Graphic shows Russia's territorial gains - and losses - at every stage of Putin's Ukrainian invasion... and how his troops are now stuck in a stalemate as war approaches 18-month mark

The largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II crests the 18-month mark in less than two weeks' time as Ukrainian forces continue their bitter fight for survival and independence in the face of Vladimir Putin's aggression. 

Recent months have seen the conflict descend into a grinding stalemate, with neither side clearly in the ascendancy as their forces grow ever wearier amid dwindling resources and constant fighting. 

Kyiv's troops are focused on making steady, marginal gains in Donetsk around the rubble-strewn crater that was once the city of Bakhmut, and to the South in the Zaporizhzhia region, while their long-range drones seek to disrupt Russian supply lines and bases in Moscow, Belgorod and occupied Crimea.

Russia's military meanwhile - stretched across a frontline spanning hundreds of miles and now without the reinforcement of Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner mercenaries - is focused on digging in as the Kremlin sets about entrenching pro-Russian politicians, installing infrastructure and solidifying its hold on occupied territories.

But less than a year and a half ago, the face of the conflict was very different. Instead of hunkering down and desperately trying to hold ground, Moscow's men were surging forward, blazing through southern Ukraine while their compatriots in the north forged a path that brought them within six miles of Kyiv's city centre. 

Now, with 18 months of Russian occupation fast approaching, a shocking time-lapse graphic shows the dramatic shifts in momentum and the changing face of the battlefield over the course of the war.

With that in mind, MailOnline recaps the conflict so far in its entirety from February 24, 2022, right up to the present day.

Ukrainian servicemen ride on tanks towards the front line with Russian forces in the Luhansk region of Ukraine on February 25, 2022

Ukrainian soldiers take positions outside a military facility as two cars burn, in a street in Kyiv, Ukraine, February 26, 2022. Russian troops stormed toward Ukraine's capital that weekend and street fighting broke out as city officials urged residents to take shelter

February 2022

After months of threats, Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine on February 24.

Images from the first days showed bombs falling on major cities, including Kyiv and second city Kharkiv, and Russian tanks rolling through towns.

Tank battalions crossed from Belarus and occupied the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, while elite paratroopers landed at airports near Kyiv - including Hostomel just six miles from the city centre - and intense battles broke out for their control.

The region around Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city that sits just 20 miles from the Russian border, fell quickly to intense bombardment as fighter jets, helicopters and missiles streaked overhead.

Fears that Kyiv would suffer the same fate grew as a 40-mile-long convoy of Russian armoured vehicles began winding its way towards the capital. 

Simultaneously, Putin's forces in Crimea pushed north, spreading through the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions and ultimately occupying the city of Kherson.

March 2022

Kherson was fully occupied by March 3 and Russia's armoured column was bearing down on Kyiv. For a time it looked as though Moscow's convoy would breach the capital, but thick mud, food and fuel shortages - as well as Ukrainian sabotage - ultimately stalled the vehicles a few miles away from the centre. 

The stalled column became emblematic of Russia's early failures in relying on slow-moving Soviet-era tactics. By contrast, Ukraine deployed small, more mobile units armed with modern technology such as drones to wreak havoc on Putin's forces, cutting supply lines and surrounding Russian troops in pinch points. 

Ukraine's fierce defence of its capital was ultimately successful, and despite Russian troops reaching deep into Kyiv Oblast, they never made it to the city centre. 

But Moscow's soldiers enjoyed continued success in the south of Ukraine. 

The first days of the war saw Russia seize control of the Black Sea and hatch its plan to form a land bridge between the eastern Donbas region to the Crimean peninsula - illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 - amid reports Moscow wanted to reach Transnistria, a Russian-occupied breakaway republic in Moldova.

Russian forces pushed north out of Crimea, spreading both east and west, overrunning the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and consolidating its gains in Kherson.

Artillery bombardments levelled towns and cities as Russia's forces swept towards this objective, and although Russian forces were stalled by resistance in Mykolaiv - preventing their advance on Odessa to the west and further north into the country - Mariupol came under siege in March.

The coastal city on the border of the Russian-controlled Donbas region with a pre-war population of 425,000 people was all but levelled to the ground by indiscriminate bombing, in scenes reminiscent of Grozny during the Second Chechen War. On March 9, a missile struck a maternity ward and days later - on March 16 - another bomb hit a theatre being used by as many as 600 civilians for shelter.

