A Cogent Analysis of the Ongoing Russo-Ukraine War (2014-present)

Good morning, everyone. I thought it was time I wrote a relatively succinct analysis of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. You are likely thinking to yourselves, “Brooke, why? Ukraine and warfare have nothing to do with travel.” I will gently correct you, dear readers. As we have said in the past, everything is connected; we live in a highly globalized world. The World War II era of American isolationism is long past, as much as some may (in some mistaken sense) long for it. Let me explain.

INTRO

Because of the closure of Russian airspace due to sanctions imposed by the European Union, flights now have to take a circular route around the Russian Federation to arrive at their destinations. This adds at least 3–5 hours to any given flight and consumes an even greater amount of fuel, which increases global ticket prices for a given airline. This, in turn, forces competing airlines to raise their prices as well, regardless of the routes they travel.

Similarly, the No-Fly Zone (NFZ) over Ukraine prohibits any unauthorized aircraft from entering Ukrainian airspace, also forcing flights to divert. Indeed, the only civilian aircraft permitted in Ukrainian airspace is President Zelenskyy’s own presidential aircraft, along with prearranged diplomatic flights such as the US’s own Air Force One. Further, one must realize that if Ukraine falls, all of Europe will be open to Russian assault, and if Europe stands ready to fall, the United States will not be far behind.

That will leave only two superpowers on the world stage: the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation. Most travel will be a veritable impossibility, a pipe dream at that point. It is important to note that, as of this writing, the Russo-Ukrainian War is still ongoing, with no clear victor in sight. Plus, as an aside, I have long desired to write a follow-up piece to the one I wrote for the Institute for the Study of War back in 2023.

RUMBLINGS OF WAR

The current war in Ukraine was instigated much earlier, in 2014. The trigger was then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Specifically, it was Yanukovych's refusal to sign a trade agreement called the European Union Association Agreement, or EUAA, which would have forged much closer ties with the European Union. Yanukovych instead opted to expand close relations with the Russian Federation. Ukraine had asked for €20 billion ($27 billion USD) in loans and aid. The EU was willing to offer €610 million ($838 million USD) in loans, but Russia was willing to offer $15 billion, as well as cheaper gas prices. In addition, the EU demanded major changes to Ukraine's regulations and laws, but Russia did not stipulate regulatory or legal adjustments of that nature. Russia also applied economic pressure on Ukraine and launched a propaganda campaign against the EU deal.

Yanukovych's decision meant the country was turning toward the Russia-proposed Eurasian Economic Union, which was more popular in Ukraine's eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Western-oriented Ukrainians went to Maidan Square to protest against the turn toward Russia. The Eurasian Economic Union (or EEU), to be succinct, is still in existence. It is an economic alliance of five post-Soviet bloc nations: Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and the Russian Federation. It was formed as an economic and potential military counterweight to NATO.

EUROMAIDAN BEGINS

The rallies in Maidan Square in Kyiv were initially peaceful but became violent in January 2014 after parliament, dominated by Yanukovych's supporters, passed laws intended to repress the protests. The European Union and the United States urged Yanukovych to negotiate a peaceful end to the conflict and said they would impose sanctions on government officials if they were found responsible for violence.

On the 18th of February, some 20,000 Maidan protesters marched from Independence Square toward the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) in support of restoring the 2004 Constitution, which had been repealed by the Constitutional Court after Yanukovych was elected president. The Berkut (special police force) blocked their path. The confrontation quickly turned violent, and BBC correspondents reported that each side blamed the other.

The Berkut security forces fired guns, including automatic weapons and sniper rifles loaded with rubber bullets and, later, live ammunition, while also using tear gas and flash grenades to repel thousands of demonstrators.

The protesters fought with rocks and bats, Molotov cocktails, and firearms. The Euromaidan Revolution, popularly known as the Revolution of Dignity, had begun.

On 21 February, just a few days later, during the same protests, President Yanukovych signed an agreement with opposition leaders. It promised constitutional changes to restore certain powers to parliament and called for early elections to be held by December. Despite the agreement, thousands continued to protest in central Kyiv, and the Berkut security forces withdrew, leaving demonstrators in control of the city's government district: the parliament building, the president's administration quarters, the cabinet, and the Interior Ministry. That evening, Yanukovych secretly fled the capital without informing parliament of his whereabouts. This was, in effect, his surrender to the people.

