The Russia-Ukraine war: the invasion, the front line and the long-range strikes

The invasion brought heavy civilian losses and displacement. In Mariupol, a Russian airstrike hit a maternity hospital in March, and local officials initially estimated that about 300 people had died in the bombing of a theater sheltering civilians.^[20][21] Ukrainian soldiers defending the city's Azovstal steel plant began leaving it and surrendering to Russian forces in May.^[22] An April missile attack on a crowded railway station in Kramatorsk killed at least 52 people.^[23] By April 20, more than 5 million people had fled Ukraine, according to the United Nations.^[24] In April, Russia also lost the Moskva, the flagship of its Black Sea fleet, which Ukraine said it had struck with a missile.^[25] On May 8, a Russian bomb flattened a school sheltering civilians in Luhansk, in eastern Ukraine, and about 60 people were feared dead, Ukrainian officials said.^[26][27]

Investigations into alleged war crimes began within days of the full-scale invasion, when the International Criminal Court's prosecutor opened an inquiry.^[28] In March 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States had seen credible reports of Russian abuses that would constitute war crimes, and later that month the United States formally declared that Russian forces had committed them, citing incidents in besieged Mariupol.^[29][30][31] In May 2022, a Ukrainian court convicted a captured Russian soldier of killing a civilian in the first war-crimes trial following the invasion.^[32] A UN-backed commission concluded that September that war crimes had been committed in Ukraine.^[33] In February 2023, the United States formally determined that Russia had committed crimes against humanity.^[34] UN Secretary-General António Guterres said the invasion had brought "massive" human rights violations.^[35] A UN-backed inquiry said the following month that Russia's transfers of Ukrainian children amounted to a war crime.^[36]

Ukraine's September 2022 counteroffensive forced Russian troops to retreat from the Balakliya and Izyum areas of the northeastern Kharkiv region.^[5] Fighting intensified again as Ukraine began its 2023 counteroffensive.^[6] Russia captured Avdiivka in February 2024 after months of fighting and Ukrainian ammunition shortages.^[7] That May, Russian forces opened another offensive in the Kharkiv region. Putin said it was intended to create a buffer zone.^[37] US President Joe Biden then authorized Ukraine to use US weapons against some targets inside Russia to defend the region.^[38]

Long-range attacks repeatedly hit cities and civilian infrastructure. Russia struck Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities after an explosion damaged the bridge linking Russia to Crimea in October 2022.^[3] Large attacks followed in late 2023, including a November drone assault on Kyiv and a December barrage that Ukraine's air force described as the war's largest aerial attack to that point.^[39][40] A July 2024 missile attack damaged Kyiv's largest children's hospital. Russia blamed Ukrainian air defenses; the United Nations said a Russian missile had most likely hit the hospital.^[4]

Ukraine launched its incursion into Russia's Kursk region in August 2024, prompting evacuations and Russian troop redeployments.^[8] In November, after Ukraine used US-supplied long-range missiles inside Russia, Moscow struck Dnipro with the Oreshnik, a new ballistic missile the Pentagon described as experimental.^[41] In June 2025, Ukrainian drones attacked Russian bases housing strategic bombers. Moscow acknowledged aircraft fires; Ukraine claimed more extensive damage that had not been independently confirmed at the time.^[42] The next month, Ukrainian officials reported an overnight Russian attack involving more than 700 attack and decoy drones.^[43]

In September 2026, US President Donald Trump urged Ukraine to stop attacking Russian refineries, arguing that the strikes were pushing up diesel prices during the energy crisis linked to the Iran war.^[44] Russian officials reported a Ukrainian attack involving more than 1,000 drones that month.^[45] On October 11, Trump announced a pause in attacks on energy targets. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine would halt its strikes if Russia stopped attacking Ukraine's infrastructure.^[46][9]