As tens of thousands fled the city, Ukrainian fighters hunkered down in the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works, a vast complex with a maze of tunnels and bunkers capable of withstanding a nuclear attack.

FEBRUARY 27: A Russian armoured personnel carrier (APC) burning next to an unidentified soldier's body as fighting rages with the Ukrainian armed forces in Kharkiv. Ukraine's defence surprised many, especially Russia, which hoped to take Ukraine within days

MARCH 5: People cross a destroyed bridge as they evacuate Irpin during heavy shelling. The city was overrun by Russian forces in the early days of the war, and would be occupied for a month. The images of people - the young and the old - being helped across the wrecked bridge became emblematic of the human cost of the war

MARCH 29: This satellite image shows the Mariupol drama theatre after it was bombed on March 16

April 2022

In the last week of March, Russian commanders began to understand their attempts to encircle Kyiv were simply untenable. Amid valiant Ukrainian defence, which resulted in considerable armour and infantry losses, the decision was made to retreat from Kyiv and back into the Kharkiv region. 

Ukraine rightfully celebrated their successful defence of Kyiv and the subsequent Russian retreat in the north. 

But the scale of the human cost of the war truly began to become apparent at the start of April, when Russian troops pulled out of the Kyiv region and Russian atrocities were discovered in towns such as Irpin and Bucha.

Footage captured in the towns, found after the Russian retreat, showed Putin's occupiers rolling through the suburbs and killing indiscriminately. April also saw a Russian missile strike Kramatorsk railway station as hundreds of Ukrainian civilians tried to flee the east of the country, killing at least 57 people.

The heinous acts shocked the world and galvanised Western support for Ukraine. Tougher sanctions were placed on Russia and - perhaps most crucially - the West increased their supply of weapons.

Days after the station bombing, Ukraine hit back. On April 13, two Neptune cruise missiles slammed into the side of the Moskva, Russia's Black Sea flagship. It was the first time a Russian warship had been sunk since World War II.

The brazen attack on the ship that was around 80 miles from the coast showed Ukraine had previously unknown long-range missile capabilities, was being well supported by its Western allies, and meant Russia's sea supremacy was not as assured as it was once thought - causing it to pull its vessels further away from land.

The day after, blasts were also reported in Russia's Belgorod region, the first reported attacks on the other side of the border since the start of the war. 

But despite the embarrassing incidents, Putin pressed on.

April marked the second phase of Russia's invasion, with Moscow claiming its retreat from Kyiv was to re-focus its efforts on taking the whole of the Donbas.

APRIL 1: This aerial picture shows burned Russian armoured vehicles in the outskirts of Kyiv. A vast column of Russian tanks and other armoured vehicles, at one point over 40 miles long, never made it to Kyiv. It is thought a combination of poor weather, a lack of sufficient food and fuel, and Ukrainian sabotage, prevented it from ever reaching the capital

APRIL 2: The bodies of civilians lie on Yablunska street in Bucha, northwest of Kyiv, after the Russian military pulled back from the city. Dozens of Ukrainian civilians were slain in the town during Russia's month-long occupation, with Yablunska street in particular going on to become emblematic of the atrocities carried out by Putin's soldiers in the regions around Kyiv

Russia's Black Sea flagship the Moskva sinks after it was struck by Ukrainian missiles on April 14. Two Neptune missiles slammed into the side of the Moskva, causing it to go down. It was the first Russian warship sunk since the Second World War, and demonstrated that Ukraine had long-range missiles in its arsenal. Russia was forced to pull its navy away from the coast

MAY 10: A view shows the Azovstal steel plant in the city of Mariupol. The plant was the last Ukrainian bastion in the city and held out against the invaders for weeks before it was finally captured by Russian forces

May 2022

Having fully retreated from Ukraine's northern regions, Russia began consolidating its efforts on seizing and securing territory throughout Ukraine's East and South. 

After weeks of valiant fighting, the Ukrainian units holed up in the Azovstal steelworks - the last bastion of resistance in the by now devastated southern port city of Mariupol - were finally out of ammunition, food and medical supplies. 

They were forced to surrender to the occupiers and were subsequently taken as prisoners of war. With their removal, Russia gained complete and total control of Mariupol and its environs - or rather, what was left of it. 