The next day, just hours after Yanukovych had fled during the night, parliament voted 328–0 in favor of removing him from office and scheduled new presidential elections for 25 May. Parliament appointed its chairman to serve as interim president until then.

Over the next few days, Russian nationalist politicians and activists organized rallies in Crimea and urged the Russian government to help defend the region from advancing "fascists" from the rest of Ukraine.

Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin was all too happy to help and immediately, yet subtly, invaded the Crimean Peninsula, claiming it was a “security concern” and that stationing military forces on the peninsula and annexing the territory were necessary “to ensure the stability of Russia’s southern neighbor.” Russia carried out this annexation almost overnight, using unmarked (masked) troops to do so after an allegedly illegitimate referendum in which the Russian Federation claimed that most citizens wanted to join Russia in the first place. It was later revealed that these masked troops were actually Spetsnaz special forces using the nickname "little green men." As of 2014, the Russo-Ukrainian War had started.

DONBAS WAR

In April of that year, after Yanukovych had fled, Russian-backed militants seized towns and cities in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region and proclaimed the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) as independent breakaway states, starting the Donbas War. Russia covertly supported the separatists with its own troops, tanks, and artillery, preventing Ukraine from fully retaking the territory.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) judged that the war was both a national and international armed conflict involving Russia, and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) judged that Russia had controlled the DPR and LPR from 2014 onward. The regions remain sites of intense fighting today.

In February 2015, Russia and Ukraine signed the Minsk II agreements, joint accords developed to end the war, but they were never fully implemented in the following years. The Donbas War became a static conflict often likened to the trench warfare of the First World War. Ceasefires were repeatedly broken and became meaningless, but nevertheless, the front lines did not move. In military analysis parlance, the Donbas War became a meat grinder for both sides, though Russia could easily afford to keep throwing soldiers' lives away, whereas Ukraine could not. The Donbas War was attrition warfare at its worst. From late 2014 through 2021, nothing really changed, but numerous separatist actions turned the Donbas into a massive killing field as "volunteer militias" loyal to either Ukraine or the Luhansk or Donetsk People’s Republics fought each other in a meat grinder in the east, while Russia fortified the Crimean Peninsula to the south. This stale fighting only intensified as 2022 dawned.

In 2019, Ukraine elected a new president: a candidate who was originally a stand-up comedian and actor. He ran his entire campaign on social media and easily won. As of 2026, he remains incredibly popular with the Ukrainian people. Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy, a Jewish comedian with no political experience, was handily elected president of Ukraine. Volodymyr remains president during the current war while martial law is in effect. In 2024, the Ukrainian parliament voted unanimously to keep Zelenskyy as president after his term had expired, keeping martial law in effect, which suspended presidential elections. This spoke to Zelenskyy's immense popularity, especially in wartime.

Beginning in 2021, there was a massive Russian military buildup near Ukraine's borders, including within neighboring Belarus, which was used as a staging ground. Russian officials repeatedly denied plans to attack Ukraine. Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, voiced expansionist views and challenged Ukraine's right to exist. He went so far as to write and publish a paper that denounced Ukraine’s right to self-determination, saying Ukraine and Russia were one people and had no right to be separate countries. Putin soon demanded that Ukraine be barred from ever joining the NATO military alliance. Ukraine had officially been a neutral country when the initial conflict began in 2014, but because of Russia's attacks, it revived plans to join NATO and intensified efforts to join the European Union.

In early 2022, Russia recognized the DPR and LPR as independent states. While Russian troops surrounded Ukraine, its proxies (Donetsk and Luhansk separatist troops, groups slated to become the national armed forces of both the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic) stepped up attacks on Ukrainian forces in the Donbas.

On 24 February 2022, the war began.

THE INVASION

Vladimir Putin announced a so-called "special military operation" with the purpose of "demilitarizing and denazifying" Ukraine, claiming in an address to the Russian people from the Kremlin that Russia had “no plans to occupy the country.”

The Russian invasion that followed was internationally condemned; many countries imposed sanctions against Russia and sent humanitarian and military aid to Ukraine.

