Ukraine is a country in eastern Europe, led by President Volodymyr Zelensky, which has been fighting a full-scale Russian invasion since February 2022. Russia had previously annexed Crimea in 2014. As of mid-2025 Russia occupies around 19% of Ukraine's territory. More than 250,000 people live in the part of the Donbas that Russia seeks beyond its existing lines.
Ukraine's economy depends heavily on its Black Sea ports. Odessa, Ukraine's third-largest city, plays an outsize role: before the war its three deep-sea ports handled roughly 60% of all exports. In 2024 agricultural exports were $24.5bn, or 59% of total exports. From July 2022 a grain-export agreement covered the ports of Odessa, Chornomorsk and Pivdenny. Russia terminated the deal in 2023, after which Ukraine opened a new corridor for commercial shipping, having driven Russia's fleet out of the western Black Sea with home-made and Western missiles.
By 2025 Odessa and two neighbouring ports were operating at 60% capacity despite war damage; their share of Ukraine's total exports (reduced by the war) had grown to 60-70%. During the 2024 harvest, grain-export terminals ran at 90%. In 2024 some 4,651 commercial ships arrived in Ukraine's Black Sea ports and 4,410 left, though insurance and logistics costs remain far higher than in peacetime. The ports need 12 megawatts of power to work at full capacity. Ballistic missiles launched from Crimea land in little over a minute and a half, leaving only seconds to run for shelter.
Mykolaiv, once a major grain-export hub on the Southern Bug river, lost its trade after the invasion. More than 50% of the city's revenue came from port-linked companies, and some 10,000 people worked in and around the port. Its exports have been diverted to the three Odessa-region ports. Twenty-nine foreign-owned vessels have been trapped in Mykolaiv since the day before the full-scale invasion.
Russia designated Ukraine's Azov Corps a terrorist organisation in 2022. As of October 2025, at least 130 Azov prisoners had been given sentences of ten years or more, and dozens more were under investigation. The UN's human-rights mission in Kyiv has called Russia's torture and ill-treatment of prisoners "systematic and widespread"; of 216 released civilians it interviewed, 92% gave accounts of abuse including beatings, electric shocks, stress positions, ritual humiliation and rape. Detention sites have been identified in Siberia and Karelia.
On the first day of the full-scale invasion, February 24th 2022, 20 border guards were killed, 59 injured and 85 taken prisoner. The border service bore the initial brunt as guards at checkpoints along the Belarusian and Russian borders faced armoured columns armed with little more than assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and machineguns. At the Vilcha checkpoint, 150km north of Kyiv on the edge of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, guards slowed a 700-vehicle-strong Russian column by mining bridges and laying ambushes; all survived the first day.
Conscription has become increasingly difficult and violent. Early in the war, Ukrainians paid bribes to get to the front lines and fight; by 2025 they run from conscription. The desertion rate among new recruits is above 30%. Prosecutors have opened over 300,000 cases related to absence without leave and desertion since the full-scale invasion began. Russia consistently recruits 10,000-15,000 more men per month than Ukraine. The UN estimates that more than 5m people have fled from Ukraine; most will not return. At least a million Russian troops have died or been wounded since the full-scale invasion began. A 59% majority of Ukrainians would accept a compromise on a de facto loss of territory if it brought a ceasefire, according to the Ukraine Rating Group. The front lines have not shifted significantly since November 2022.
Andriy Yermak ran the presidential office and was in reality an unelected chief minister in all but name. Officials said he controlled roughly 85% of the information flowing to President Zelensky. On November 28th 2025 Yermak was forced out after a raid by anti-corruption investigators linked to the Energoatom scandal; he denied any wrongdoing. Three figures were under consideration as successors: Mykhailo Fedorov, the reform-minded deputy prime minister; General Kyrylo Budanov, the popular spy chief; and Sergiy Kyslytsya, the deputy foreign minister. Zelensky even floated abolishing the presidential office altogether. Insiders said he might move towards a government led by security officials, in which case Budanov would be the likely choice. In June 2025 deputy prime minister Oleksiy Chernyshov became the most senior Ukrainian politician ever charged with corruption. Yulia Svyrydenko, an associate of Yermak's, became prime minister, replacing Denys Shmyhal. A renewed attempt to remove spy chief Kyrylo Budanov, the product of a three-year feud with Yermak, ended in failure—at least Yermak's ninth such try. Repeated White House warnings not to fire Budanov may have helped.
On the night of June 30th–July 1st 2025, American military assistance stopped abruptly, with all arms shipments put on hold and some planes turned around in mid-air.
In November 2025 detectives from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) uncovered a scheme to embezzle at least $100m from Energoatom, the state nuclear company, using kickbacks of 10-15% on contracts. Some of the money appears to have been sent to Moscow. Six suspects were arrested. On November 19th parliament voted to dismiss Svitlana Hrinchuk, the energy minister, and Herman Halushchenko, the justice minister. Among the accused was Timur Mindich, a former business partner of Zelensky's, who fled the country hours before detectives arrived. Oleksiy Chernyshov, Halushchenko and Hrinchuk denied involvement. Detectives say some of the accused used aliases: "Carlson" for Mindich, "Che Guevara" for Chernyshov and "Professor" for Halushchenko. The roots of the scheme likely predate Zelensky's presidency; many alleged members are linked to Andriy Derkach, a former MP who once headed Energoatom and fled to Russia in 2022.
When the suspects realised they were being recorded, they allegedly menaced the NABU detectives—following them, obtaining their home addresses and tracking them using classified government CCTV networks. Several detectives were detained by security services on July 21st. The next day the president's party pushed through a hasty bill stripping the anti-corruption agencies of their operational independence—a move reversed after huge public protests. Oleksandr Klymenko, head of SAPO, the anti-corruption prosecutor's office, says the investigation went ahead only because the presidential office's efforts to block it failed.
