The invasion of Ukraine has already lasted longer than the Soviet fight against the Nazis in World War II

"The Soviet front of World War II, the Great Patriotic War for Russians, lasted 1,418 days. The special military operation as Vladimir Putin dubbed Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, reached its 1,418-day mark on January 12. Nearly four years of war that, in the Soviet theater, resulted in the retreat of the Third Reich from Moscow and the Volga to Berlin, while the Kremlin's current campaign remains entrenched in Donbas."

"The anniversary comes at the worst possible time for Putin. If the parallels with the Holy War were already causing concern within Russia, now the United States, the country it aspires to emulate as a superpower, has just carried out its own special operation in Venezuela with the kidnapping of President Nicolas Maduro, in a matter of minutes. The Kremlin's biggest success in 2025 has been expelling the Ukrainian army from the Russian region of Kursk, where Kyiv's forces staged an incursion in 2024."

"The front is more reminiscent of the trenches of the First World War than Operation Bagration or the Blitzkrieg of the 1940s. Russian advances in 2025 have been modest, at the cost of even greater losses than in previous years. Ukrainian forces remain on the defensive in a war of attrition, and the occupied villages have not resulted in a strategic breakthrough. In fact, the much-touted conquest of Pokrovsk remains unfinished, despite Moscow having deployed around 170,000"

After 1,418 days the Russian campaign in Ukraine has produced limited territorial gains and heavy casualties, contrasting with the Soviet WWII front that drove Nazi forces back to Berlin. Russian control is concentrated in parts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, and a land corridor to Crimea, while Kyiv retains significant resistance and lacks provincial capitals. Advances in 2025 have generally been modest and resemble World War I–style trench warfare rather than rapid mechanized offensives. Ukrainian forces remain defensive in a war of attrition; occupied villages have not yielded strategic breakthroughs despite large Russian deployments.

Read at english.elpais.com