In March 2022, Deutsche Welle (commonly abbreviated as DW), a German news media outlet, reported that the Azov Regiment (also known colloquially as the Black Brigade or the Men of Death) was the primary unit defending the city of Mariupol during the siege. A “special military operation” that was supposed to last three to four days at most has now, as of this writing, gone on for almost five years. Vladimir Putin himself asserted back in 2014 that Russian forces "could take Ukraine in two weeks." Aleksandr Lukashenko, president of Belarus, had already stated that, in case of war, Kyiv would be taken in "3–4 days."

Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Russian state-controlled international broadcaster RT (Russia Today), had made similar remarks about Russia being able to "defeat Ukraine in two days." The narrative of the planned "three-day" capture of Kyiv was further reinforced on 2 March, when the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) repeated the claim following its release of a video showing a captured Russian soldier claiming that his unit had been sent into Ukraine with food supplies for only three days.

KYIV ASSAULTED, RUSSIA REPULSED, YET PORTIONS ANNEXED

In the face of unexpectedly fierce resistance, Russia abandoned its initial attempt to seize Kyiv in early April, foregoing its Northern Front and shifting most of its forces to the east. In August, Ukrainian forces regrouped and began liberating territories in the northeast and south during the 2022–early 2023 Kherson Counter-offensive. In September, Russia declared that it had annexed four key provinces: Donetsk and Luhansk (the two breakaway quasi-states), as well as the Ukrainian-aligned provinces of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

Since then, Russian offensives and Ukrainian counteroffensives have gained only small amounts of territory in a back-and-forth effort of attrition-based warfare. The invasion has also led to attacks in Russia by Ukrainian and Ukrainian-backed forces, among them a cross-border offensive into Russia's Kursk region in August 2024. This is routinely called the Second Battle of Kursk (the first was in 1944 during World War II, between the USSR and Germany). Russia has repeatedly carried out deliberate and indiscriminate attacks on civilians far from the front line, utilizing long-range standoff (LRSO) weapons.

We will touch briefly on the initial Northern Front in the opening days of the war. On the morning of 24 February 2022, Russia initiated attacks on Kyiv Oblast with long-range artillery and cruise missile strikes on several primary targets, including Boryspil International Airport, Kyiv's primary airport, rendering the runways unusable by cratering them. Russia apparently intended to rapidly seize Kyiv, with Spetsnaz infiltrating the city, supported by airborne operations and a rapid mechanized advance from the north. Russian Airborne Forces attempted to seize two key airfields near Kyiv, launching an airborne assault on Antonov Airport, followed by a similar landing at Vasylkiv, near Vasylkiv Air Base just south of Kyiv, on 26 February.

These assaults in the battles (skirmishes, really) of Antonov and Hostomel Airports were part of the larger, all-encompassing Battle of Kyiv. The helicopter group that initially landed troops reportedly carried around 300 VDV (Russian Airborne Forces) airborne troops, purportedly from the 11th Guards Air Assault Brigade or 31st Guards Air Assault Brigade (reports are unclear and vary), for a direct assault on nearby Antonov Airport. While ultimately forced back, Russian troops did manage to destroy the Antonov An-225 aircraft, parked at nearby Hostomel Airport.

The An-225 Mriya (“Dream”) was the largest aircraft, not to mention cargo aircraft, ever built. While a second airframe exists at roughly 35% completion, it will potentially cost billions of euros to complete, according to an Antonov spokesman.

ELIMINATION OF THE NORTHERN FRONT

The attacks were unsuccessful, as noted, due to several factors, including the disparity in morale and performance between Ukrainian and Russian forces; the Ukrainian use of sophisticated man-portable weapons provided by Western allies; poor Russian logistics and equipment performance; the failure of the Russian Air Force to achieve air superiority; and Russian military attrition during its siege of major cities. As Russian forces advanced toward Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned that "various subversive groups" were approaching the city, referring to the inbound, heavily armed Russians.

The Ukrainians also claimed that, at the beginning of the invasion, just 30 SOF (special forces) soldiers managed to halt the Russian attack. The Ukrainians ambushed a heavy Russian convoy, guarded by some 2,000 troops, and destroyed three lead vehicles, attacking the rest of the convoy and destroying the bridges in the process. This engagement ended up temporarily stalling the entire Russian advance from Belarus, which consisted of 70,000 soldiers and 7,000 vehicles. This convoy, it should be noted, was so massive in length that it could be seen from space via satellites.

ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS

Mercenaries of the Wagner Group and aligned Chechen forces under their leader, Ramzan Kadyrov (called Kadyrovites), reportedly made several attempts to assassinate Zelenskyy and replace him with a Russian-aligned Ukrainian puppet dictator. The Ukrainian government said these efforts were thwarted by anti-war officials in Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), who shared secretive intelligence about the plans with their Ukrainian counterparts. These reports help illustrate that President Putin does not have people in loyal lockstep behind him. Many are not quick to trust him, at the very least, and there is very likely a joint information-sharing effort going on behind the scenes between Moscow and Kyiv.

We must also emphasize the fact that the Ukrainian military is not the same Eastern, Soviet-bloc-style military it was in 2014. The Armed Forces of Ukraine have been trained by German and Polish forces and given substantial American equipment. They now fight like a proper Western army, something Russia was unprepared for, having expected the same Eastern-style army it knew in 2014.

After Ukraine had fully retaken all of Kyiv Oblast, the Armed Forces of Ukraine began to mop up pockets of isolated Russian troops who had been left behind in the retreat. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW, the institution I used to write for) assessed that these remnant groups did not offer organized resistance and, indeed, that many surrendered outright. The Institute for the Study of War also said that some of the Russian units pulled back to Belarus and western Russia would "remain combat ineffective for a protracted period." As of this writing in 2026, these various units remain combat ineffective.

REDEPLOYMENT

On 6 April 2022, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said that the Russian "retraction, resupply, and redeployment" of its troops from the Kyiv area should be interpreted as an expansion of Putin's plans for his military actions against Ukraine. He said Russia was redeploying and concentrating its forces in eastern Ukraine and Mariupol within the next two weeks as a precursor to the further expansion of Putin's actions against the rest of Ukraine. Indeed, as of 2026, hardened battle lines remain firmly established in eastern Ukraine.

Moving ahead a bit for the sake of brevity, in early 2023, the largest and most strategically important Ukrainian city in eastern Ukraine, Mariupol, came under siege by the Russian advance. Most of the Azov Regiment was stationed in Mariupol at the beginning of the invasion.

While the nearly year-long siege resulted in a Russian victory over the city's destroyed ruins, numerous Russian war crimes were alleged. These crimes included unlawful attacks on civilians, killings, the blocking of humanitarian aid, forced displacement or deportation, looting, and rape.

HUMAN RIGHTS?

Based on analyses of mass graves, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International have both estimated that at least 10,280–13,380 people died in Mariupol from March 2022 to February 2023. However, reporting assumes that this is an undercount, with estimates given at the low end.

Russia was accused of using the presence of the Azov Regiment in the battle as justification for war crimes. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov justified the Mariupol hospital airstrike by claiming that members of the Azov Regiment were using the hospital as a base and had previously evicted the patients and staff. Where have we heard that excuse before? Gaza, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq—the list is endless.

Prior to falling to Russian forces, Mariupol was defended by the Ukrainian Ground Forces, the Ukrainian Naval Infantry, the National Guard of Ukraine (primarily the aforementioned Azov Regiment), the Territorial Defense Forces of Ukraine, and various irregular forces. Upward of fourteen different military units, within and outside Mariupol, defended the city during the siege. Russia sent five separate divisions to assault the city, enlisted at least two units of troops from the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), and employed continuous bombing from the Russian Air Force. The commander of the Azov Regiment, Colonel Poropenko, was reportedly given the award and title of Hero of Ukraine, albeit posthumously.

The trials currently being held in Russia are sham trials conducted to cater to Putin’s claim of the “denazification of Ukraine.” Most of the Ukrainians standing trial in Russia are members of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which, according to Human Rights Watch, makes them prisoners of war with corresponding status and protections under the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War. According to HRW and Amnesty International, the charges constitute war crimes and, per HRW, are an excuse to prosecute Ukrainian soldiers for participating in the conflict. As international human rights lawyer Maksym Vishchyk notes, "Russian sham trials thus appear to entirely negate these core IHL principles, and appear aimed at de facto legitimizing revenge against the POWs for fighting in defense of their country."