Four years into the war, Russia's occupation is changing. In January 2026 a three-year "transition period" intended to absorb the occupied territories into Russia formally ended. Courts, pensions, taxation, policing and business and property registers have been folded into Russia's electronic bureaucracy. A new edict requires Ukrainian property owners to register their homes with the occupying authorities by July 1st 2026 or face seizure; properties deemed "unoccupied" will be expropriated regardless. Propaganda banners promote the idea of "one nation", reunited under Russia.
The Mokrany-Domanove crossing, 60km from Poland, is a humanitarian corridor for people escaping Russia's occupation, in use since the first weeks of the war. The circuitous route runs through Russia and Belarus and takes days. To cross into Ukraine, those without valid Ukrainian documents must first have temporary papers issued by the Ukrainian consulate in Minsk. Some never make it, stopped at "filtration points" run by the FSB, Russia's state security service. Roughly 30 to 40 people are crossing each day.
Ukraine's pining for Brussels is as old as its modern statehood: the country declared it wanted to join the EU in 1993, when the bloc had a mere dozen members. For many years the pleas were merely performative. Ukraine applied for membership four days after Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, was granted candidate status a few months later, and in June 2024 formally opened accession negotiations—a process that requires adopting decades-worth of EU law. No country has been admitted to the EU since Croatia in 2013. Civil servants at the European Commission praised the reformist zeal in Kyiv, though momentum flagged later; a clumsy attempt by Zelensky in July 2025 to hobble two anti-corruption agencies was greeted with horror in EU circles.
Hungary's Viktor Orban is vetoing Ukraine's advance to the next stage of accession talks; he faces an election in April 2026 and thinks Ukraine-bashing will help his cause. As part of peace proposals pushed by America in late 2025, the suggestion emerged that Ukraine should be granted early EU membership, perhaps as soon as January 2027—a shortcut that Ukraine is keen on but existing members are wary of, resenting being bounced into an important decision by outsiders. Attempts to propose a sort of partial membership have so far fallen flat. The EU approved a €90bn ($105bn) loan for Ukraine in April 2026, after Hungary under Viktor Orban had blocked it; Orban's ejection by voters in mid-April made other leaders' doubts more visible. Zelensky wants full EU membership by January 2027. Friedrich Merz publicly ruled out swift accession, stating that Ukraine cannot join the bloc while at war and must meet strict standards on the rule of law, corruption and other fundamental principles. EU farmers are scared of competition from Ukraine's large, world-class farming industry; if Ukraine joined, the Common Agricultural Policy could not survive in its current, subsidy-heavy form, it is said in Brussels. France and Germany are pushing associate forms of membership, possibly involving observers' seats in EU institutions without voting rights. Most important, there is talk of extending the EU's mutual-defence clause in Article 42.7 to Ukraine as part of a provisional arrangement. At the Cyprus summit on April 23rd-24th EU officials were given the task of exploring how Article 42.7 might work in a conflict. Merz endorsed provisional membership, arguing that Zelensky would need an EU pathway to win a peace referendum involving territorial concessions. Ukraine's NATO ambitions are "dead" for the foreseeable future, say Western officials: Joe Biden was sceptical; Donald Trump was hostile. Ukraine has 800,000 men at arms and home-grown, AI-guided drone and counter-drone technologies. Alexander Stubb, Finland's president, counselled: "We Europeans have to understand we need Ukraine more than Ukraine needs us."
A mooted deadline of 2030 seemed ambitious but not entirely outlandish. Albania and Montenegro are making steady progress and might manage to join by 2030. Brussels has discussed "creative solutions" including letting new members join with transition periods during which they would lack the same veto powers as existing members, or even allowing members falling short of EU standards to be expelled.
Taras Kachka, Ukraine's deputy prime minister for European integration, has a plan to enact the necessary regulatory changes by 2030. At the start of the war 75% of Poles supported Ukraine's membership of NATO; by late 2025 53% opposed it and the share of supporters had fallen to 34%.
On July 22nd 2025 parliament rushed through Bill 12414, which subordinates Ukraine's two main independent anti-corruption bodies—NABU (the National Anti-Corruption Bureau) and SAPO (the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office)—to the presidentially appointed prosecutor-general during wartime. Both had been set up under Western oversight after the 2014 Maidan revolution. The bill passed 263 to 13; Zelensky signed it the same night despite pressure from the EU and a joint G7 ambassadors' statement urging a pause. The EU's enlargement commissioner, Marta Kos, said it would have a negative impact on Ukraine's membership negotiations. The law triggered the first anti-Zelensky protests since the invasion. After international backlash, Zelensky introduced a new bill that in effect reversed the changes. In early July the government had also blocked the appointment of Oleksandr Tsyvinsky to head the Bureau of Economic Security, and prominent anti-corruption campaigner Vitaliy Shabunin was arrested in what appeared to be a politically motivated move.
Ukraine lost its Crimean naval facilities in 2014. In 2017 American troops began building a naval hub at Ochakiv, where the Dnieper-Southern Bug estuary meets the Black Sea. In 2021 Britain pledged to help develop a naval base there. Russia attacked Ochakiv from the start of the full-scale invasion; half of its pre-invasion population of 15,000 has fled. The strategic Kinburn Spit at the estuary's mouth is occupied by Russian forces.
Russia's destruction of the Kakhovka dam in 2023 flushed an unknown number of mines into the waterway. Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium have given Ukraine five minesweepers, but the Montreux Convention prohibits them from entering the Black Sea in wartime.
Ukraine has struggled to win African support. In February 2025 only ten countries south of the Sahara voted in favour of a UN resolution proposed by Ukraine to mark the three-year anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion. The Soviet Union's legacy of backing African liberation movements gives Russia deep historical ties; there is no record of a Ukrainian foreign minister visiting the continent before 2022.
