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On February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a full-scale land, sea and air invasion of Ukraine. Three years later, the conflict continues and marks the largest deployment of Russian troops along the Russian-Belarus border since the end of the Cold War.

Since then, $407 billion in international aid has been sent to Ukraine, with $118 billion from the United States alone. 20% of the country is now occupied by Russia, nearly 7 million Ukrainian citizens have fled their homeland and roughly 4 million remain displaced within the country’s borders. According to figures released by Kyiv, U.N. statistics and open-source data published by BBC Russia, the total death toll of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers, as well as Ukrainian civilians stands at over 148,000 souls.

UF Professor of Political Science Bryon Moraski has been paying particularly close attention to how the war has developed since its onset. He is one of UF’s leading experts on Russian and Ukrainian politics and has written numerous books and papers on the two countries.

A New Era of Warfare

The proliferation of unmanned vehicle use has been one of the biggest developments in the past year. Both Russian and Ukrainian troops have used drones to conduct missions from afar since the war began, but this year Russia began relying on them much more heavily while improving the tech inside.

“The war has revealed and has even been the proving ground for a new era of warfare with unmanned vehicles,” said Moraski.

For most of the war, these weapons have been fairly primitive, with the drones themselves being about the same as those a civilian or hobbyist could purchase but with military technology strapped to it. These drones typically serve two functions: tracking units and targets from a distance with a camera or dive bombing into targets with explosive warheads attached. According to Reuters, these devices typically only cost about $500, but have the potential to cause millions of dollars of damage in an instant with relatively low risk to its controller.

As the war has progressed, so too has the technology behind these weaponized drones, with a major Russian breakthrough at the start of 2025. One of the biggest downsides to using drones in combat has been their reliance on radio waves in order to receive signals from their controllers, and hijacking these waves has been a key part of both sides’ strategies. In January, Russia unveiled new drones that use long lengths of fiber optic cable to receive and transmit signals, making them much more resistant to jamming technology. The new drones are also much smaller than previous models, making them harder to detect. While they are much scarier in concept it is unknown what effect they will have on the war, at least for now.

Shifting Fronts

Both Russian and Ukrainian forces have experienced major gains and losses in the past year, and as it stands today Russia has the upper hand on the war’s front lines. In January, Ukraine launched an offensive on the Kursk region of Russia, about 50 miles away from the border. The motives and goals of this campaign are as-of-yet unknown, but it is the latest in a trend of attacks well within Russian borders. While the Ukraine military struggles with morale and recruitment, Russia has benefited from a supply of soldiers and weapons from North Korea, which they have used to outgun Ukrainians in disputed territory on the border. In response, Ukraine has turned its attention to the northeast in recent months, sending drones further into Russia to strike them at home.

Another tactic that both sides of the conflict have adopted in the past year is the targeting of vital energy infrastructure. In Ukraine, power plants and nuclear plants have been the target of Russian bombings, leading to concerns surrounding nuclear safety. In Russia, oil reserves have also been targeted by Ukrainian drones, with a recent attack on January 29th sparking a massive oil fire in the Nizhny Novgorod region of Russia.

Support Abroad

In terms of foreign support and global attitudes towards the war, the biggest shift we’ve seen is the 2024 U.S election. Under the Biden administration, the U.S was generally very supportive of Ukraine, supplying the country with steady financial support since the war’s onset. In 2024, after two and a half years of worries over being dragged directly into war with Russia, the Biden administration’s hesitation to directly provide weapons to Ukraine eased. Starting last fall, the U.S began sending tanks, anti-aircraft missiles, and defense ships to Ukraine, while agreeing to allow NATO allies to send fighter planes.

In November 2024, Donald Trump won the U.S presidential election, promising during the campaign to end the war as quickly as possible. In February 2025, the Trump administration announced their plans for peace talks. While the Biden Administration supported Ukraine joining NATO and keeping the pre-war borders, current Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced that peace deals with Russia would almost certainly entail Ukraine losing land and being excluded from NATO. The Trump administration would confirm this just a few days later, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio leading the U.S delegation in peace talks hosted by Saudi Arabia.

Even with peace talks underway, the end of the war is still shrouded in uncertainty. According to Moraski, “A peace plan had been implausible because Ukraine was not willing to accept Russian demands, and neither were any of Ukraine’s Western supporters. The latter appears to have changed, and the Kremlin looks poised to be rewarded for its aggression.”