Flyover satellite images revealed huge mass graves on the outskirts of the city with Ukrainian officials estimating tens of thousands of civilians had likely perished there.

In the northeast, Russian forces continued to forge a path through the Kharkiv region, taking a series of towns and villages, but were held on the outskirts of the regional capital by a fearsome defensive effort from Kyiv's military. 

Despite being just 25 miles from the Russian border, Moscow's troops were never able to gain total control of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, and by mid-May the tide had turned. 

Momentum swung the way of the Ukrainians, and Kyiv's troops pushed their adversaries back from Kharkiv and forced a major retreat. 

Most of the region had been liberated by the end of the month - but that didn't stop Russian forces from blasting Ukrainian civilians with artillery and missiles from afar. 

Away from the battlefield, Finland and Sweden - countries who remained steadfastly neutral throughout the latter half of the 20th century into the new millennium - announced their applications to NATO, marking a future expansion of the security bloc Russia was so keen to avoid.  

JUNE 3: Incendiary ammunition airbursts are seen during a shelling, as Russia's attack on Ukraine continues, in the town of Marinka, in Donetsk region. Russia continues to this day to insist it has not been attacking civilians

JUNE 20: A Ukrainian service member with a dog stands guard in the industrial area of the city of Sievierodonetsk

JULY 22: In this photo released by the Russian Defence Ministry Press Service in July, Russian soldiers fire a 2S4 Tyulpan self-propelled heavy mortar from their position at an undisclosed location in Ukraine

June - July 2022

June and July saw Russia commit untold numbers of troops to the battle for the region of Luhansk, which along with the Donetsk region constitutes the Donbas.

Much of Luhansk had been under control of Russian separatists even before Putin launched the full-scale invasion, and Moscow's forces were largely able to force Ukrainian defenders back West and out of the region.

A dejected but defiant Zelensky in early June admitted Russian forces controlled roughly 20 per cent of his country. 

The twin cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, sat on opposing banks of the Donets river, were the final Ukrainian strongholds left in Luhansk by the summer of 2022.

Both were consistently battered by Russian missile strikes from all sides, with Putin's commanders turning to artillery and dogged infantry attacks as they drew closer to the city's outskirts.

After weeks of bitter fighting, Russian troops were ultimately able to force a breakthrough, and Ukrainian defenders on June 24 were ordered to abandon Sievierodonetsk and retreat across the river to Lysychansk to avoid further losses. 

But the weary Ukrainians were unable to regroup, and by early July the Russians had swept across the Donets.

Putin's troops succeeded in taking control of Lysychansk, and with it, Ukraine's last major urban stronghold in Luhansk fell. 

Russia's assault on the cities in Luhansk echoed the brutality displayed amid the destruction of Mariupol. As Kyiv's troops pulled back from Sievierodonetsk, President Zelensky took to the airwaves to describe the scale of the damage.

'All the city's critical infrastructure is destroyed... More than two-thirds of the city's housing stock is destroyed.' 

But the tide began to turn towards the end of July as Ukraine's forces began to slow the onslaught, aiming to force a stalemate as they sought to regroup and requip with fresh weaponry donated by NATO. 

SEPTEMBER 17: Ukrainian soldiers ride a top of infantry fighting vehicles in Novoselivka, near the eastern frontlines of the war

OCTOBER 8: Black smoke billows from a fire on the Kerch bridge that links Crimea to Russia, in what is believed to have been a daring Ukrainian attack. The damage to the bridge cut off a key supply line for the Russian armed forces fighting in Ukraine

Black smoke billows from a fire on the Kerch bridge that links Crimea to Russia on October 8. The bridge connected the Crimean peninsular to Russia, and the blast was a major embarrassment to Vladimir Putin

August - September 2022

By the end of July, Ukraine had managed to almost completely halt Russian forces, stymying Moscow's advances further into Donbas and the southern Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. 

The third phase of the war truly began at the end of August, when Ukraine formally launched a counteroffensive against the Russian invaders six months into the conflict.

Kyiv's forces began to use Western-supplied weapons, such as the HIMARS missile system, to great effect, striking deep into Russian-controlled territory. The Ukrainian government said its military had 'breached Russia's first line of defence near Kherson' and struck a Russian base in the same region on August 29.

Blasts at a Russian airbase in Crimea, miles from the front lines, showed just how far Ukraine was able to strike with the weapons, and forced Russia to pull back its fighter jets and increase its air defences in the peninsular.

