thousands. Western support, once seemingly unconditional, now faces political headwinds. And neither side appears capable of achieving its war aims through military force alone. This is not the quick Russian victory Vladimir Putin expected, nor the liberation Ukraine hoped for. It is a stalemate, and stalemates in modern war are measured in years, not months.
The current front line runs roughly 1,000 kilometres from the Russian border in the northeast, through the Donbas, to Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts in the south. It has changed little since late 2023. Russia controls approximately 18% of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea (annexed in 2014), and the majority of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts—the four regions Putin illegally annexed in September 2022. Ukraine holds the western parts of those oblasts and has fortified defensive lines that have largely held against Russian assaults.
Ukraine's much-anticipated 2024 counteroffensive, launched in June with newly delivered Western armour and training, failed to achieve a breakthrough. Ukrainian forces advanced a few kilometres in some sectors but could not penetrate Russia's main defensive lines, which consist of multiple trench systems, extensive minefields, and pre-sighted artillery kill zones. The offensive ground to a halt by autumn, having cost Ukraine significant casualties and equipment without liberating major population centres. Western officials, speaking anonymously to the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal, acknowledged that expectations had been unrealistic—breaking prepared defences requires air superiority and overwhelming firepower that Ukraine simply does not possess.
Russia's winter 2024-25 offensive, focused on Avdiivka and Bakhmut in Donetsk, has made marginal gains at enormous cost. Russian forces captured Avdiivka in February 2024 after months of assaults that Ukrainian officials estimate cost Russia 20,000+ casualties. The pattern is consistent: Russia uses massed infantry assaults, often by poorly trained conscripts and convicts recruited by the Wagner Group (now absorbed into the regular military after Yevgeny Prigozhin's death), to overwhelm Ukrainian positions through sheer weight of numbers. Ukraine inflicts heavy casualties but eventually withdraws when positions become untenable. Russia advances a few kilometres, consolidates, and repeats. It is World War I tactics with 21st-century surveillance, and it is horrifically costly for both sides.
The Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank that tracks the conflict daily, estimates that Russian forces are suffering 800-1,200 casualties per day (killed and wounded) during active offensive operations. Ukraine does not publish casualty figures, but Western intelligence estimates suggest Ukrainian losses are also in the hundreds per day, though lower than Russia's due to better defensive positions and tactics. The total death toll—military and civilian—is unknown but certainly exceeds 200,000, with some estimates running far higher.
Modern artillery-centric warfare consumes ammunition at rates that have shocked Western defence establishments. At the peak of Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive, Ukrainian forces were firing 6,000-8,000 artillery shells per day. Russia, with a larger industrial base and stocks inherited from the Soviet Union, was firing 20,000-40,000 per day. By early 2025, Ukraine's rate has fallen to 2,000-3,000 shells per day—not because the need has decreased, but because Western production cannot keep up.
The United States, which has provided the bulk of military aid, produces approximately 30,000 155mm artillery shells per month as of early 2025, up from 14,000 per month in 2022 but still far below Ukraine's needs. European production is similarly constrained. The West's defence industrial base was optimised for precision-guided munitions in limited conflicts, not mass artillery barrages in a conventional war. Scaling up production requires building new factories, training workers, and securing supply chains—all of which take years.
Russia faces its own constraints but has partially offset them by receiving ammunition and drones from Iran and, crucially, artillery shells from North Korea. South Korean intelligence estimates that North Korea has supplied over one million shells to Russia since mid-2023, a lifeline that has allowed Russia to maintain its artillery advantage. Western sanctions have slowed but not stopped Russia's domestic production, and its willingness to tolerate lower quality control and higher dud rates gives it a quantitative edge.
The result is a war where Ukraine must husband ammunition carefully, limiting its ability to conduct offensive operations, whilst Russia can afford to expend shells more freely. This imbalance is one reason the front lines have stabilised—Ukraine cannot generate the sustained firepower needed to break through, and Russia's advances are so costly that even its larger resources are strained.
Western military aid to Ukraine totals over $100 billion since February 2022, with the United States providing roughly half and European nations the rest. The aid includes artillery, air defence systems, armoured vehicles, small arms, ammunition, and intelligence support. It has been essential to Ukraine's survival—without it, Kyiv would likely have fallen in 2022.
