Trent Mosley itched and itched, the discomfort of standing on the sideline — not his foot injury that held him out of action since Aug. 22 — weighing on the senior receiver.
The USC commit picked an exceptional time to return. Trailing by six, with 5:06 remaining in the game, Mosley took the snap in the wildcat formation and swerved his way into the end zone for a touchdown.
“It sucked just knowing I couldn’t go out there and help my teammates,” Mosley said. “Now I’m back and we’re getting better.”
The score and the hush of the normally raucous Santa Ana Stadium crowd told the story: For the first time in a long while, the Trinity League is up for grabs. Santa Margarita (5-2, 2-0) played Southern Section stunner on Friday night at Santa Ana Stadium, upsetting Mater Dei 7-6 to set the stage for a thrilling Trinity League finale after the Eagles took down the Monarchs (4-2, 1-1) for the first time since 2013.
“Incredible,” Santa Margarita coach Carson Palmer said. “They’ve been playing like the best defense in the country all year long, every week.”
Palmer pointed to defensive coordinator Steve Fifita, who served as interim head coach during last season and decided to stay on the Eagles’ staff as the catalyst for Santa Margarita’s success. Mater Dei had only 175 yards on offense Friday.
Mater Dei High’s CJ Lavender Jr. intercepts a pass intended for Santa Margarita receiver Grant Mosley on Friday night.
(Craig Weston)
“They’re [Fifita’s] heartbeat on defense,” Palmer said of the group, which includes Fifita’s nephew Dash, a senior linebacker.
Pound-for-pound, the defensive lines of Santa Margarita and Mater Dei wouldn’t budge.
Eagles senior linebacker Vai Manutai would secure a sack — while moments later Monarchs linemen Montana Loilolo and Matamatagi Uiagalelei stormed through for sacks of their own. Monarchs linebacker Shaun Scott forced a fumble and earned 1 1/2 sacks as the Eagles couldn’t break 25 rushing yards.
Mater Dei quarterback Ryan Hopkins never got comfortable — outside of a 10-yard touchdown strike to Kayden Dixon-Wyatt in the first quarter — eventually throwing an interception to Eagles defensive back Davide Morales as the third quarter came to a close.
“We’re right there, but we’re not quite there,” said Mater Dei coach Raul Lara, referring to plays such as Hopkins overthrowing wide receiver Gavin Honore for a potential game-winning touchdown, which instead became a turnover on downs with 2:06 remaining.
Lara continued: “This game of football is a great tool to teach young men life skills. Not everything in life is going to be perfect.”
Quarterback Trace Johnson of Santa Margarita could not get comfortable , tossing two interceptions into the hands of Mater Dei defensive back CJ Lavender Jr.
When Johnson found open space, it was thanks to Mosley.
For a team-high six catches for 51 yards, Mosley — who often lined up next to his brother Grant in the slot — helped set up the game-winning drive after freshman running back Adrian Petero hauled in a 59-yard catch to bring the Eagles into Monarchs’ territory.
Trent Mosley’s punch in and the point after — which was enough to win after a failed two-point conversion after Dixon-Wyatt’s score — now sets up unprecedented territory in recent Trinity League seasons.
Yes, Mater Dei and St. John Bosco (which defeated Orange Lutheran 48-0 Friday) will still be contenders.
But the Eagles, who also hold a win over Corona Centennial, can certainly consider themselves as contenders for the league’s crown — and maybe even Division 1 glory. Santa Margarita plays St. John Bosco on Friday at Trabuco Hills.
“We can go forever,” Trent Mosley said. “The culture we have, the bond we have — I know what we’re capable of.”
About 70 percent of the Nukak population remains displaced from their ancestral lands, according to the FCDS.
Most families have been pushed into sedentary lifestyles, settling in makeshift camps on the edge of towns, where addiction and child sexual exploitation became widespread.
Others have settled on small plots in rural areas, where tensions with settlers flared over land disputes.
“The settlers took over the land as if it were vacant. They say there were no Nukak, but what happened was that the Nukak got sick and left,” said Njibe.
In the most remote reaches of the Amazon, where the Nukak reservation is located, the Colombian government has little presence.
The Nukak, therefore, have few legal protections from settler violence when they try to reclaim their lands.
