Today marks a year since Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Within minutes of the Russian president announcing his ‘special military operation’ on February 24, 2022, explosions could be heard in Kyiv.
It was widely expected the Russians would quickly overwhelm Ukraine’s military, seize the capital and overthrow President Volodymyr Zelensky in a matter of days, or weeks.
But Putin – and seemingly everyone else watching on – underestimated the ferocity of the Ukrainian resistance.
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It would also become clear very quickly that huge swathes of the Russian battalions sent across the border were either poorly trained, woefully equipped, or both.
This was starkly illustrated by the ominous 35-mile convoy which, instead of decapitating the Ukrainian government in a lightning onslaught, slowly ground to a halt starved of fuel and food.
Russia quickly seized around a quarter of Ukraine’s territory in the first weeks of the invasion, but it has never held as much land since then.
Here, Metro.co.uk looks at how Putin’s forces have been pushed back as the war raged on over 12 bloody months.
February
In the early hours of February 24, tens of thousands of Russian soldiers poured into Ukraine.
Accompanied by attacks from air and sea, they made swift gains in the first days, including in the south around Kherson and northeast near Kharkiv, the country’s second city.
The main aim was to topple Kyiv and either capture or kill President Zelensky in the hope of securing a quick surrender.
But seemingly against all odds, Moscow’s blitzkrieg strike stalled outside the capital.
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Down in the western Black Sea, the Russian warship Moskva approached the tiny outpost of Snake Island, demanding that its band of Ukrainian defenders surrender or die.
Their response – ‘Russian warship, go f**k yourself’ – reverberated around the world as the enemy began firing.
March
Kyiv had been saved, but the harrowing consequences of the invasion quickly became apparent as the Russian withdrawal revealed horrific evidence of war crimes.
In the recently occupied town of Bucha, northwest of the capital, mass graves were filled with the bodies of murdered civilians, including children, some with their hands bound and showing signs of torture.
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According to UN data, more civilians were killed in March than any other month of the conflict.
Russian troops did, however, manage to take control of Kherson.
April
More than 50 civilians were killed in a Russian missile strike on a train station in Kramatorsk, a city in Donetsk, as the Kremlin’s troops set their sights on seizing all of the Donbas region in the east.
May
By the end of May, Russian troops had almost obliterated the southern port city of Mariupol.
One particularly harrowing attack saw hundreds of people who had taken shelter in a theatre marked with the word ‘children’ killed in a missile strike.
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The fighting there ended with a siege at the Azovstal steel plant, which by that time had become a symbol of Ukrainian resistance.
After three months of relentless attacks, the ‘heroes of Mariupol’ were forced to surrender the city.
Tens of thousands are thought to have been killed in the fighting.
June
Ukrainian troops recaptured Snake Island.
The Russian retreat, combined with the sinking of the Moskva in April, helped ease the threat to Odessa.
July
After weeks of fighting, the Russians seized Lysychansk, the largest city under Ukrainian control in Luhansk.
August
Now armed with Western-supplied weapon systems, including HIMARS, Ukraine launches an offensive to retake the southern regions of Kherson and Mykolaiv.
September
Instead of pushing on in Kherson, Ukraine mounted a stunning counterattack up around Kharkiv, punching through the Russian lines and freeing Balakliya and Kupyansk, as well as the logistical town of Izyum.
President Zelensky said the counteroffensive had liberated thousands of square miles of territory.
In a speech on September 10, he said: ‘These days, the Russian army is showing its best – showing its back. And, in the end, it is a good choice for them to run away.
‘There is and will be no place for the occupiers in Ukraine.’
Ukraine went on to recapture the city of Lyman in Donetsk.
With Russia fighting simply to cling onto territory it already controlled, Putin declared the illegal annexation of four Ukrainian regions; Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, Donetsk and Kherson.
His troops did not have full control of any of them and lost the capital of one within weeks.
October
Putin suffers a huge blow to his war effort when the Kerch Strait Bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland is blown up by a truck crammed full of explosives on October 8.
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November
Ukraine claims a huge victory with the liberation of Kherson – the only regional capital seized by the Russians in the nine-month conflict to date.
In one of Putin’s biggest humiliations of the war, Russia said it had pulled 30,000 soldiers across the Dnipro River.
President Zelensky hailed the recapture as an ‘historic day’.
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Analysis of data provided by the Institute for the Study of War showed that Ukraine had reclaimed more than half of the land captured by Russia since the beginning of the war.
December
There were few territorial shifts, but Ukraine had success targeting military bases hundreds of miles inside Russia by using drones.
President Zelensky also made his first overseas visit since the beginning of the war, travelling to the United States to meet Joe Biden.
January
Russia makes its first gains in months with the claimed capture of Soledar amid the fight for the nearby city of Bakhmut.
And in a significant development for the resistance, Germany joined Britain, the US and other NATO allies in agreeing to send tanks to Ukraine.
February
President Zelensky visited the UK to thank the British for their support throughout the war and plead for fighter jets to bolster Ukraine’s defences.
One year on, the two sides appear locked in a brutal and bloody stalemate.
And as the anniversary approached it was not Putin walking proudly through Kyiv, but President Biden.
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In a surprise visit, he promised the US would back Ukraine for ‘as long as it takes’, adding: ‘Putin’s war of conquest is failing.’
Putin responded by delivering a fresh nuclear warning to the West by suspending the last major arms control treaty with Washington, announcing that new strategic systems had been put on combat duty and threatening to resume nuclear tests.
A year after ordering an invasion that has triggered the biggest confrontation with the West in six decades, Putin vowed Russia would achieve its aims and accused the West of trying to destroy it.
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