Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has now been raging for four years – and despite repeated attempts at peace talks brokered by the US, there appears to be no end in sight.
As the war marks the grim anniversary milestone on Tuesday, the bloody war of attrition continues having claimed the lives of more than 15,000 Ukrainian civilians.
In the last year, Moscow has ramped up its use of drones by 200 per cent, launching hundreds of strikes from unmanned aircraft on a regular basis.
Vladimir Putin’s forces have also increasingly targeted Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, leaving millions without power or heat as the face their coldest winter in years, with temperatures as low as -26C.
On the political stage, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has been forced to fight a battle on two fronts – trying to keep a volatile US president onside while also pushing back against Moscow’s uncompromising territorial demands during fruitless peace talks.
Funding the war has also become a growing problem for Zelensky, with the US cutting its aid by 99 per cent since Trump returned to office in 2025.
The Independent looks at the cost of Putin’s war four years on.
The past year has seen Russian forces increasingly target civilians, with more number killed and injured than any year other than 2022.
In 2025 there were 14,656 civilian casualties – including injuries and deaths – marking a 31 per cent increase on the year before.
Since the war began, 15,172 Ukrainian civilians have been killed, including 739 children, according to the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).
Russian military casualties last month hit the 1.2 million benchmark, a death toll not suffered by any major power since World War 2, according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
Moscow dramatically increased its drone production in 2025, allowing it to launch hundreds each night at targets across Ukraine to devastating effect.
“The rapid expansion of drone warfare and increasingly autonomous systems has made it easier to carry out attacks with devastating consequences for civilians,” Uliana Poltavets, Ukraine programme coordinator for rights group Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), told The Independent.
More than half of the 58,495 air and drone strikes carried out by Russian and Ukrainian forces since 2022 have been carried out in the past year, data from monitoring group Armed Conflict Location & Event Data (ACLED) shows.