A Nukak elder teaches her granddaughter, Linda Palma, how to make a bracelet from palm fibres [Alexandra McNichols-Torroledo/Al Jazeera]
But in recent years, Nukak members like Njibe, tired of waiting for government action, resolved to return on their own.
The idea gained traction in 2020, when several clans retreated into the jungle for fear of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But after returning to their relative isolation, the clans considered staying for good. They called on nongovernmental organisations like FCDS for support.
At that time, Njibe was living on a small farm inside the limits of the Nukak Maku reservation.
Even within the reservation, decades of colonisation had razed large swaths of the forest. Grassy pastures dotted with cows had replaced the Amazon’s towering palm trees.
Deforestation had increased in the wake of a 2016 peace deal between the government and the FARC. The rebel group previously limited deforestation in the Amazon in order to use its dense canopies as cover against air surveillance.
But, as part of the deal, FARC — the largest armed rebel group at the time — agreed to demobilise. A power vacuum emerged in its place.
According to FCDS, powerful landowners quickly moved into areas formerly controlled by the FARC, converting the land into cattle pastures.
Armed dissident groups who rejected the peace deal also remained active in the area, charging extortion fees per cow.
“The colonisation process has caused many [Nukak] sites to be either destroyed or absorbed by settler farms,” said a FCDS expert who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation.
Two Nukak children play in the waters of the Amazon rainforest [Alexandra McNichols-Torroledo/Al Jazeera]
Still, in 2022, the FCDS forged ahead with a pilot programme to support seven Nukak communities as they settled deeper into the reservation, where the lush forest still remained. There, the Nukak hoped they could revive a more traditional, if not completely nomadic, way of life.
But many of the expeditions to identify permanent relocation sites failed.
Initially, Njibe hoped to move to a sacred lake inside the reservation that he recalled from his childhood, but once he arrived at the site, he found that it was now part of a ranch.
When he asked the settler who ran the ranch for permission to stay there, the rancher rejected his request, and Njibe was forced to choose another place to live.
He considered returning to a forested area — about 24 hectares (59 acres) wide, roughly the size of 33 football fields — that he considered his childhood home.
But that too lay within a ranch. This time, however, the settler in question, who Njibe said was more sympathetic to his land claims, allowed him to stay.
Remember the vaunted Trump-Putin summit? It was just a month ago this week, but Americans could be excused for having forgotten. Nothing good has come of it. The cringy Alaska photo-op for the American and Russian presidents certainly didn’t yield President Trump’s long-promised deal to end Vladimir Putin’s criminal war on Ukraine.
In fact, as each day since has shown, worse than nothing has come from that failed bro-fest. Which begs renewed attention to it. Putin arrived to Trump’s literal red-carpet welcome and left with an apparent if unstated license — as then-candidate Trump said last year of the Russians — “to do whatever the hell they want.”
And they have.
On Tuesday last week, a Russian bomb hit a group of Ukrainian retirees collecting their pension checks, killing two dozen and injuring more — another day’s civilian toll in Putin’s ongoing offensive, the harshest in more than three years of war and one that’s struck U.S. and European installations. The next day, stunningly, about 20 Russian drones flew over next-door Poland, a NATO ally, forcing the alliance to scramble jets to shoot down threats over its territory for the first time in NATO history.
And mostly we’ve heard bupkis from Trump — except to keep blaming the war on his predecessor President Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, never Putin. Even servile Senate Republicans have roused themselves to press for punishing sanctions against Russia, but Trump withholds his blessing.
You’d think the self-proclaimed “president of peace” would at least be riled that Putin’s impunity since Alaska is a stick in the eye to Trump’s wife as well. Melania Trump wrote Putin a letter — which Trump delivered at their summit — urging him to protect children. “It was very well received,” Trump boasted later.
What a tragic irony that the president who promised he’d end the Ukraine war on “day one,” and who incessantly contends Russia never would have invaded had he, Putin’s friend, been president in 2022, now presides over Russia’s escalation of the war and its unprecedented incursion into NATO territory. And Trump acts all but impotent.
For three years until his return to power, Russia did not test the United States’ pledge to “defend every inch” of NATO territory. Now it has. And at the news of the Poland intrusion, Trump, the supposed leader of the free world, showed himself to be little more than an internet troll.
