Ukraine in maps: Tracking the war with Russia

Fighting has raged in Ukraine since Russia launched a full-scale invasion almost three years ago. Russian forces have slowly expanded the amount of territory they control over the past year, mostly in the east of Ukraine, but Ukrainian forces have made those advances as slow and difficult as possible and have staged a counter-offensive into Russian territory.

Here is a recap of recent significant events and the situation in Ukraine.

With the third anniversary of Russia's invasion approaching on 24 February, new US President Donald Trump says Russia's President Vladimir Putin has agreed to start negotiations to end the war.

His comments come as Russia has been gaining ground more quickly than at any time since it launched its full-scale invasion.

In eastern Ukraine, Moscow's war machine has been churning mile by mile through the wide open fields of the Donbas, enveloping and overwhelming villages and towns.

Russia's biggest advantage is manpower and it has shown a willingness to throw soldiers at Ukrainian positions to gain a few metres at a time.

Experts at the Institute for the Study of War expected Russian forces to focus on seizing frontline Ukrainian towns and cities over the winter - they have recently taken the town of Kurakhove and have continued advancing to the north east, towards the city of Pokrovsk.

The Russian advance towards Pokrovsk is the most notable change in control of the front line near Donetsk for several months, but innovative tactics by Ukrainian forces, combining the use of drones and ground forces, have inflicted significant losses of troops and equipment and slowed the offensive.

It has taken a year for Russia's troops to advance about 40km (25 miles) west - Ukraine was forced to withdraw from Avdiivka, just north of Donetsk, in February 2024 after months of fighting.

Almost all of Avdiivka's pre-war population of more than 30,000 people have left and the town itself is almost completely destroyed.

In addition to its operation on the eastern front, Russia began what the ISW describes as its "subordinate main effort" when it crossed the international border to the north of Ukraine's second-biggest city, Kharkiv, in May 2024. Several villages were seized and thousands of civilians fled.

The Russian push took place at the end of a four-month period when the US was not supplying weapons to Ukraine, due to a stalemate in the US Congress which was resolved last April.

Ukrainian forces eventually held firm and even though the city of Kharkiv has come under repeated attack from glide bombs fired by Russian warplanes, it remains beyond the range of Russian artillery.

Eastern Ukraine has been contested territory since 2014, when Russian-backed fighters seized large swathes of the eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Russia had already seized the southern peninsula of Crimea in February 2014 before annexing it soon afterwards.

Trump has said it is unlikely Ukraine will return to its pre-2014 borders but, in response to a question from the BBC, he said "some of that land will come back".

In an interview with the Guardian, published on 11 February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky suggested that Russian-held territory in Ukraine could be swapped for territory seized by Urainin Russia's western Kursk region in recent months as part of a peace deal.

Ukraine seized control of part of the region in a surprise attack launched across the border by Ukrainian troops in August, advancing up to 18 miles (30km) into the Russian region.

Almost 200,000 people were evacuated from areas along the border by the Russian government, and Putin condemned the Ukrainian offensive as a "major provocation".

After two weeks, Ukraine's top commander claimed to control more than 1,200 sq km of Russian territory and 93 villages.

Some of that territory has been regained by Russia but Ukraine still has troops in the Kursk region.

Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov described Zelensky's suggestion of a territory swap as "impossible".

Russia's full-scale invasion began with dozens of missile strikes on cities all over Ukraine before dawn on 24 February 2022.

Russian ground troops moved in quickly and within a few weeks were in control of large areas of Ukraine and had advanced to the suburbs of Kyiv.

Russian forces were bombarding Kharkiv, and they had taken territory in the east and south as far as Kherson, and surrounded the port city of Mariupol.

But they hit very strong Ukrainian resistance almost everywhere and faced serious logistical problems with poorly motivated Russian troops suffering shortages of food, water and ammunition.

Ukrainian forces were also quick to deploy Western supplied arms such as the Nlaw anti-tank system, which proved highly effective against the Russian advance.

By October 2022, the picture had changed dramatically and, having failed to take Kyiv, Russia withdrew completely from the north. The following month, Ukrainian forces recaptured the southern city of Kherson.

Since then, the battle has mostly been in the east of Ukraine with Russian forces slowly gaining ground over many months, with at least 70,000 Russian troops killed - and an estimated 500,000 being either killed or injured in total, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.

By Dominic Bailey, Mike Hills, Paul Sargeant, Chris Clayton, Kady Wardell, Mark Bryson, Sana Dionysiou, Gerry Fletcher, Kate Gaynor and Erwan Rivault

To indicate which parts of Ukraine are under control by Russian troops we are using daily assessments published by the Institute for the Study of War with the American Enterprise Institute's Critical Threats Project.

The situation in Ukraine is often fast moving and it is likely there will be times when there have been changes not reflected in the maps.