Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on the maps — latest updates

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Russian mercenary group Wagner, claimed on Sunday (April 2nd) that his forces “legally” controlled the town of Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, after planting a flag on the ruins of its administrative building local.

Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said the situation in Bakhmut was “very tense” but Bakhmut remained under kyiv’s control, despite Prigozhin’s claims.

Russia has struggled for months to capture the heavily bombarded city in Donetsk province, which Ukrainian forces call the “Bakhmut fortress”.

Satellite images of the Vuhledar region, south of Bakhmut in the Donetsk region, reveal the extent of the damage in areas that came under heavy artillery shelling.

Other maps and charts from the war

On February 24 last year, the world woke up to news that Russian tanks had arrived in Ukraine from the east and north.

Troops had been massing on Ukraine’s borders for months and Russian leader Vladimir Putin had made a series of fiery speeches on the long-running conflict in the Donbass region.

It was feared that the war would be short-lived, as Ukrainian troops could be overwhelmed within days. But that didn’t turn out to be the case.

Ukrainian forces advanced into Kherson on November 11 after Russia said its forces had completed their withdrawal from the southern city, sealing one of the biggest setbacks of President Vladimir Putin’s invasion.

Kiev’s advances and Moscow’s chaotic retreat across the Dnipro River, carried out under Ukrainian artillery fire, meant that Russia had returned the only provincial capital it had captured during the war, as well as the transfer of strategic positions.

In late August, Ukraine launched its first major counterattack since Russia began an all-out assault on the country in February, even as Kiev complained that its forces lacked sufficient Western heavy weaponry to carry out a decisive strike.

The advance liberated 3,000 sq km of territory in just six days – Ukraine’s biggest victory since pushing back Russian troops from the capital in March.

Ukrainian forces continue to push east, capturing Lyman transportation centernear the northeastern edge of Donetsk province, which it wrested from Russian control on October 1. The hard-fought victory came after nearly three weeks of battle and paved the way for a Ukrainian advance towards Svatove, a logistics hub for Russia. after his troops lost the Kharkiv region in the blitzkrieg Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The shift in focus of the conflict to the Donbass region followed Russia’s failure to capture kyiv during the first phase of the war. Prior to Ukraine’s swift counteroffensive, marginal Russian gains in the east suggested the war was entering a period of stalemate.

The Russians were thwarted in kyiv by a combination of factors, including geography, attackers’ blunders and modern weapons – as well as Ukraine’s ingenuity with smartphones and pieces of foam carpet.

The number of Ukrainians fleeing the conflict has made it one of the biggest refugee crises in modern history.

In mid-March, an attack on a Ukrainian military base, which had been used by US troops to train Ukrainian soldiers, added to Russia’s increasingly direct threats that continued NATO support for Ukraine risked turning it into an enemy combatant in the war. On March 24, NATO agreed to establish four new multinational battlegroups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia to reinforce troops in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

Sources: Institute for the Study of WarRochan Consulting, FT research

Mapping and development by Steve Bernard, Chris Campbell, Caitlin Gilbert, Cleve Jones, Emma Lewis, Joanna S Kao, sam learning, Ændra Rininsland, Niko Kommenda, Alan Smith, Martin Stabe, Neggeen Sadid And Liz Faunce. Based on reports from Roman Olarchyk And John Rose in Kyiv, Guy Chazan in Lvov, Henry Foy in Brussels and Neggeen Sadid in London.