“What’s with Russia violating Poland’s airspace with drones? Here we go!” was his online outburst long hours after the news last Wednesday. The next day he suggested the drones’ flight into Poland “could have been a mistake,” provoking rebuttals from Polish leaders and NATO allies. And when NATO’s European members last Friday reinforced the alliance’s eastern flank defenses against Russia, they announced no U.S. contributions.
Much was made last spring of Trump’s nickname among some Wall Street types for his on-again, off-again tariffs: “TACO,” for Trump Always Chickens Out. But that moniker better describes Trump’s Russia stance: He repeatedly sets up a face-off against Putin, and invariably face-plants.
For weeks ahead of the August summit, Trump threatened “extreme consequences” if Russia didn’t agree to a cease-fire. Then, as quickly as U.S. soldiers rolled out the red carpet for Putin, Trump rolled up his cease-fire talk. After hours under Putin’s sway, he came away talking not about what Russia would do for peace but what territorial concessions Ukraine would make. And a month later, he’s still resisting Congress’ proposed sanctions against Russia, even as he’s levied big tariffs on India and China in part as punishment for buying Russian oil.
Nothing Trump claimed would happen as a consequence of his summitry has come to pass. Not a meeting between Putin and Zelensky, nor a trilateral follow-up with the Nobel-coveting Trump joining as mediating peacemaker. Putin has had high-level meetings since the Alaska summit, but they’ve been with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un — all drawn closer in solidarity against the United States’ hegemony.
Trump’s embarrassingly weak response to Russia’s aggression, together with his passivity in the face of Israel’s defiance in renewing its offensive in starving Gaza, recently prompted a New York Times analysis declaring “the bystander phase of the Trump presidency.” A Wall Street Journal headline said Trump is “sidelining himself” in foreign policy. On Wednesday, New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote that, just as Trump sought to rename the Department of Defense to be the Department of War, the White House should be called “Waffle House.” (Or Taco Bell?) The criticisms are international: Poland’s deputy prime minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, said in a video last week that Putin, by his hostilities, is “mocking” Trump’s peace talk.
There’s mockery indeed in Moscow, where politicians and state-run media continue to celebrate Putin as the summit winner. Russians weren’t quaking in their valenki when Trump told “Fox & Friends” hosts on Friday that his patience with Russia is “running out fast.” Alexei Zhuravlyov, a leader of the Russian State Duma, said Trump’s “normal state” is “either waiting to talk to Putin, talking to Putin or explaining how well he talked to Putin.” Pundit Mikhail Rostovsky dismissed Trump’s fussing and threats as “a new ‘Groundhog Day.’”
“The Kremlin believes that Russia is slowly but surely achieving its goals in Ukraine,” Rostovsky added. “Therefore Moscow does not intend to stop there.”
Putin has said as much himself. Only Trump doesn’t seem to hear him. Or doesn’t want to.
STRICKEN Ukraine will be forced to surrender large swathes of its eastern territory and forget about ever joining Nato under peace terms haggled by Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
Allies have offered “ironclad” security assurances to protect Ukraine from future Russian aggression if a peace deal can be forged.
But it would stop short of Nato Article 5 status, which sees members of the alliance leap to the aid of any member that is attacked.
Ukraine’s desire to join Nato has been blamed as a root cause of President Putin’s invasion.
He has insisted “Nyet” — Russian for “No” — over the proposal.
But the future security of Ukraine is the number one condition of its president, Volodymyr Zelensky.
British and other European troops could be committed to police the peace, with President Trump finally conceding the Americans would play a vital role in the future defence of Ukraine.
Last night, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz publicly stated: “The good news is that America is ready to participate in such security guarantees and is not leaving it to the Europeans alone.”
And PM Sir Keir Starmer said Mr Trump’s “leadership in pursuit of an end to the killing” should be commended.
Calls for an immediate ceasefire were dropped by world leaders yesterday, after Mr Trump announced he was instead pursuing a more stable and lasting “peace deal”.
Trump-Putin latest- Don says ‘no deal’ on Ukraine war & holds call with Zelensky after saying it’s now ‘up to him’
The Sun has been told a surrender deal would see Ukraine forced to reject Nato membership and other “multinational deals”.
