Four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24th February 2022, the central expectation that shaped much of the early commentary has not materialised: Moscow has not achieved its declared war aims.
On the fourth anniversary, the war remains active, the front line continues to shift slowly, and ceasefire discussions persist in public debate, but there is no clear sign of a settlement on terms acceptable to both sides. Recent reporting on the anniversary similarly notes limited Russian territorial gains relative to the scale and cost of the campaign.
In the first weeks and months of the invasion, pessimistic assessments dominated political statements, media coverage and analytical work. Many observers considered it plausible that Russian forces could secure at least part of their objectives, and some scenarios contemplated a much deeper Russian advance into eastern Ukraine, including the possibility of occupation of territory east of the Dnipro river followed by prolonged insurgency. Those forecasts reflected Russia’s numerical military advantages and the uncertainty surrounding Ukraine’s capacity to sustain national resistance.
Four years on, one broad conclusion is that the war has confounded those assumptions. Russia has retained significant military capacity and continues offensive operations, but it has not converted its advantages in manpower, equipment and firepower into a decisive strategic victory. The conflict has instead become a long war of attrition in which military effectiveness has depended not only on numbers, but also on command performance, adaptability, logistics, and motivation.
That point is central to many current assessments of the battlefield balance. Russia’s armed forces remain larger by multiple quantitative measures, while Ukraine has faced persistent and well-documented shortages, especially in infantry staffing and force generation. Yet numerical superiority has not produced a battlefield collapse of Ukrainian defences. This has reinforced the view among many analysts that Ukrainian forces have, at key stages of the war, demonstrated stronger operational agility and a higher degree of motivation linked to national defence, local knowledge and the protection of homes and families.
A second major outcome of the past four years is the reappraisal of Russia’s military reputation. Before 2022, the Russian armed forces were often described in public debate as one of the world’s most powerful militaries, with direct implications for European security planning. The war has not removed the Russian threat; however, it has changed perceptions of Russian military performance, particularly in relation to command quality, force employment and the ability to translate scale into rapid strategic results.
At the same time, the war has transformed Ukraine’s military position in Europe. Ukraine’s armed forces are now widely viewed as one of the continent’s most capable and combat-experienced militaries. European leaders marking the anniversary again linked Ukraine’s defence directly to wider European security, underlining the degree to which Ukraine is now considered part of Europe’s security architecture in practice, whatever the pace of formal institutional processes.
This has implications beyond the battlefield. Even in the absence of a final settlement, European governments are increasingly focused not only on immediate military aid, but also on the longer-term preservation and development of Ukrainian military capacity. The strategic logic is clear: irrespective of ceasefire outcomes, Ukraine’s armed forces are seen by many in Europe as a forward element in deterring future Russian aggression.
A third conclusion concerns the United States and the wider transatlantic balance. The war has highlighted, and in some respects accelerated, a shift in burden-sharing expectations between Washington and Europe. Under both the Biden and Trump administrations, the United States has supported Ukraine, but with visible limits and changing conditions. Public reporting and official documents since 2025 reflect a more explicit “America First” framing under President Trump, alongside continued but more politically contested forms of support.
For Europe, this has intensified debate about “strategic autonomy” — or, more precisely, strategic independence in defence and deterrence. The discussion is no longer theoretical. It is tied to production capacity, defence spending, command structures, logistics, and the ability to sustain deterrence in Europe’s east without assuming automatic US leadership in every contingency.
The result is a difficult transition period. Europe faces an ongoing Russian threat while still building the capacity required for long-term autonomous deterrence. That creates a period of elevated risk extending through the remainder of the decade. By 2030, European states may have built a stronger collective deterrent posture; however, that remains a policy objective rather than an established fact.
Four years after the invasion began, the war’s immediate lesson is not that the danger has receded. It is that the assumptions of February 2022 — about Russian military inevitability, Ukrainian collapse, and Europe’s strategic timetable — have all been revised, and that the next phase of the conflict will be shaped as much by European decisions as by events on the front.