Russia wages an information war in Africa through outlets like the African Initiative, a Kremlin-linked media group pushing pro-Russian narratives in the Sahel. Russia's soft power is amplified by the Russian Orthodox Church, which has a growing portfolio of religious and cultural outreach on the continent. Russia is also Africa's largest arms supplier. The Wagner Group (now renamed the Africa Corps) had some 6,000 fighters stationed in Africa before 2022, helping shore up fragile governments in the Central African Republic, Mali, Libya and Sudan. Some have since been redeployed to Ukraine, but the number of African countries hosting Russian mercenaries has continued to grow.
Ukraine has tried to push back: credible reports emerged in 2024 that a small number of Ukrainian special forces were fighting alongside Sudan's national army, and Ukrainian intelligence claimed to have aided Tuareg rebels fighting Mali's Russia-aligned junta. But this sparked a diplomatic furore; Mali and Niger cut diplomatic ties with Ukraine.
Ukraine has promoted itself as a supplier of high-tech drones for civilian uses and launched a "Grain for Ukraine" initiative that has delivered some 280,000 metric tonnes of wheat to 12 African countries.
Ukraine does not publish its own combat losses in detail. In February 2025 President Zelensky said that more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed and 380,000 wounded since Russia's invasion—probably an underestimate. A leaked Ukrainian intelligence report from September 2024 suggested 70,000-80,000 soldiers had been killed in action. Ukraine's ratio of wounded to killed is thought to be eight to one, far better than Russia's four to one, reflecting greater care for troops' welfare and the advantages of fighting a largely defensive war.
On June 1st 2025 Ukraine launched "Spider's Web", a raid in which 117 drones emerged from trucks across Russia—from Siberia to the Chinese border—and destroyed a dozen or so planes in Russia's long-range air fleet. Ukraine claimed to have destroyed 41 large planes—about one-third of Russia's strategic-bomber fleet. Analysts viewing satellite pictures of some airfields estimated the real number at roughly half that.
Since late November 2025 Ukraine has attacked at least nine oil tankers, seven of them shadow-fleet vessels, using mines as well as naval and aerial drones. Some strikes occurred far from its shores, including one in the Mediterranean. Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's defence minister, wants more drones to hit Russia beyond Ukraine's borders. "Kyiv believes the tactic is working," observes Charlie Edwards of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Some 60% of Ukraine's power comes from nuclear reactors, with most of the rest from hydropower and thermal (coal or gas) plants. Ukraine's transmission grid rests on about 90 crucial substations that convert 750-kilovolt current from power stations into lower voltages for regional networks. Russia has been striking them one by one. Critical nodes were supposed to be protected with reinforced concrete and wire mesh, but many were not.
As winter 2025 approaches, Russia has shifted from expensive missiles to waves of cheap Shahed-like drones, focusing on specific regions rather than scattergun attacks. Where 150 drones in a night was once considered serious, Ukraine now frequently faces 600 or 700. Russia has taken offline several thermal power plants and perhaps half of Ukraine's gas production, forcing it to spend $1.9bn on imported gas. Russia is focusing on Sumy, Chernihiv and Kharkiv to detach the industrial east from energy production in the west.
In 2024 two officials responsible for building energy defences—Oleksandr Kubrakov, then deputy prime minister, and Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, then head of Ukrenergo, the transmission-system operator—were forced out, and after Trump returned to the White House aid dried up. "The protective systems weren't built simultaneously across all sites," says one contractor. Ukraine is creating hundreds of new military units combining air defence with drones to protect the most essential facilities.
By January 2026 Russia had found a strategy targeting civilian energy infrastructure in ultra-cold weather (-20°C). Bombardments focused on substations converting high voltage to local lower voltage, aiming to detach Kyiv from the national grid. An overnight attack on January 19th left 1m users in Kyiv without electricity, with several thousand homes cut off from central heating. DTEK, the local power company in Kyiv, warned that if the capital's remaining thermal power plants were knocked offline, the water system would follow—and in a worst-case scenario the city's pipes would have to be drained until spring. Mayor Vitaly Klitschko encouraged anyone who could to leave; some 600,000 already had.
Russia has been saturating Ukraine's air defences with drones and missiles. On the night of May 25th 2025 Russia struck Ukraine with 355 drones in a single attack, a record, alongside at least nine missiles. The newest generation of Shahed attack drones, now in their sixth modification since Iran first shipped them to Russia in 2023, use machine-learning and piggy-back on Ukraine's own internet and mobile networks instead of relying on jammable GPS.
Since summer 2024 Russia has raised monthly production of Geran drones (its version of the Iranian Shahed) five-fold. In May 2025 two factories, both nearly 1,500km east of the front line, produced about 2,700 Gerans and 2,500 Gerberas (a smaller decoy drone). The factories have been hit by Ukrainian drone strikes but output has not been severely dented. An upgraded Geran-2, first deployed in June 2025, uses video guidance, artificial intelligence and improved electronics to thwart jamming. It can fly at altitudes of up to 4,000 metres and reach speeds of 400kph in descent, up from 185kph. Its warhead has grown from 40kg to as heavy as 90kg. A Geran-3 with a turbojet engine can fly at up to 600kph but costs an estimated $1.4m, compared with about $200,000 for the upgraded Geran-2.
Until March 2025 only 3-5% of Gerans were getting through Ukraine's defences. By July that rose to some 15% of a significantly higher number. By January 2026 Ukraine's overall drone interception rate had fallen from 98% to 80% over the preceding year, with the sheer number of drones—Shaheds now produced by the hundreds daily—identified as the main problem rather than shortages of interceptor missiles alone.
Colonel Pavlo "Lazar" Yelizarov, a front-line drone commander who built a feared force of some 1,500 operators, was appointed assistant air-defence commander in January 2026, signalling a new emphasis on domestically produced interceptors. Using million-dollar missiles such as the IRIS-T to shoot down $200,000 drones risks exhausting high-end air defences needed against ballistic and cruise missiles.
The most promising solution is cheap interceptor drones. At least four Ukrainian firms, including Wild Hornets and Besomar, produce them, as do Tytan (German) and Frankenberg (Estonian). General Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine's commander-in-chief, says interceptor drones have a 70% success rate against Gerans. Each interceptor must cost no more than $5,000, fly at about 300kph and loiter at altitudes of up to 5,000m. In July 2025 Zelensky ordered production of at least 1,000 interceptors a day, an "urgent funding requirement" of $6bn.