The announced pause did not stop Russian strikes. Zelenskyy said partners had given no early warning before five ballistic missiles hit civilian infrastructure in Kyiv; a subsequent Russian attack on energy facilities left more than 600,000 people without power, he said.^[47][48] Ukraine resumed attacks on Russian energy targets, saying Russia had never stopped attacking Ukraine's energy infrastructure.^[9] On October 18, Ukrainian drone attacks set oil facilities ablaze in St. Petersburg during a barrage involving more than 1,000 drones, according to Russian officials.^[10] Russian missile and drone strikes on October 20 killed at least nine people, officials said, as Zelenskyy met US and European officials in Norway.^[49] Overnight into October 22, hours after agreeing to resume talks with Ukraine, Russia bombarded Kyiv with ballistic missiles in strikes that experts said were aimed at destroying energy infrastructure before winter.^[50]

The attacks on civilians drew new findings and new death tolls. A UN panel said in late October that Russia had committed war crimes and crimes against humanity by intentionally attacking energy infrastructure.^[51] A Russian drone struck a busy railway station in Dnipro, killing at least 13 people, Zelenskyy said, in a toll later reported at 15.^[52] On November 2, Russia bombed an aid distribution center and a neighboring school building used as a shelter in southern Ukraine; Ukrainian officials first reported 26 dead, and the toll rose to 31 the next day, with dozens missing.^[12][13][53] On the night of November 3, the Kyiv Independent reported, Russia hit a substation critical for a nuclear power plant in what it called the biggest mass attack on Ukraine's energy this year.^[11]

A temporary local truce around the occupied city of Oleshky, negotiated separately, let residents evacuate before it ended on November 1.^[54][55] Ukraine renewed its refinery strikes,^[56] and Zelenskyy reported record Russian casualties of 54,400 in October, a figure Bloomberg attributed to him and to Western intelligence data.^[57] Late on November 1, emergency alert apps in both Ukraine and Russia were hit by cyberattacks that sent false warnings of nuclear threats; Ukraine blamed Russia, and it was not clear whether the two hacks were linked.^[58]

Restrictions on SpaceX satellite internet services also disrupted Ukrainian military operations in October, including the use of strike and interceptor drones.^[59] Reporting referred to both Starlink and its military counterpart, Starshield. Accounts of who ordered the restrictions differed: Musk said limits on Starshield were decided by the US military and ultimately the president; Reuters reported, citing officials, that an order came from within the White House.^[59][60] The Wall Street Journal subsequently reported that Musk had authorized the slowdown, while Trump denied ordering it.^[60] Senator Thom Tillis asked Musk for an explanation, and Democrats called for an investigation.^[61][60] Europe began looking for alternatives to Musk's service as a result.^[62] On November 12, Zelenskyy said units had again recorded disruptions to Starshield for days.^[63]

The long-range war intensified in November. The death toll from Russia's bombing of an aid distribution point in the Zaporizhzhia region rose to 53, the acting regional governor said,^[64] and days later a Russian drone struck emergency workers in the village of Komyshuvakha, the site of an earlier deadly strike.^[65] Russian strikes caused Kyiv's worst water outage of the full-scale war and left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without electricity,^[66][67] and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant switched to generators after losing its final external power line.^[68] Ukrainian drones hit the Kirishi refinery, Russia's second largest, and the Baltic export port of Ust-Luga, and Ukrainian strikes since late October had disrupted refineries with about 30% of Russia's oil-processing capacity.^[69][70][71] The Guardian reported that leaked death records showed more than 400,000 Russians killed since the full-scale invasion.^[72] Ukrainian drones struck a Russian warship in the Gulf of Finland, the first time a naval vessel had been targeted there,^[73] two car bombings in Russia killed a senior military figure and seriously injured another man, attacks The Guardian said were thought to be orchestrated by Kyiv,^[74] and overnight into November 13 Ukraine fired almost 1,200 drones at Russian targets, one of its biggest aerial attacks of the war.^[75]