Negotiations would also begin about ceding control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Eastern Ukraine which are, in part, heavily occupied by Russian troops.
There was confusion last night over whether the talks would focus on territory currently held by the Kremlin invaders, or whether the wider regions were on the table.
Yesterday, EU leaders insisted: “Russia cannot have a veto against Ukraine’s pathway to EU and Nato.”
However, that does not rule out Mr Zelensky deciding to withdraw Ukraine’s stated aim to join both alliances as part of the wider deal.
Battered Ukraine will be outlawed from joining NATOCredit: Reuters
Russia has long claimed Donetsk and Luhansk are more loyal to Moscow than Kyiv, while Mr Zelensky has publicly ruled out giving up the land.
However, he is under massive pressure to concede and end the bloody three-and-a-half year conflict, which has seen more than a million deaths.
European leaders were locked in talks with the White House this weekend, as the world scrambled to catch up with what Mr Trump had offered Mr Putin to end the war.
Last night, UK government sources said the PM was playing a key role in selling the terms of the deal to wider Western allies in a series of calls following the talks between the Americans and Russians.
I welcome the openness of the United States, alongside Europe, to provide robust security guarantees to Ukraine as part of any deal. This is important progress and will be crucial in deterring Putin from coming back for more
Sir Keir Starmer’s statement
President Trump yesterday insisted it is time for Mr Zelensky to choose whether to agree with the terms of the deal — as the pair prepared to meet tomorrow.
The White House has also offered to play host to a trilateral summit between the Russians and Ukrainians if the deal is within reach.
Speaking following Friday’s talks, where he met with his Russian counterpart for the first time in six years, President Trump insisted it was “a great and very successful day in Alaska!”
He wrote on his Truth Social website: “The meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia went very well, as did a late night phone call with President Zelensky of Ukraine, and various European Leaders, including the highly respected Secretary General of Nato.
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PM Sir Keir Starmer said Mr Trump’s ‘leadership in pursuit of an end to the killing’ should be commendedCredit: Getty
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France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, said: ‘We are clear Ukraine must have ironclad security guarantees to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity’Credit: Getty
“It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up. President Zelensky will be coming to D.C., the Oval Office, on Monday afternoon. If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin.
“Potentially, millions of people’s lives will be saved. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
In a televised address released by the Kremlin, he said: “The conversation was very frank, substantive, and, in my opinion, brings us closer to the necessary decisions.”
He added: “We have not had direct negotiations of this kind at this level for a long time. We had the opportunity to calmly and in detail reiterate our position.”
We are clear that Ukraine must have ironclad security guarantees to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity. No limitations should be placed on Ukraine’s armed forces or on its cooperation with third countries. Russia cannot have a veto against Ukraine‘s pathway to EU and NATO
European statement
In a long statement, President Zelensky welcomed the offer of security guarantees outlined by Mr Trump, in a tentative sign he may be willing to sign up to the terms.
He wrote: “A real peace must be achieved, one that will be lasting, not just another pause between Russian invasions. Killings must stop as soon as possible, the fire must cease both on the battlefield and in the sky, as well as against our port infrastructure.
“All Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians must be released, and the children abducted by Russia must be returned.
“Thousands of our people remain in captivity — they all must be brought home. Pressure on Russia must be maintained while the aggression and occupation continue.”
He went on: “In my conversation with President Trump, I said that sanctions should be strengthened if there is no trilateral meeting or if Russia tries to evade an honest end to the war. Sanctions are an effective tool.
“Security must be guaranteed reliably and in the long term, with involvement of Europe and the US.
“All issues important to Ukraine must be discussed with Ukraine’s participation, and no issue, particularly territorial ones, can be decided without Ukraine. I thank our partners who are helping.”
Yesterday the PM was taking part in a round of behind the scenes diplomacy, speaking to the White House and European capitals.
He heaped praise on Mr Trump, saying his “efforts have brought us closer than ever before to ending Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine”.
He went on: “His leadership in pursuit of an end to the killing should be commended.”
But the PM warned: “While progress has been made, the next step must be further talks involving President Zelensky.
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Negotiations would begin about ceding control of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Eastern Ukraine, pictured a soldier loading artilleryCredit: Getty
The path to peace in Ukraine cannot be decided without him. I spoke to President Zelensky, President Trump and other European partners, and we all stand ready to support this next phase.