In January 2026 Ukraine destroyed a record 1,704 Shaheds—half of those launched—with 70% of interceptions using drones. The 412th Unmanned Systems Brigade, known as "Nemesis", accounted for a sixth of the shootdowns; operating outside the military bureaucracy, it has automated processes from combat to paperwork. Among the most popular interceptor models is the Sting, which at $2,000 costs less than half the price of rivals; Merops, a semi-autonomous drone produced by a company founded by Eric Schmidt, Google's former boss, needs only to be guided into visual range before engaging automatically. Mykhailo Fedorov, who at 35 leads the defence ministry, has presented "closing the skies" as his first priority. Russia is responding with experimental jet-powered drones that fly at 400-500kph and early trials of small swarms.
Short-range defence still requires gun systems such as Ukraine's Sky Sentinel, an autonomous turret with a heavy machine gun, and Rheinmetall's Skynex, designed to combat swarm attacks. Neither is yet available in significant numbers. Ukraine is also developing Tryzub, a laser system that can supposedly down aerial targets at altitudes of 3,000m or above.
On October 22nd 2025 Ukraine and Sweden signed a deal that could lead to Ukraine buying 100-150 Gripen fighter jets to rebuild its air force over many years. The Gripen is relatively cheap and especially well suited to Ukraine's needs. Even France, which makes competing planes, would prefer Ukraine buying Gripens to American jets.
Ukraine has at least eight American Patriot batteries, the only Western system capable of intercepting ballistic missiles. Since spring 2023, Patriot crews have knocked out more than 150 ballistic and air-launched ballistic missiles. The systems have been largely concentrated around Kyiv, where air defences intercept roughly 95% of incoming drones. Zelensky says Ukraine needs at least ten more Patriot batteries.
Lockheed Martin, which builds the Patriot system's PAC-3 interceptor missiles, is increasing output to 650 per year—about 100 fewer than Russia's projected annual production of ballistic missiles. It typically takes two PAC-3 interceptors to bring down one Russian ballistic missile. A Ukrainian government source reckons Russia holds a stockpile of some 500 ballistic missiles.
On April 30th 2025 America and Ukraine signed a deal granting America access to Ukraine's minerals through a new reconstruction investment fund, jointly managed by the two countries. The fund is 50-50 owned by America and Ukraine, financed by revenues from new licences for mineral exploration and extraction, including rare earths, oil and gas. All profits are to be reinvested in Ukraine for the first decade. Crucially, the deal does not require Ukraine to use minerals revenues to repay past American military assistance. Scott Bessent, America's treasury secretary, signed for the American side.
In April 2025 America circulated proposals that would recognise Russia's annexation of Crimea, promise Ukraine would never join NATO, and end sanctions on Russia, without offering Ukraine security guarantees. Zelensky said Ukraine would never formally recognise Russia's seizure of Crimea. Neither side had accepted the plan. J.D. Vance, America's vice-president, warned on April 23rd 2025 that the Trump administration was prepared to "walk away" from the peace process.
At a meeting in Rome brokered by France, Donald Trump and Zelensky met in St Peter's Basilica. Ukrainian sources say Zelensky used his 15 minutes to deliver a simple message: Ukraine is ready for an unconditional ceasefire, Russia is not. Trump afterwards rebuked Vladimir Putin for "tapping [him] along"—his strongest criticism of Putin yet. A massive missile attack on Kyiv on April 24th, in which a North Korean-produced missile killed at least 12 people, visibly angered Trump.
Russia has moved its red lines somewhat, publicly accepting direct negotiations with the Zelensky administration it once derided as illegitimate. But its foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said on April 28th 2025 that Russia needed full recognition of all its annexed territories, including parts of four provinces it does not completely control, as well as demilitarisation and "denazification" of Ukraine.
In mid-May 2025, after a visit by four European leaders to Kyiv on May 10th, peace talks were set to begin in Istanbul, hosted by Turkey. Putin turned down Zelensky's dare of a face-to-face meeting and sent only a third-level delegation with no mandate to make decisions. America attended with a high-level delegation headed by secretary of state Marco Rubio. The European leaders had threatened further sanctions on Russia's energy and banking sectors if Russia did not agree to a ceasefire first. On the battlefield, Russia continued to take Ukrainian territory, albeit at a snail's pace.
In late August 2025 Trump met Putin at the American base in Anchorage; Putin conceded nothing, not even a ceasefire. Three days later Trump met Zelensky and seven European leaders at the White House and suggested "Article 5-like protection" for Ukraine—though he explicitly ruled out NATO membership, describing Ukraine's bid as "very insulting" to Russia. Trump said Europeans would be the "first line of defence" and America would "help them out", possibly with air power, but gave few specifics. Marco Rubio was leading a working group to examine the guarantees. Russia reaffirmed its opposition to any foreign force in Ukraine and insisted that guarantors should include China.
A "coalition of the willing" spearheaded by Britain and France had been engaged in detailed military planning for months to deploy troops to Ukraine and planes to its skies after any ceasefire. The precedent most often cited was the 1994 Budapest memorandum, in which America, Britain and Russia promised to respect Ukraine's integrity—promises that proved worthless.
By February 2026, after four years of war, Russian forces in Donetsk had advanced just 60km. America had reduced its war financing by 99%. Ukraine had become less dependent on American intelligence. Peace talks in Geneva had what one observer called a "Potemkin quality".
In January 2026 the Ukrainian segment of the Druzhba pipeline, which delivers Russian crude to parts of central Europe, was damaged. Zelensky claimed it was Russia's doing and refused to fix it, arguing that proceeds from oil sales fuel the Kremlin's war machine. This infuriated Hungary, whose PM Orban had carved out an exemption from EU sanctions to keep importing cheap Russian crude. Orban used the spat to block the finalisation of the EU's €90bn aid package to Ukraine, which had been agreed in December 2025. Europeans grudgingly backed Orban, linking the aid to Ukrainian co-operation on Druzhba. Zelensky fumed that this amounted to blackmail. On March 17th Zelensky acceded to EU demands that he get busy fixing Druzhba.