Meanwhile, in the north, Ukraine liberated Kharkiv Oblast - the region around the country's second-largest city that had been taken in the early days of the war. 

The successes gave the Ukrainian military the initiative to launch a lightning offensive which saw Kyiv's soldiers liberate over 1,000 square miles of land in a six-days in September - the country's biggest victory since pushing Russia back from Kyiv in March.

On September 20, in an attempt to claim some form of victory, Putin announced the Russian annexation of four Ukrainian regions - Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson - despite not being in full control of any of them.

And a day later, the Russian despot ordered the partial mobilisation of Russia's military reservists, meaning 300,000 new soldiers would soon join the fight. The partial mobilisation provoked strong public anger in Russia.

But by October 1, Ukrainian troops had regained control of Lyman in the Luhansk region - a key regional hub. 

A week later, a huge explosion severely damaged the Kerch Strait Bridge that connects Crimea and Russia in the most embarrassing single incident to Moscow in the war since the Moskva sank, severing a key supply route to Russian forces in the south of Ukraine.

Two days later, Russia blitzed Ukraine with missile strikes, hitting the capital Kyiv for the first time in months and several other cities - killing civilians seemingly as revenge for the explosion that crippled the bridge.

NOVEMBER 23: A wounded Ukrainian soldier is seen as military mobility proceeds in Bakhmut

A heavily wounded Ukrainian soldier waits to receive medical treatment at a hospital in Bakhmut on December 5

DECEMBER 7: An expert of the prosecutor's office examining collected remnants of shells and missiles used by the Russian army to attack the second largest Ukrainian city of Kharkiv

DECEMBER 30: Ukrainian servicemen ride a tank past a school bus and through the village of Torske, in the Donetsk region

Winter 2022-2023

November heralded a major victory for Ukraine, as its counteroffensive in the southern Kherson region forced a Russian retreat across the Dnieper river, resulting in the liberation of Kherson city which had been occupied since the first weeks of the war.

But as winter set in, so did a territorial stalemate. 

Ukraine's high-intensity counteroffensive finished early in November, and meant its military needed time to regroup and prepare in case Russia launched a counter-punch of its own.

Attention fell on the battle of Bakhmut, a city in the Donbas that became a key target of Russia and the private military company Wagner. Fighting there had been ongoing since May, but Russia stepped up its efforts in the latter months of 2022.

Reports of Wagner's involvement in the invasion had been consistent since around April, but the shadowy group took a leading role in the fighting for Bakhmut, and took on a new public persona.

Wagner's chief Yevgeny Prigozhin reportedly recruited 50,000 Russian prisoners to fight for their freedom in his Private Military Company.

Fighting around Bakhmut was intensely bloody and was likened to a First World War 'meat grinder' as Russia crashed thousands of its seemingly expendable soldiers against the Ukrainian defences.

Casualties were heavy on both sides as artillery and trench warfare in the countryside around the city gave way to bitter close-quarter combat in the city centre. 

In January, Wagner claimed it had captured Soledar, a town near Bakhmut, boasting it did so without the help of the Russian military - angering the Kremlin. Later that month, Russian forces also came out on top of a bloody conflict for the nearby town of Vuhledar.

But Kyiv and the West played down the significance of both towns, saying Moscow sacrificed wave upon wave of soldiers and mercenaries in a pointless fight for a bombed-out wasteland, with analysts saying it offers little tactical benefit. 

Nonetheless, Russia's success in taking more territory helped solidify their lines and provide further scope to launch more attacks on Bakhmut. 

The New Year did however bring a fresh round of military aid commitments from Western powers, including much sought-after tanks.

The US and Germany committed to sending M1 Abrams and Leopard 2 tanks respectively, after Rishi Sunak announced Britain would offer Challenger 2 tanks to Kyiv.  

The first Leopard 2 tanks arrived in Ukraine just in time for the anniversary of the invasion, when Zelensky gives an impassioned speech.

'We survived the first day of the full-scale war. We didn't know what tomorrow would bring, but we clearly understood that for each tomorrow, you need to fight. And we fought,' he said in an early morning video address.

'[It was] the longest day of our lives. The hardest day of our modern history. We woke up early and haven't fallen asleep since.'

