Four years in, Ukraine’s war grinds on with no end in sight

BRUSSELS (CN) — Four years after Russian tanks rolled across the Ukrainian border in the early hours of Feb. 24, 2022, the war that many expected to last weeks is entering its fifth year — bloodier than ever, locked in stalemate on the battlefield, and no closer to resolution at the negotiating table.

Europe had plans for this anniversary. EU leaders wanted to show up with gifts: a 90 billion-euro ($94 billion) loan and a fresh round of sanctions. Hungary vetoed both.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed the European Parliament by video link from Kyiv, insisting Russian President Vladimir Putin had failed in his objectives. "He has not broken the Ukrainian people. He has not won this war."

He pushed for fast-track EU membership by 2027, warning that without a concrete date, Putin would "find a way to block Ukraine for decades by dividing Europe." Brussels is reportedly drawing up plans to make it happen — but German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has already said the timeline is "out of the question."

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán tied his veto to a dispute over Russian oil transit through the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline — one of the few energy links Moscow and Budapest have maintained since the invasion. Kyiv says was it damaged by Russian drone strikes, and Budapest says Ukraine has refused to repair it.

Zelenskyy rejected that framing. "It can't be so that Russia destroys, Ukraine renovates, and during renovation Russia attacks again," he said. "For what? To lose people?"

Under EU rules, both the loan and sanctions package require unanimous approval from all 27 member states, giving any single country an effective veto. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas acknowledged on Monday that neither measure would pass, despite leaders having agreed to both at an EU summit in December.

The stakes are high: an $8.2 billion International Monetary Fund program for Ukraine is conditional on the loan, and analysts warn Kyiv faces a budget gap as early as April.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen — the EU's executive chief — and European Council President António Costa — who chairs summits of member state leaders — both traveled to Kyiv for the anniversary. On the blocked loan, von der Leyen was blunt: "They have given their word. This word cannot be broken," she said, promising to deliver the funds "one way or the other."

Costa was blunter, saying Orbán was breaking EU law. "No one is able to stop or to block a decision from the European Council," he said, adding he had written to the Hungarian premier demanding compliance and calling on Brussels to use "all the tools we have in the treaty" — a veiled threat of legal action.

Peace, elusive

On the diplomatic front, there is movement — but little progress. The Trump administration has been the most active actor in recent months, with envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner facilitating the first direct talks between Russian and Ukrainian officials in the same room since Turkey brokered negotiations in Istanbul in 2022 — first in Abu Dhabi, then Geneva.

Zelenskyy said the U.S. peace proposal had improved through revisions, but told reporters there had been "no positive movement" on the core issue: the future of Russian-occupied land.

French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Merz joined Zelenskyy for a Coalition of the Willing meeting Tuesday, a European-led defense grouping, calling for a "full, unconditional ceasefire" — but stopped short of new concrete commitments.

G7 leaders — the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan — went further, endorsing Trump's peace initiative and declaring that "only Ukraine and Russia, working together in good faith negotiations, can reach a peace agreement."

But Moscow's conditions remain maximalist. Russia's war aims are "unchanged" and "not open to opportunistic compromise, " said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier in the month.

The Kremlin demands Ukraine cede not just occupied territory but also the roughly 30% of Donetsk still under Kyiv's control, along with a formal ban on NATO membership — terms Ukraine has flatly rejected.

"Russia cannot be permitted to make gains at the negotiating table where it has failed on the battlefield," Costa said Tuesday, speaking alongside Zelenskyy in Kyiv.

Despite the diplomatic stalemate, Europe has dramatically scaled up its material support for Ukraine. In 2025 alone, European military aid rose 67%, and financial and humanitarian aid by 59% compared to the annual average since 2022, according to Germany's Kiel Institute.

The EU now accounts for nearly 90% of all financial and humanitarian support for Ukraine. Germany led military deliveries last year with equipment worth 9 billion euros. France, the EU's second-largest economy, ranked fifth.

A war transformed

Behind the solidarity, the battlefield picture remains grim.

What began as a tank war — with Russia pushing toward Kyiv from multiple directions in an advance that covered 27% of the country at its peak in March 2022 — has transformed beyond recognition. By mid-2022, fierce Ukrainian resistance and sweeping counteroffensives had clawed back significant ground, but Russia still controls roughly 20% of Ukrainian territory — an area about the size of Pennsylvania, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. That includes large swaths of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, along with the Crimean peninsula.

The pace is slow, but the direction of travel has not changed. In the most recent four-week period tracked by Russia Matters, a Harvard-affiliated conflict monitoring project, Russian forces gained another 182 square miles, slightly above last year's monthly average of 171.

The war has since settled into a brutal war of attrition, dominated by drones and artillery along a front line stretching more than 600 miles. Western military officials say drones now account for the vast majority of battlefield casualties on both sides. The Coalition of the Willing noted in its statement Tuesday that Russia suffered almost half a million casualties in 2025 alone — for minimal territorial gains.

The U.N. recorded 2,514 civilian deaths in Ukraine in 2025 — the highest annual figure since the invasion began, and a 31% rise over the previous year. Infrastructure damage tops $195 billion, according to the U.N.

Around 3.7 million Ukrainians remain internally displaced, while nearly 5.9 million have registered as refugees abroad, according to the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR.

Ukraine has suffered an estimated 500,000 to 600,000 troops killed, wounded or missing, according to the Centre for European Reform — a pace Ukraine, with a fraction of Russia's population, cannot keep up indefinitely.

The war has also redrawn Europe's security landscape. Britain's Armed Forces Minister Al Carns called it "the most defining conflict" in decades, pointing to the rapid evolution of drone warfare and the presence of North Korean troops fighting alongside Russian forces.

"I would never have guessed in my lifetime I would see North Korean troops fighting on the border of Europe," Carns told reporters Monday.

Macron, writing on X on Tuesday, called the war "a triple failure for Russia: military, economic and strategic," arguing it had strengthened NATO and galvanized Europeans rather than weakening them.

Four years in, the ledger is staggering: more than 15,000 civilians dead, nearly 6 million Ukrainians displaced abroad, half a million troops killed, wounded or missing — and a reconstruction bill the World Bank now puts at $588 billion. The war that was supposed to last days has outlasted every prediction, every diplomatic initiative and every ceasefire proposal.

Courthouse News correspondent Yuval Molina is based in Brussels, Belgium.