“I welcome the openness of the United States, alongside Europe, to provide robust security guarantees to Ukraine as part of any deal.
“This is important progress and will be crucial in deterring Putin from coming back for more.
“In the meantime, until he stops his barbaric assault, we will keep tightening the screws on his war machine with even more sanctions, which have already had a punishing impact on the Russian economy and its people. Our unwavering support for Ukraine will continue as long as it takes.”
In a joint statement, Sir Keir and European leaders including France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, said: “We are clear Ukraine must have ironclad security guarantees to effectively defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
“No limitations should be placed on Ukraine’s armed forces or on its cooperation with third countries.
Russia cannot have a veto against Ukraine‘s pathway to EU and Nato.
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Italian leader Giorgia Meloni made a joint statement with MacronCredit: The Mega Agency
DONALD Trump was right to bring Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table on Friday, says Dame Priti Patel.
The Shadow Foreign Secretary gave her support to the US President’s efforts — while adding that Britain must keep up “tightening the screws” on the Russian tyrant’s regime.
The Tory grandee told The Sun on Sunday: “It is right President Trump has brought Putin to the negotiating table.
“And we support his efforts in ending Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
“Now is the time for the Euro-Atlantic partnership to be stronger than ever in supporting Ukraine, and forcing Putin to end his barbaric war.
“The British government must lead the charge, as we have done, in keeping pressure on Putin through sanctions — and demonstrate we can lead efforts to support Ukraine, and tighten the screws on Russia.”
But others had concerns that no ceasefire had been reached yesterday — even with Mr Trump having warned Putin of “severe consequences” if fighting did not stop.
Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said: “Trump has to tell him to agree to a ceasefire or he will up the ante on sanctions, secondary sanctions and weapons to Ukraine. Putin has to fear what Trump can do — more than his own generals and politicians who would come after him.”
He added that Trump “must understand who Putin is, a KGB man who has one purpose in life — to recreate the Soviet Union”.
Former PM Boris Johnson also said that Trump was right to make a move as Putin was weaker than he seemed owing to the war’s damage to Russia’s economy.
Most Labour MPs remained quiet on the talks. Crossbench peer and intelligence expert Lord Peter Ricketts said they were a “clear win” for Putin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and United States President Donald Trump will meet on Friday in Alaska to discuss ending Moscow’s three-year-long war in Ukraine.
The leaders are expected to discuss “land swapping”, suggesting that Trump may support an agreement where Russia will maintain control of some of the Ukrainian territory it currently occupies, but not all.
In a news conference at the White House on Tuesday, Trump said, “Russia’s occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They occupied prime territory. We’re going to try to get some of that territory back for Ukraine.”
But the idea of a swap also suggests that Ukraine might need to give up some land that it currently controls.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly said that any deal involving the ceding of Ukrainian land to Russia would be unsuccessful.
What does Putin want?
Last month, Trump warned that tougher sanctions would be put in place unless Russia halted fighting with Ukraine within 50 days. That deadline has now passed, and no new measures have hit Moscow, but the US has imposed 50 percent tariffs on India to punish it for its continued purchase of Russian oil.
Trump has demanded that Putin agree to a ceasefire on Friday to avoid the US imposing further tariffs on other countries buying Russian energy assets.
Putin has stated that he wants full control of Ukraine’s eastern regions, including Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, parts of which Russia annexed in 2022, along with Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.
If Kyiv were to agree, it would mean withdrawing troops from parts of Luhansk and Donetsk, where much of the recent fighting has been concentrated.
Bloomberg reported on August 8 that US and Russian officials were working towards an agreement that would “freeze the war”, and allow Moscow to keep the territory it has taken.
In addition, Putin has consistently demanded that Ukraine remain a neutral state, abandoning its ambitions to join NATO.
Can Ukraine even cede territory?
Ukraine giving up land it has lost during this war and previously, in 2014, is not a welcome option.
On Saturday, Zelenskyy said that he would not “gift” land to Russia, and that Ukrainians would not give up their land to Russian occupiers.
More than this, ceding any territory would be illegal under the Ukrainian constitution.
How much of Ukraine does Russia control?