On May 19th 2025 Trump spoke to Putin for two hours. Despite having advertised the call as a last chance for Russia to face tough new sanctions, Trump issued no threats and instead lavished Putin with flattery. He afterwards claimed to have secured a new Russian agreement to work on a "memorandum" for peace and to begin "immediate" talks. The Vatican confirmed it was ready to host negotiations; a working group was established with the Ukrainians. In Congress, a sanctions package targeting buyers of Russian energy with tariffs of up to 500% reportedly had enough Senate signatures to pass, but still required Trump's approval.
War is permanently reshaping Ukraine's geography. Kharkiv, just 40km from Russia, was an industrial powerhouse and Ukraine's second city, home to about 1.6m people before the invasion; its population has fallen to between 1.2m and 1.3m. The city was once a major educational centre with 270,000 university-level students; because of frequent drone and missile attacks most education is now online, and only half the old number of students are believed to remain. The share of Ukraine's IT workers in Kharkiv fell from 14% in 2021 to 4% last year. In the first half of 2025, builders started work on only 199 new homes in Kharkiv, compared with 15,559 in Kyiv province and 6,956 in Lviv.
Lviv, 70km from prosperous Poland, is profiting as people, business and investment move west. Its governor keeps a bust of Emperor Franz Joseph in his office—Lviv was one of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's biggest cities before the Soviet conquest turned the country's focus eastward. Lviv has grown to a million inhabitants since 2022, thanks largely to 150,000 arrivals from Kharkiv and other eastern areas. Some 280 companies have relocated to Lviv province, including 60 from Kharkiv. A major industrial park and a university have opened in the city's suburbs. The EU plans to help make Lviv a railway hub by upgrading links to Poland and Romania. All new private-equity investment is in western Ukraine; Dragon Capital, an investment firm, says it does not even look at any region east of the Dnieper.
Analysts say redeveloping eastern cities will require the government to offer tax breaks graduated by proximity to Russian-occupied territory. Much of the country's east could become a rust belt, perpetually threatened by war.
The war has distorted Ukraine's property market rather than collapsing it. In Lviv, average prices climbed to $1,720 per square metre by early 2026, 64% higher than at the start of the war—exceeding prices in Kyiv. In cities near the front lines, sale prices drop but rents often surge owing to limited supply and high military wages. In Kramatorsk monthly rent for a bungalow reached 60,000 hryvnia ($1,370), higher than the purchase price of the cheapest flats. Bomb shelters have become enticing selling points in central Kyiv, where rents are soaring from an influx of foreign dignitaries and cash. Semi-legal firms buy homes facing the biggest missile threat at large discounts, betting on post-war recovery and government compensation. Kharkiv, 30km from the front lines, has become an affordable investment hotspot, with one-bedroom flats selling for three and a half times average yearly wages, down from five a couple of years earlier.
Growth of 2-2.4% was expected in 2025; about a third of it comes from defence and tech firms. The flow of goods through Ukraine's deep-sea ports surpasses pre-war volumes. In one primary school in Kyiv's central Pechersk district, first-year numbers have fallen by two-thirds.
Farm goods made up over half of Ukraine's exports in 2025. Britain kept egg trade tariff-free with Ukraine until 2028 after the EU reimposed barriers; a record 200m Ukrainian eggs were exported to Britain in 2025.
On April 5th 2026 Zelensky made a surprise visit to Damascus, the first by a Ukrainian president, arranged by Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Ukraine and Syria had restored diplomatic relations in September 2025 after severing them in 2022 when Bashar al-Assad recognised Russia's annexation of occupied Donetsk and Luhansk. The two countries are exploring trade—Syrian phosphates for Ukrainian wheat—and a security partnership. Ukraine now has Europe's biggest army (Russia aside) and wants to "step into Russia's fading footprint" in Syria, where Russia retains two military bases but its influence has waned.
By the end of 2025 Ukraine's total military effort—defined as its defence budget plus foreign gifts of weapons and military grants—will have cost roughly $360bn since the full-scale invasion. In 2025 alone the war effort required $100bn-110bn, the highest annual sum yet, equivalent to about half of Ukraine's GDP. The official fiscal deficit is about a fifth of GDP; public debt has doubled as a share of GDP since before the war, to about 110%.
Ukraine's direct defence budget is about $65bn a year. Other government spending amounts to another $73bn, according to Dragon Capital, an investment firm in Kyiv. Domestic revenues cover about $90bn, leaving an annual budget deficit of roughly $50bn. In addition Ukraine relies on donated weapons valued at some $40bn in 2025. Defence spending has been increasing by about 20% a year, keeping it at roughly two-thirds the value of Russia's rising expenditure—though a senior Ukrainian official suggests Russia's actual war spending may be more than double its official budget.
Since the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has each year set a budget, published the shortfall and relied on friendly governments, aided by the IMF, to fill the gap. In 2025 foreign governments provided $38bn, equivalent to a fifth of GDP. The war cost $140m a day in 2024, rising to $172m a day by September 2025. Svyrydenko estimated $50bn would be required for 2026—far more than expected by foreign donors, who had pledged only $31bn. She sought to raise defence spending to 2.8trn hryvnia ($68bn). The government had already raised income taxes and levied financial institutions, leaving few revenue sources to squeeze.
America and the EU, Ukraine's two biggest funders, rely on IMF forecasts that had envisaged an end to fighting in 2025 and a deficit below 5% of GDP by 2027. After failed peace talks, Svyrydenko asked the IMF for a new bail-out to replace a $16bn package set to expire in 2027, but negotiations made little progress; the fund reckoned the government might need $20bn more than forecast by end-2027. Trump stopped America's flow of economic aid to Ukraine. European governments have mostly redirected returns earned by frozen Russian central-bank assets, but remain reluctant to seize the assets themselves.
