The Russian invasion of Ukraine has completed its first month, and while President Vladimir Putin’s forces have failed to take Ukraine’s capital Kyiv or its second largest city Kharkiv, Russian forces have taken large areas of Ukraine's southeast. Russia so far has captured few large cities and has encountered fierce resistance throughout the country.
Meanwhile, sanctions from Western countries continue to affect Russia’s economy, preventing it from easily selling its exports, including oil and food.
The current state of the war is much different from the consensus just before the war started, that the Russian military would be able to relatively quickly topple the Ukrainian government and control large swaths of territory. Any hope for a Ukrainian victory would likely lie in a long-term insurgency similar to Afghanistan in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion in the 1980s. Rather, the strong Ukrainian resistance has kept the government in power and prevented the seizure of many large cities, even though Russia has managed to control territory along the border and in the east and south of the country.
Putin’s actions in Ukraine have been characterized as war crimes given his military’s targeting of civilian neighborhoods. Russia’s attacks on civilian neighborhoods represent a dark turn in the conflict as following their failure to occupy most of Ukraine's major cities.
Russia last week announced they will shift focus to the eastern front, where Russia has been helping separatists since 2014 fight to remove Ukrainian control. Western nations have responded incredulously to the statement, skeptical of whether Russia will actually shift focus or will try a new offensive to capture Kyiv and other major cities.
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