JANUARY 13: Armored vehicles destroyed during the fighting between Ukrainian and Russian armed forces lie on a bank of the frozen Siverskiy Donets River in the recently-liberated village of Bogorodychne

FEBRUARY 4: A Ukrainian firefighter works at the scene of a fire at a shopping mall that was attacked by Russian missiles in Kherson, southern Ukraine. Emergency workers have had to brave the warzone to continue their work of saving civilians

FEBRUARY 5: A Ukrainian serviceman with a mask leads a group of soldiers down a snow-topped road near the frontline in Donetsk. The region, where as of February 2023 fighting is still on-going, has seen some of the deadliest battles of the war

Spring - Summer 2023 

The stalemate that characterised much of the winter period was shifted somewhat in March when Russian troops, led by Wagner forces, launched another consolidated assault on Bakhmut. 

Their assault persisted for weeks, soaking up Ukrainian ammunition and resulting in huge losses on both sides, but by April, Wagner leader Prigozhin claimed his forces had assumed 'legal control' of Bakhmut, and less than a month later, the city was fully occupied with Ukrainian forces pushed out of the city limits. 

April was also punctuated by some stark revelations about the conflict, courtesy of leaked US intelligence documents. 

In late April and early May, chatter began about a planned Ukrainian counteroffensive after months of relative inaction over winter.

But the documents revealed serious doubts about Ukraine's battle capabilities, citing tens of thousands of troop losses and considerable ammunition shortages, particularly for artillery batteries which played a key role in frontline warfare. 

Nevertheless, by June there were some signs that Kyiv's military had regrouped, re-equipped and were ready to fight on. The long-awaited counteroffensive officially began on June 4, and Ukrainian units quickly set about recapturing territory in and around Bakhmut, which Russia had conquered but failed to hold for any meaningful length of time after the increasingly disgruntled Yevgeny Prigozhin withdrew his Wagner fighters from the conflict. 

Zelensky's men managed to recapture a few dozen square miles of territory in the South as well - but the month of June precipitated one of the war's biggest tragedies when the control room of the Nova Kakhovka dam, spanning the Dnieper river in Kherson, was blown up - most likely by Russian forces.

The resulting floods caused the evacuation of tens of thousands as the deluge swept through dozens of settlements in Kherson city itself and killed 50 people in what was described as the country's worst ecological disaster since Chernobyl. 

Weeks later, a pivotal moment in the conflict unfolded when Prigozhin and a contingent of Wagner fighters staged a daring mutiny against Russia's defence ministry. They seized the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don and made a beeline for the capital - before Prigozhin slammed the brakes at the eleventh hour. 

He and his fighters were miraculously spared death or jail for treason, and were instead exiled to Belarus thanks to a deal allegedly brokered by Belarus' president Alexander Lukashenko - leaving Russia's worn-out military to fight on alone without mercenary support.   

The month of July saw fighting stall yet again with very little ground made in either direction.  

But the summer months did see a considerable uptick in what appeared to be Ukrainian-authored strikes on Russian soil, with long-range drones finding more and more military and administrative targets in and around Moscow, Belgorod and occupied Crimea. 

Where are we now? 

With less than two weeks to go until the 18-month mark in the conflict, fighting on the ground is very much stalled. 

Neither side has made any significant gains in recent weeks, with pockets of fighting along the frontline yielding little progress in either direction. One exception to this appears to be minor Ukrainian gains in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, with Kyiv officials and Russian milbloggers appearing to confirm some Ukrainian counterattacking success south of Bakhmut in Donetsk, and around several small settlements in Zaporizhzhia. 

Besides this, the sides have largely focused on conducting long-range strikes. 

Russian missiles slammed into several Ukrainian cities this month, with one particularly devastating attack on a hotel and residential area in Pokrovsk in Donetsk killing eight people and leaving dozens seriously injured. 

Ukraine meanwhile targeted government offices in the Russian capital's Moscow-city commercial district, and a massive explosion destroyed a major military manufacturing plant on the city's outskirts - though it is unclear whether this explosion came as a result of a Kyiv strike. 

The status of Wagner fighters in the war is unclear - after weeks of offering training to Belarus' army units, reports suggested Prigozhin's mercenaries may have overstayed his welcome in Minsk, with Lukashenko seemingly uninterested in financing them now that the Russian government has cut ties with Wagner's troops - at least those operating in Ukraine.