CURRENT ASSESSMENT

Fast-forward to 2025 and heading into 2026: Russia’s vaunted Black Sea Fleet has been all but destroyed by a country with no navy (Ukraine is now a huge producer of unmanned kamikaze sea drones, especially since sinking the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva). Ukraine has been making huge advances in drone technology, with its armed forces specializing in, and indeed adapting to, squad-based, asymmetric, and drone-based warfare.

The conflict has decisively shifted toward a war of attrition marked by massive long-range Ukrainian drone and missile strikes against Russian oil refineries, fuel depots, and Russia’s remaining Black Sea naval assets. Russian aerial bombardment continues, focusing on Ukrainian energy and heating infrastructure as the Ukrainian winter looms large, with neither side gaining any decisive advantage.

Ukrainian forces and specialized drone units continue deep strikes into Russian industrial and refinery infrastructure (including production facilities in the Volgograd, Samara, and Rostov regions), while localized ground fighting and counter-operations continue across the Donetsk, Luhansk, and southern fronts, as has been the case since February 2022, when this war began.

The war can be seen and categorized as an evolving form of attrition-based warfare on the ground in the east. There is no northern front anymore.

In the air, there is no symmetrical aerial combat as in wars past. Russia is continuously using hordes of Iranian-built Shahed “suicide” drones combined with varying numbers of Zircon-type long-range standoff (LRSO) air-launched cruise missiles.

Typically, these drones and missile swarms target Kyiv itself, as well as outlying towns and suburbs. Ukraine has built a patchwork of anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense systems utilizing an A.I.-augmented system and an E.U.-supplied ViaSat coded network. Ukraine had relied on SpaceX's Starlink for network aid, but after the 2026 betrayal by Elon Musk, it opted for E.U.-influenced ViaSat.

UKRAINE'S HOMEGROWN DEFENSE

Ukraine’s homegrown electronic warfare “Kaz” electronic “scrambler” system is incredibly effective, especially when paired with the U.S.-supplied Patriot missile defense system. Ukraine’s air force is another intriguing evolution, using Soviet-era MiG-29 “Fulcrum” aircraft as the backbone of its air force when the invasion began in 2022. It now uses the Boeing (formerly General Dynamics) F-16 Viper and has exquisitely customized it for its needs. With Ukraine now looking to acquire Sweden’s Saab JAS-39 Gripen (Swedish for Griffin) and build the Gripen domestically, Russia is and will continue to be overmatched. The world also now realizes that Russia is a paper tiger. In other words, Russia can be terrifying when looking at a listing of Russia’s armed forces on paper, but in reality, it is no more harmful in a war against a peer or near-peer adversary than the armed forces of, say, Cuba. For those of you saying, ‘I didn’t know Cuba had an army or air force.’ Exactly my point.

This is not to disparage Ukraine, as it is uniquely innovative and, by far, extremely battle-hardened. It desires only the survival and well-being of its people. It is not to disparage the Russian Federation either, as it is doing a fine job of disparaging itself on the battlefield and in the Kremlin.

If you look up the drone strikes on Ukraine’s independent video feeds (YouTube has blocked most of the feeds), you will see that Russia is fighting a World War II-style war of attrition by conscription, while Ukraine is using small squad-based tactics and drone strategies to fight smartly and make up for a lack of manpower, equipment, and more.

While the equipment is supplied by the United States and the European Union, Ukraine was burning through it astonishingly quickly for the better part of three years. Russia is operating on the premise of, to sound callous for a moment, “throwing enough troops at the problem until it stops being a problem.”

ANALYTIC CONCLUSION

This is the state of the Russo-Ukrainian War as of 2026: an attrition-caliber stalemate, with Ukraine’s technological edge countering Russia’s continued, yet drastically depleting, numerical superiority. Ukraine has the backing of the European Union and, tentatively, the United States, while Russia counts on aid in the form of ammunition and fresh troops from Iran and North Korea and, diplomatically for now, support from the People’s Republic of China under President Xi Jinping.

Thank you for learning more about this conflict that is helping to shape our world. Next time, we will return to a much lighter topic.

Learn so much more about the conflicts that affect our world, and travel in general, at our site: brookeintheairtravel.net