Russia occupies about one-fifth – 114,500 square km (44,600 square miles) – of Ukraine’s land.
The active front line stretches some 1,000km (620 miles) through the regions of Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson.
Russia controls about three-quarters of the Zaporizhia and Kherson regions.
Additionally, small parts of the Kharkiv, Sumy, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions of Ukraine are under Russian occupation. Across the Sumy and Kharkiv regions, Russia controls about 400 sq km (154 sq miles) of territory. In Dnipropetrovsk, Russia has taken a tiny area near the border.
Russia controls about 46,570 sq km (17,981 sq miles), or 88 percent, of the territory known as Donbas, made up of the Luhansk and Donbas regions. Russia occupies almost all of Luhansk and three-quarters of Donetsk.
Ukraine still holds about 6,600 sq km (2,550 sq miles) of Donbas, although Russia has been focusing most of its energy along the front in Donetsk, pushing towards the last remaining major cities not in its control.
This has been part of its efforts to secure what is known as the “fortress belt”.
What is the fortress belt?
The “fortress belt” stretches some 50km (31 miles) along a strategic highway between the towns of Kostiantynivka and Sloviansk.
The fortress belt includes key towns — Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka, Oleksiyevo-Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka – which have remained under the control of Ukrainian troops since 2014 and are of significant strategic importance as logistical and administrative centre.
Attempts by Russian troops to capture Sloviansk and the cities of the fortress belt in 2022-2023 were unsuccessful, and Ukrainian counteroffensives drove the Russian forces far from key positions.
“Ukraine’s fortress belt has served as a major obstacle to the Kremlin’s territorial ambitions in Ukraine over the last 11 years,” the Washington, DC-based think tank Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported on August 8.
Russian advances: What’s the situation on the ground now?
In August, Russian forces made significant gains, advancing about 10km (6 miles) beyond the front lines as they intensified efforts to seize the fortress belt from the southwest, concentrating forces in the Toretsk and eastern Pokrovsk directions.
Al Jazeera military expert Alex Gatapoulous said, “I’m not sure what Ukraine has to offer in terms of territory. Russia has it all and is slowly winning this conflict, albeit at a great cost.
“There is already movement around Pokrovsk in the east, and Konstantinivka is also in danger of encirclement. If Ukraine hasn’t built defensive positions in-depth, Russian forces will have the ability to break out into open country. This is a really dangerous time for Ukraine. They’ve lost all the Russian territory they had taken in Kursk and have little to trade with.”
How has the war progressed over the past three years?
In the war’s early weeks, Russia advanced from the north, east and south, rapidly seizing vast areas of Ukrainian territory, with fierce battles in Irpin, Bucha and Mariupol – the latter of which fell to Russian forces in May 2022. The siege of Mariupol was one of the deadliest and most destructive battles of the war. Ukrainian officials estimated tens of thousands of civilian deaths.
By March 2022, Russian forces seized the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest in Europe, and by April of that year, Russia controlled 27 percent of Ukraine.
By late 2022, Ukraine had turned the tide with major counteroffensives in Kharkiv and Kherson, with Kyiv reclaiming 54 percent of the land Russia had captured since the beginning of the war, according to ISW data, reducing Russian-occupied land to just 18 percent of the country.
In August 2024, Ukraine launched a significant incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, marking a notable escalation in the conflict. This offensive saw Ukrainian forces advancing approximately 10km (6 miles) into Russian territory, seizing control over an estimated 250 sq km (96.5 sq miles), all of which has since been retaken by Russia.
By late 2024 and into 2025, the war had settled into a grinding impasse, with both sides suffering heavy losses. However, Russia’s recent incursions, pushing towards Sloviansk, allude to the potential for another offensive to take land it has historically struggled to capture.
What was the pre-war situation?
Prior to Russia’s full-scale 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia had held Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Moscow also supported separatists in the Donbas region, leading to the creation of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics. Russia officially recognised these entities on February 21, 2022, and launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine three days later.
The war in Ukraine has resulted in one of the largest and fastest-growing displacement crises in Europe since World War II. According to the UN, approximately 10 million Ukrainians have been displaced, which is about 21 percent of the country’s pre-war population.
Of these, 3.7 million remain internally displaced within Ukraine, while 6.9 million have fled abroad as refugees.
