Monday marks exactly three years since Vladimir Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine.

He expected his so-called “special military operation” to last a matter of days, but Ukrainian forces, backed by the west, have been able to slow down his attempt to seize huge parts of their territory.

Even so, Russia now illegally occupies around a fifth of Ukrainian land. 

The war has now been pushed to the forefront of the international agenda, after Donald Trump returned to office and made ending the war in Ukraine one of his core foreign policy objectives.

But, rather than forcing Putin to withdraw from Ukraine’s sovereign land, the US president is already suggesting the beleaguered country should cede territory to Russia and forgo all of its Nato ambitions – while also falsely blaming Kyiv for starting the war in the first place.  

While it would not be a victory over the whole country, it certainly seems like success has never been closer for Putin, despite Kyiv’s best efforts.

So, how did we get here? HuffPost UK walks you through the major events that have brought us to this anniversary. 

The context to Putin’s 2022 invasion

Putin has often argued that Ukraine and Russia are one country, “a single whole”.

This inaccurate claim stems from their history. Ukraine was absorbed into the Russian Empire in the late 19th Century and subsequently became part of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine became an independent state when the Soviet Union fell in 1991. The new international borders ensured the peninsula of Crimea and the eastern regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporzhzhia, and Kherson all belonged to Ukraine.

But Russia continued trying to keep Ukraine in its sphere of influence, especially after Putin got into power in 2000 (he has remained in office in some capacity ever since.).

Tensions reached new heights in November 2013, when the public began to protest against Ukraine’s pro-Russian president.

Viktor Yanukovych went against many Ukrainians’ wishes and chose not to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the EU. He instead opted to move closer to Russia.

Known as the “Euromaidan” protests, these large-scale demonstrations called for the president to resign over this perceived government corruption. More than 100 people ended up being killed by Ukraine’s pro-Putin government as they pushed back against the rebellion.

But Yanukovych was still ousted – a move Moscow dubbed a coup – and pro-Russia counter-protests began.

Moscow moved into the power vacuum and by March 2014 had annexed Ukraine’s peninsula of Crimea. The Kremlin also claimed locals had agreed via referendum to split from Ukraine.

Pro-Russian separatists then also seized government buildings in the east of Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk – known together as the Donbas – and claimed they were independent states. 

Russia was suspended from the Group of 8 largest economies in the world (now the G7) as a result and faced a wave of sanctions.

The invasion and occupation

Putin decided to escalate the Donbas conflict on February 23, 2022 by illegally recognising separatist regions Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states.

He followed that up with dozens of missile strikes on cities all over Ukraine country before dawn, on February 24, 2022.

Ground troops swept in, seized large swathes of territory, and attempted to secure the capital of Kyiv.

Russian troops bombed Kharkiv, seized land in Kherson and surrounded the port city of Mariupol.

But Ukraine shocked Moscow with their defence, putting up resistance around the country and using Western supplied arms to deter the Russian advance.

Reports claim Russian troops were poorly motivated, with little food, water and ammunition.

In a humiliating U-turn, Russia ended up withdrawing from Kyiv in April 2022.

But Putin persisted with his aggression. He never called it a war, but proclaimed it was a “special military operation” needed for Russia’s security and to root out the neo-Nazi government (a baseless claim).

He also cracked down on independent media across Russia, suppressed protests opposing the war, and signed a law which grants up to 15 years in prison for spreading “false or defamatory” information about the military.

Putin also squashed mass protests after he called up 300,000 reservists in a partial mobilisation in September 2022 to bolster his depleted forces.

Putin caused international horror after his troops took the city of Mariupol following a three-month siege in 2022.

The Red Cross said scenes were “apocalyptic” as Ukrainian forces tried – but ultimately failed – to deter their Russian opponents, and tens of thousands of bodies were buried in mass graves.

And despite strong resistance from Ukraine, six months after his invasion, he annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia and officially broke international law.

The frontline has fluctuated slightly over the last three years as Russian troops have gradually moved forward albeit while taking heavy casualties.

Some of Russia’s early success can be attributed to the Wagner mercenaries, but Putin disbanded the group in 2023 after their leader Yevgeny Prigozhin mounted a (brief) rebellion against the Kremlin.

He ended up withdrawing after negotiating with Putin’s allies in Belarus, but was killed two months later in a mysterious plane crash.

The UK’s ministry of defence estimates Russian troops have taken 860,000 losses since the war began.

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said this week that there have been more than 46,000 Ukrainian deaths on the battlefield, and 390,000 injuries.

According to the Wall Street Journal last September. there have been around a million casualties – people killed or wounded – in total.

Ukraine moves into Kursk

Kyiv has mostly been dependent on the next installment of funds from the west to get through the war.

However, it turned the conflict on its head when it crossed Russian borders for the first time since World War 2 last August, and occupied the region of Kursk.

Six months later, Russia still has not been able to expel the Ukrainians from 450 square kilometers.

However, this has not been a useful bargaining chip for Kyiv so far, as Russia has rejected swapping this land with occupied parts of Ukraine.

Russia on the international stage

The west immediately imposed a string of sanctions against Putin, his oligarchs and Russian trade as soon as he invaded.

The UN’s international criminal court also issued a war-crimes indictment for the Russian president, accuses him of the unlawful deportation and transportation of children from the war into Russia in 2023.

But, Nato has been determined not to be drawn directly into the war out of fear the Russian president could go nuclear. 

Western allies have avoided angering Putin too much by not permitting Ukraine to join the EU or Nato, while still offering military aid and investment.

Come March 2024, Putin secured a fifth term in office supposedly after winning 87% of the vote.The international community condemned it as a sham referendum, but mostly just ignored it. 

Putin did seem pretty much alone on the world stage, reliant on his closest ally Belarus’ Alexander Lukashenko, and a wary acquaintance with China, until he turned to North Korea last year.

He set up a mutual defence alliance with Pyongyang, and was then able to use North Korean troops to bolster his frontline forces temporarily.

However, they seem to have disappeared from the frontline after enduring a shocking casualty rate.

But the most significant moment for Putin’s international reputation has just happened in the last fortnight.

Trump told the world he “trusted” the Russian leader’s desire for peace and spoke of him with warmth, signalling Putin’s potential return to the world stage.

Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff even said he had developed a “friendship” with the wanted leader.

Does Putin now hold all ‘the cards’?

Ukraine’s European allies nervously wait to see how Trump might decide to settle the war. Will Russia get to consolidate its hold over occupied Ukraine?

As Kyiv’s most powerful ally, the US could derail its entire war efforts by withholding funding – meaning the White House could easily force Ukraine’s hand.

And it certainly looks like Trump is not going to drive a hard bargain.

He claimed this week: “I think the Russians want to see the war end, I really do. But I think they have the cards a little bit, because they’ve taken a lot of territory.”

So the only question remains: will the Russian leader finally achieve his three-year goal?