The Economist estimates Ukraine will need approximately $389bn in cash and arms over the four years from 2026 to 2029, mainly from Europe—almost double the roughly $206bn that Europe has supplied since just before the war started in February 2022. Over the same period America gave about $133bn. Supporting Ukraine without America would require remaining NATO members to increase their contribution from about 0.2% of GDP to 0.4%.
Some $163bn of Russian state assets are frozen in European accounts, mostly in Belgium. A proposed "reparations loan" would use these assets as collateral: clearing houses would lend money to the EU via special bonds, which would then pass it on to Ukraine. The loans would be repayable only if Russia agreed to pay reparations after the war. Friedrich Merz, Germany's chancellor, has insisted the new money be spent only on weapons, not on filling budget gaps—partly to press other donors such as Japan and Canada to cover the deficit. Belgium's opposition to the guarantees underpinning the bonds has stalled the plan, though few doubt it will proceed because it is the only game in town. In late 2025 the EU also failed to agree on a plan to seize €140bn ($160bn) of frozen Russian assets outright. Europe's economy is ten times bigger than Russia's, but if it continues to work on Brussels time, help may come too late.
The EU has budgeted to provide $15bn by 2027. The European Commission wants to provide $117bn in the next seven-year budget cycle starting in 2028, though a more realistic estimate is $30bn a year in 2028 and 2029. When the reparations loan and EU budget run out, the obvious solution would be joint European borrowing along the lines of the bloc's €800bn post-pandemic recovery fund, though German officials fear this would undermine fiscal discipline and be vulnerable to vetoes by Russia-friendly leaders such as Hungary's Viktor Orban.
Iryna Mudra, the deputy head of Ukraine's presidential office, insists Ukraine should have full control over where the money is spent. Ukraine's own defence industries can produce pioneering drone technologies at scale, though questions of corruption persist. One model being pursued is joint production in Europe using Ukrainian designs.
In June 2025 Russia launched a large-scale summer offensive aimed at breaking Ukrainian morale. Ukrainian intelligence identified Kostiantynivka, a logistics hub for Ukrainian forces in the Donbas, and neighbouring Pokrovsk as the focus of the campaign. Before the full-scale invasion in 2022 some 67,000 civilians lived in Kostiantynivka; by mid-2025 only 10-20% remained. Kostiantynivka receives up to 25 guided bombs a day; its remaining 8,500 civilians mostly leave by a 3pm curfew. Russia has also massed 50,000 troops near the north-eastern province of Sumy, advancing slowly towards the provincial capital.
Captured Russian officers have told Ukrainian interrogators the campaign is being presented as "one last push". However, the front lines have not shifted in Russia's favour in any strategically significant way for three years; Russia's fighting in small dismounted groups to mitigate drone risk means progress is never quick.
About 100,000 of Ukraine's 1m military personnel are women; all are volunteers, unlike many of the men, who are conscripts. Some 5,500 serve on the front line, including as medics, drivers and drone crews. Before the full-scale invasion in 2022 about 15% of armed forces staff were female; the army's huge growth means the share is smaller but the absolute number has more than doubled. Only in 2018 did Ukrainian legislators open military high schools and universities to women and remove other restrictions on the roles they could fulfil. Perhaps 20% of students in military schools are now women.
Three and a half years into the war, Ukraine pivoted to international recruitment to tackle its manpower crisis. An initial international legion formed after Zelensky appealed for help in February 2022 was badly managed; the overwhelming majority eventually left. In May 2025 a new recruitment centre opened at an undisclosed location in western Ukraine, with a digital advertising campaign concentrating initially on Latin America. It was attracting around 100 new applications a day. Front-line salaries of $3,000 a month before bonuses—perhaps ten times the average in poorer parts of South America—are a strong incentive.
Ukraine's recruitment rate is running at 27,000 a month, roughly 15,000 below Russia's. Desertions during training are a worrying problem. Russians do not routinely make prisoner exchanges with Ukraine's foreign fighters; Zelensky suggested in May 2025 that the Kremlin would prefer to use them as leverage with the global south.
In 2022 Ukraine's arms industry produced $1bn-worth of weapons; by 2024 its capacity had reached $35bn, according to Herman Smetanin, Ukraine's 32-year-old minister for strategic industries, who ran a tank factory before the war. That was $20bn more than the government could afford to buy; 40% of Ukraine's weapons were still home-made. In 2022, 82% of the arms industry was state-owned. The state share rose to 89% by the end of that year as existing factories ramped up. But private firms grew faster: by 2024, 58% of the rapidly expanding industry was in private hands. Neither public nor private firms made use of mothballed Soviet weapons factories; it proved quicker to build small new ones.
Ukraine's output of artillery shells rose from 50,000 in 2022 to 2.4m in 2024. Its armoured-vehicle production tripled in 2024. It has been making home-grown howitzers for barely a year but is now producing more than ten a month.
Defence-tech innovation in Ukraine has become a form of industrial Darwinism. While Russia depends largely on state-run programmes, Ukraine has created a dynamic, competitive, but fragmented market involving some 2,300 companies. The Brave1 programme offers defence startups small grants, access to military units and introductions to potential investors. Army units earn "points" for combat achievements, which they can use to buy drones and other weapons from producers; every strike must be verified using video footage, generating valuable data. The government has increased the cap on profits for some defence contracts to 25%. Procurement remains flawed: many contracts last only a few months, making it tough for firms to plan and expand.
Ukraine has become a defence-industry power in drone interception. In early 2026, at the request of Gulf states under attack by Iranian missiles and Shahed drones during the Gulf war, Ukraine sent 228 advisers with battle-tested drone-defence experience to the region. In late March Zelensky toured the Gulf and signed ten-year security partnerships with Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE; Ukraine is also working with Jordan and Kuwait.
