How Ukraine has pushed back and held the line against Russia for 3 years

Elon Musk on Feb. 21 questioned why Ukraine was still actively defending itself amid the ongoing Russian full-scale invasion, suggesting the country's fight against the Kremlin's imperialist ambitions was, in fact, a giant money-making scam.

"What are they dying for? What exactly are they dying for? The line of engagement has barely moved for two years. People are dead in trenches, and for what?" Musk said at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

Without providing evidence and repeating unfounded claims, he added: "I'll tell you what for, for the biggest graft machine I've ever seen in my life."

Three years ago, on Feb. 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion against Ukraine in an attempt to wipe out the country and its people. Moscow's brutal invasion killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians, who have died defending their country's right to exist as a sovereign and democratic nation.

On April 7, 2022, as Russia was pushed out of Kyiv's outskirts, Pentagon spokesperson Major General Pat Ryder said Russian President Vladimir Putin had "achieved exactly zero of his objectives inside Ukraine."

"He didn't take Kyiv. He didn't topple the government. He didn't remove Ukraine as a nation state," he added.

Three years on and this statement still holds true. In fact, Russia occupies less Ukrainian territory than it did when Ryder spoke.

Before the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia occupied 7.1 percent of Ukrainian territory, according to U.S. intelligence assessments, consisting of the whole Crimean peninsula and around one-third of both Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.

According to data from Ukrainian data journalism website Texty, the peak of Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine was in March 2022. On the 31st of that month, Moscow's forces controlled 167,223 square kilometers of Ukraine, just under 28% of the country's total land mass of 603,628 square kilometers.

A comparison of occupied Ukrainian territory — at its peak in March 2022 vs. February 2025 (Nizar al-Rifai/The Kyiv Independent)

Due to the fast moving nature of Russian advances in February 2022, there is no reliable data for how much land Moscow's forces fully controlled in the first few days of the full-scale invasion.

Russia had advanced in the north, south, and east of Ukraine, with the northern push aiming to take the capital of Kyiv.

Due to fierce Ukrainian resistance, this advance quickly stalled, and Russia was forced into a humiliating retreat at the beginning of April 2022, giving up around 40% of the land taken since Feb. 24, and exposing the myth of Russia's military superpower status.

Moscow's initial advances in the south and east saw large parts of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Kharkiv, and Luhansk oblasts fall under Russian control.

But lightning Ukrainian counteroffensives launched in late summer 2022, saw Kyiv retake control of great swathes of land including the cities of Kherson.

Russia illegally annexed Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts on Sept. 30, 2022, despite controlling none of the regions in full.

At the beginning of 2023, Russia occupied 108,928 sq kilometers, or just over 18.04% of Ukrainian territory, according to the DeepState monitoring group.

A long-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in June 2023 stalled, and since then, the war in Ukraine has settled largely into one of attrition as Kyiv holds the line against Moscow's forces.

Russian losses vs. Ukrainian land occupied. (The Kyiv Independent)

One notable exception was Ukraine's surprise cross-border incursion into Kursk Oblast in August 2024. According to Russian General Staff officer Sergei Rudsky, Ukrainian soldiers are in control of about 500 square kilometers (193 square miles) out of 1,268 square kilometers (490 square miles) initially seized by Kyiv.

As of Feb. 23, 2025, Russia occupies 112,333 sq kilometers, 18.61% of Ukrainian territory, with the small gains made in grinding advances in eastern Ukraine, taken at huge cost.

According to Ukraine's General Staff, Russia has lost 868,230 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion.

The figures do not specify killed or wounded, though the overall consensus is that it includes dead, wounded, missing, and captured. They are broadly in line with estimates from Western nations.

Around 165,000 Russian troops have been killed since the launch of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to a report by Meduza and Mediazona, independent Russian media outlets, on Feb. 24.

Russia's rate of advance has slowed over the last three months, and according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), at this speed, it would take Russia more than 83 years to capture the rest of Ukraine.

"Assuming that they can sustain massive personnel losses indefinitely," it added.

Three years of war have also cost Ukraine dearly — more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed on the battlefield since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, and 380,000 have been injured, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with NBC published on Feb. 16.