But the political consensus that enabled this support is fraying. In the United States, Republican opposition in Congress delayed a $60 billion aid package for six months in 2024, with critics arguing that the funds should be spent domestically or that Ukraine should negotiate rather than continue fighting. The package eventually passed, but the delay caused ammunition shortages that Ukrainian commanders say cost lives. If Donald Trump wins the 2024 US presidential election, as polls suggest is possible, American support could be drastically reduced or made conditional on Ukraine entering negotiations on terms favourable to Russia.
European support has been more consistent, but it too faces pressures. Germany, the largest European donor, has committed over €20 billion but faces domestic criticism over the cost amid economic stagnation. Hungary, under Viktor Orbán, has blocked EU aid packages and maintained close ties with Moscow. Slovakia's new government, elected in 2023, halted military aid to Ukraine entirely. Public opinion in most European countries still supports Ukraine, but the intensity has faded—Ukraine is no longer the top news story, and voters are increasingly focused on inflation, energy costs, and domestic issues.
The UK has been one of Ukraine's most consistent supporters, providing over £7 billion in military aid including Challenger 2 tanks, Storm Shadow cruise missiles, and extensive training for Ukrainian forces. British intelligence sharing has been critical to Ukraine's targeting of Russian logistics and command posts. The cross-party consensus in Westminster remains solid, but the UK's ability to provide further large-scale aid is limited by its own defence budget constraints and the need to rebuild stocks.
The war's human toll is staggering. The UN has confirmed over 30,000 civilian deaths, but the true number is certainly higher—many deaths in occupied territories and active combat zones go unrecorded. The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights notes that its figures are "far from complete" and the actual toll could be tens of thousands higher.
Military casualties are even harder to verify. Neither Ukraine nor Russia publishes reliable figures. Western intelligence estimates, reported by the New York Times and BBC, suggest that Russian military deaths exceed 100,000, with total casualties (killed and wounded) possibly exceeding 300,000. Ukrainian losses are believed to be lower but still catastrophic—estimates range from 50,000 to 100,000 killed and 150,000+ wounded. These are rough estimates, and the true figures may not be known for years.
Beyond deaths, the war has displaced over 6 million Ukrainians abroad and another 5 million internally. Entire cities—Mariupol, Bakhmut, Avdiivka—have been reduced to rubble. Ukraine's infrastructure has been systematically targeted: power plants, water systems, bridges, railways. The World Bank estimates reconstruction costs at over $400 billion, a sum that dwarfs Ukraine's pre-war GDP and will require decades of international support.
The psychological toll is immeasurable. An entire generation of Ukrainians has grown up under war. Soldiers on both sides suffer from PTSD, physical disabilities, and the trauma of industrial-scale violence. Russian society, insulated by state media and repression, has been less directly affected, but the long-term consequences of losing hundreds of thousands of young men will reshape the country's demographics and economy.
Diplomatic efforts have gone nowhere. Turkey and China have offered to mediate, but neither side sees a basis for compromise. Ukraine's position, backed by the West, is that Russia must withdraw to the 1991 borders (including Crimea), pay reparations, and face accountability for war crimes. Russia demands that Ukraine recognise its annexation of Crimea and the four eastern oblasts, accept permanent neutrality (no NATO membership), and agree to limits on its military. These positions are incompatible.
Putin shows no sign of backing down. He has framed the war as an existential struggle against NATO expansion and Western encroachment, and his domestic position depends on not being seen to lose. Russia's economy, though strained by sanctions, has not collapsed—high energy prices in 2022-23 provided a cushion, and Russia has reoriented trade towards China, India, and other non-Western partners. The Russian public, fed a diet of state propaganda, largely supports the war or is apathetic. There is no domestic pressure on Putin to negotiate.
Ukraine, for its part, cannot accept a settlement that legitimises territorial loss. President Volodymyr Zelensky's political survival depends on his promise to restore Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Ukrainian public opinion, hardened by three years of war and atrocities in occupied territories, overwhelmingly opposes ceding land to Russia. Any leader who proposed such a deal would face accusations of betrayal.
The most likely outcome, barring a dramatic shift, is a frozen conflict—a de facto partition without a formal peace treaty, similar to Korea after 1953. The front lines would stabilise, fighting would continue at a lower intensity, and both sides would remain in a state of war indefinitely. This is not a resolution, but it may be the least bad option available.
Several scenarios could unfold in the war's fourth year:
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