Ukrainian defence firms have honed the mass production of interceptors costing $2,000-5,000 each, which now take out up to 90% of the $50,000 Russian Geran-2 drones (an improved version of the Iranian Shaheds). The Ukrainians have become proficient at matching the shooter to the target, aided by their AI-enabled battlefield-management system, Delta. Uforce recently became Ukraine's first defence-technology unicorn.
Co-production of air-defence systems and partnerships between Ukrainian firms and Gulf counterparts are expected. China withholds some drone technologies from Ukraine that it sells to Russia, but China relies on Gulf Arab countries for half its oil imports and is likely to sell them anything they want for systems they co-produce with Ukraine.
In 2025 European and Ukrainian companies signed more than 20 agreements, nearly twice the number in 2023. In February 2026 four Ukrainian defence manufacturers launched joint ventures with firms from Denmark, Finland and Latvia. The European Commission approved a $1.7bn programme to integrate Ukraine's defence industry with Europe's.
In August 2025 Ukraine unveiled the Flamingo, a new cruise missile with a declared range of 3,000km and a payload of over a tonne, made by Fire Point, a private company. Representatives say the missile began as a napkin scribble in late 2024 and entered mass-production in nine months—led by a management team that claims no previous defence-industry experience. The body is fibreglass (harder to spot than metal); the engine appears to be an AI-25 turbofan from the Motor Sich design bureau in Zaporizhia province, a frequent target of Russian attacks and a potential bottleneck. The missile was priced at under €1m ($1.2m), competitive in the cruise-missile market. Production was at one missile a day, with plans to reach seven a day. The name started as an in-house nod to the women in top positions; test prototypes were painted pink. An apparently identical "FP5" missile was presented at a weapons show in the United Arab Emirates in February 2025. Some competitors questioned whether the missile's performance claims were credible, noting its bulk and steep launch climb make it visible to radar.
In September 2024 Zelensky had secretly requested American Tomahawk cruise missiles as part of his "Victory Plan"; the Biden administration refused. Ukraine says 40% of its long-range strike targets in 2025 have been Russian refineries. According to some estimates, up to 20% of Russia's refining capacity has been taken out, at least temporarily: a loss of well over 1m barrels a day. Refineries hit several times have suffered lasting damage; the destruction of cracking units that break down crude oil into petrol, diesel and aviation fuel hurts most because they are difficult to replace under the sanctions regime.
The FP-1 long-range drone, which first appeared in May 2025, accounts for about 60% of deep strikes into Russian territory. It costs $55,000, carries a warhead of 60-120kg and has a range of up to 1,600km with the lighter payload. By mid-2025 it was being produced at a rate of 100 units a day. The Lyutyi drone, heavier and more expensive, has a range of 2,000km and uses a machine-vision system to guide it to its target. Robert "Madyar" Brovdi commands Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces. His drone brigade, "Madyar's birds", claims responsibility for a sixth of Russian losses; the wider unmanned-forces grouping he controls accounts for more than a third yet makes up just 2% of the army's headcount. December 2025 marked a turning point: the first month when verified Russian losses to Ukrainian drones exceeded recruitment. Since the start of that winter, drones killed or incapacitated at least 8,776 more soldiers than Russia replaced, at a cost of $878 per kill. At the December peak, losses reached 388 a day—equivalent to the assault component of an entire battalion. Brovdi's unit runs an ecosystem of 15 interlocking functions, from jamming to surveillance, mine-laying and explosive production.
Ukraine's three most feted military units—the Azov, the Third Assault and the Khartiia—all started life as small localised outfits and have grown into full-scale corps, each boasting over 20,000 men. The Third Assault was founded at the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022 by Andriy Biletsky, once a far-rightist but now a carefully spoken former (and perhaps future) MP and even a presidential contender. The Khartiia was founded by Vsevolod Kozhemyako, the owner of a big agricultural conglomerate with large landholdings in the threatened east. The Azov, which Mr Biletsky had initially commanded, dates to Russia's 2014 invasion of the Donbas; it was largely wiped out in the three-month battle for Mariupol in 2022 and had to be rebuilt from scratch. In spring 2025, as part of a wider army reorganisation, each was given four or five more brigades, turning them into corps.
The three units are examples of Ukraine's extraordinary capacity for self-organisation and of how business skills can be applied to the armed forces. Almost none of their officers come from the Soviet-inherited military system. Battalion commanders are measured against key performance indicators—"price per kill" and "cost per front-line day"—and the corps have professional HR departments, so that promotions do not go to senior officers' drinking buddies. Sizeable marketing and creative teams keep the corps hyperactive on YouTube and social media. The Third Assault's KillHouse drone school in the outskirts of Kyiv is open to anyone; a quarter of graduates sign up. Azov Care, a support service for wounded soldiers and their families, arranges funerals, finds the best hospitals and prosthetics, and helps families obtain compensation.
Ukrzaliznytsia, the state-owned railway company, is the backbone of the domestic economy and international trade. Its freight lines sustain Ukraine's embattled industry in the east and carry crucial grain exports to the border. Since August 1st 2025 there have been more than 700 attacks on railway infrastructure, compared with 313 in the first seven months of the year. Russia's anti-rail strategy targets Odessa to stop exports reaching Black Sea ports, Sumy and Chernihiv to make those areas uninhabitable, and Donetsk to sever the region from Ukraine. Railway freight volumes have halved from about 315m to 160m tonnes a year. In the first nine months of 2025 the company made a loss of $172m.
Twenty-one months after Russia's assault on the Donbas city of Pokrovsk (pre-war population 60,000) began, it neared its end in late October 2025. A bloody surge made the situation in the city and in Myrnohrad, a satellite town, irretrievable. Russia fully controls at least 60% of Pokrovsk itself, with the rest contested. Ukrainian forces in Myrnohrad risk encirclement, with a corridor to the north only a few kilometres wide after Russian forces entered the urban area of Rodynske on October 26th.
