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US President Donald Trump is set to have a call with Vladimir Putin on Monday at the start of what could be a pivotal week for stalled Ukraine peace talks.
Trump has cast his phone call with the Russian president, their first publicly disclosed encounter in almost three months, as a critical moment in securing a lasting settlement to the war.
Kyiv and its European allies are fearful that if the Trump administration walks away from peace talks, it would also stop or reduce US military support to Ukraine, handing a further battlefield advantage to Moscow in its full-scale invasion of its neighbour.
If a document is agreed “in the next few days” where both sides show willingness to make concessions “then I think we can feel good about continuing to remain engaged”. “If, on the other hand, what we see is not very productive, perhaps we’ll have a different assessment,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in an interview with CBS.
The Trump administration has also struck a deal with Kyiv for US access to critical minerals and energy assets in Ukraine, after weeks of fraught negotiations contrasting with the more positive Russia talks.
The agreement signed at the US Treasury department will establish a “reconstruction investment fund” for Ukraine, though it does not include a previous Trump demand for retroactive compensation for more than $100bn in US military support.
While Washington has argued that the deal is necessary for any continued US support, it does not include explicit security guarantees, and Ukraine will be beholden to it regardless of whether a peace deal is secured with Russia. However, any future US military assistance, such as contributions to Ukraine’s air defences, will be qualified as investment under the terms of the deal.
Kursk incursion
Ukraine seized parts of Russia’s Kursk region in a surprise incursion in August 2024. But after making steady gains in the region, Ukrainian troops began to lose territory and were largely pushed out of Russia this spring.
Kyiv’s forces managed at one point to seize some 1,300 sq km of Russian territory, but the incursion came at the cost of territory in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
Russia mobilised a force of about 50,000 soldiers, including at least 10,000 from North Korea, to push the Ukrainians out of Kursk.
The Russian defence ministry said on March 13 that it had taken Sudzha back, depriving Ukraine of a valuable bargaining chip in any talks with Russia.
The eastern frontline
The Kremlin’s invasion has become a war of attrition, with both sides grinding it out from labyrinth trenches and a frontline stretching more than 1,000km, from southern Kherson region to Kharkiv in the north-east.
Ukraine has attempted to stabilise its defences and strengthen its eastern position ahead of any Trump-led negotiations with Putin.
Ukraine had been hoping to slow Russia’s offensive and seize the initiative, but Ukrainian officials have admitted that they are struggling to hold back Russia’s larger and better equipped army amid manpower shortages.
Ukraine has plans to draft additional troops, though efforts to attract recruits are being hampered by military service being open-ended.
Russian forces gained thousands of square kilometres of the Donetsk region in 2024.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think-tank, said Russia captured approximately 4,200 sq km of Ukrainian territory last year, most of which was in the Donetsk area.
Drone war
Drones have played a key role in the war, with both Russia and Ukraine utilising unmanned aerial vehicles as part of their military strategies.
Ukraine has used drones to strike Russian soil, including hitting a Moscow suburb, with the aim of disrupting the Kremlin’s war effort and bringing the conflict home to ordinary Russians.
Ukraine has also used drones to attack military facilities, munitions factories and energy infrastructure in Russia and is estimated to have sunk one-fifth of Russia’s Black Sea fleet.
Russian minefields and fortifications coupled with constant drone surveillance and artillery strikes proved insurmountable during the much-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive of summer 2023.
Civilian and cultural impact
The number of Ukrainians fleeing the war has made it one of the largest refugee crises in modern history.
A Financial Times investigation found that Ukrainian children who were abducted and taken to Russia in the early months of the Kremlin’s 2022 invasion have been put up for adoption by authorities, in one confirmed case under a false Russian identity.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine
On February 24 2022, the world awoke to news that Russian missiles had struck targets across Ukraine and used tanks to blast through the border.
The invasion came after months of rare public warnings from western intelligence agencies. It would soon escalate into the largest conflict in Europe since the second world war.
Ukrainians call the past 10 years “the great war” because of Russia’s first military invasion of their country in February 2014, when troops without insignia began their takeover of the Crimean Peninsula. Months later, they would spill into the Donbas region, fomenting a war under the guise of a separatist uprising.
March 2022: Russia fails to capture Kyiv
The Russian attempt to take Ukraine’s capital was thwarted by a combination of factors, including geography, the attackers’ blundering and modern arms, as well as Ukraine’s speedy, grassroots effort to mobilise and its ingenuity with smartphones and pieces of foam mat.
May 2023: Battle for Bakhmut
Putin hailed his first major victory after the early days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in May 2023, after his forces captured Bakhmut following a gruelling nine-month battle that reduced the city to ruins.
Many of the estimated to 30,000 men killed were convicts recruited by the Wagner Group, led by Yevgeny Prigozhin, who a month later staged a mutiny against Moscow and then died in a plane crash in August 2023.
Additional cartography by Jana Tauschinski, Aditi Bhandari, Cleve Jones and Hirofumi Yamamoto
Development by Vanessa Brown, Martin Stabe, Alan Smith, Emma Lewis, Joanna S Kao, Sam Learner and Ændra Rininsland