On October 29th and 31st Ukrainian military intelligence (Budanov) conducted two helicopter raids using American Black Hawk helicopters, personally led by Budanov, to slip special forces into the contested zone and strengthen positions along an access road. The city is a crossroads that offers Russia a base for further advances.
Russia's progress has been predicated on mass: casualty ratios of one to six, one to eight or one to ten. Just as crucially, Russia is edging ahead in the drone fight. Elite formations such as Rubikon, reporting directly to the defence ministry in Moscow, dominate the skies. Russian drones lurk along Ukrainian supply routes, hovering or waiting at a road's edge rather than flying after a target, with a reach several kilometres deeper than Ukrainian equivalents. Military and political leaders have failed to start building new underground fortifications in response to Russia's war of mass and drones.
Ukraine's early edge in drone warfare has been eroding. Rubikon, first seen near Kursk in 2024, reports directly to Russia's ministry of defence and has been disrupting Ukrainian supply lines as far as 40km behind the front around Kostiantynivka and Pokrovsk. New, well-funded Russian drone units can operate at longer distances and search for and kill Ukrainian drone operators first. By late 2025 casualties among drone operators and others in rear areas were higher than among front-line infantry—a remarkable reversal from earlier in the war.
On December 12th 2025 a successful Ukrainian counter-attack liberated most of the key railway town of Kupiansk in the north-east, leaving pockets of Russians encircled. Zelensky posted a selfie video from the town's edge, barely 1km from enemy positions, weeks after Putin had declared the town to be his. The operation was led by the Khartiia corps (commanded by Ihor Obolensky), the 92nd brigade and the Code 9.2 regiment, an elite assault unit. The first stages began on August 24th, Ukraine's independence day. By mid-September Russia had breached the Oskil river running through the town and occupied the centre. On September 21st the full counter-charge began. Over October and November Ukrainian forces pushed the Russians back over the river and cut off supply routes by taking two villages to the north. Russia attempted to reinforce its encircled troops via a disused pipeline, unaware that Ukrainian guns controlled the exit point; the pipe became a death trap.
Siversk, a small mining town in Donetsk province, had served as a Ukrainian outpost on high ground blocking a Russian advance towards Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the largest cities in the province still held by Ukraine. In the second week of December 2025 Russian forces surged forward to gain a significant foothold. By mid-December Russia appeared to control most of the town, with some troops pushing beyond it.
During the first half of 2025 Russia's army grew by an average of 8,000–9,000 soldiers a month, despite heavy losses. The Russian grouping in Ukraine stood at roughly 710,000 troops as of December 2025, with an operational reserve of about 50,000. Russia's fifth army was advancing westward near the city of Huliaipole in Zaporizhia province, reportedly "several weeks" ahead of its operational plan. Russia was estimated to be suffering more than 1,000 casualties a day, killed and wounded.
The Chernobyl nuclear power plant's new safe confinement (NSC), completed in 2019 at a cost of $1.6bn, was damaged by a Russian drone in February 2025. The attack punched a hole in the dome and started the first fire at the site since the 1986 disaster. Some 300 openings were cut to fight the blaze, destroying parts of the airtight seal. Without full repairs the structure risks corrosion within a few years.
Ukrainian forces have built a massive fortification system across the Donbas to protect towns and cities not yet occupied by Russia. Near Sloviansk and Kramatorsk the defensive lines are 200m wide, comprising belts of razor and anti-infantry wire, anti-tank ditches (2m deep, 3m wide), defensive berms, dragon's teeth (concrete tank traps) and mines, patrolled by drones. In 2014 Kramatorsk and Sloviansk were seized by Russian-backed rebels; it took Ukrainian forces almost three months to eject them. As of early 2026 the nearest Russian positions are only 17km from Kramatorsk. Kostiantynivka, the next target after Pokrovsk, is being fortified with razor wire in the streets.
After the shock of the full-scale invasion, many Ukrainians turned to literature to cope with, and sometimes escape, reality. The number of bookshops rose rapidly; readers were drawn to poetry and non-fiction, which gave an immediate account of the war. Authors who volunteered as soldiers have gained prominence. Some, such as Maksym Kryvtsov, a poet turned machine-gunner, were killed in action. Serhiy Zhadan, a poet, novelist and rockstar who enlisted in the National Guard's Khartiia brigade in 2024, can attract 4,000 people to poetry readings in Kyiv. Vivat, one of Ukraine's biggest publishing houses, led by Yuliya Orlova, has published more than 50 war-related titles since 2022.
In spring 2025 Ukraine announced plans to deploy 15,000 ground robots. About 40 mostly private firms produce some 200 UGV models, falling into three categories: logistics (petrol, water, evacuation), engineering support (mine-laying, mine-sweeping, communications) and combat support (grenade launchers, drone-hunting turrets). The war's widening "grey zone"—10km of ground either side of the contact line, watched and punished by drones—is spurring demand for the most robust robots.
The 3rd Assault Brigade is among the pioneers, stress-testing UGVs at a training ground in Kyiv. Mule drones can transport tonnes of materiel; new evacuation drones like the Ardal spare stretcher teams. The Hyzhak ("Predator") uses artificial intelligence to identify and shoot drones from 200 metres. The Liut ("Fury"), a 7.62mm machine-gun platform by UGV Robotics, first saw action during the incursion into Kursk in August 2024. Early operators had to be within a kilometre of their vehicles; by 2025 they could control them via Starlink from command posts far from the front.
The most immediate brake on mass deployment is communications: Starlink fails in difficult terrain or beneath trees, and mesh networks can collapse if key nodes are lost. Engineers say the technology probably needs an AI or machine-vision upgrade before mass combat use becomes realistic, perhaps a year away. The availability of skilled operators is another constraint. Russia's army, increasing by 8,000–9,000 men per month, may not feel the same imperative, but Ukraine's developers expect Russia to eventually copy, standardise and scale up the best UGV designs, as it did with first-person-view drones.
If I'm over the hill, why is it I don't recall ever being on top?