KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — More than a dozen senior European officials were in the Ukrainian capital on Tuesday in a show of support on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine — a grim milestone in a war that has killed tens of thousands of people and put European leaders on edge about the scale of Moscow’s ambitions on the continent.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was defiant despite the devastating toll — insisting that Russia has not “broken Ukrainians” nor triumphed in the war.
Zelenskyy said his country has withstood the onslaught by Russia’s bigger and better equipped army, which over the past year of fighting captured just 0.79% of Ukraine’s territory, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank.
“Looking back at the beginning of the invasion and reflecting on today, we have every right to say: we have defended our independence, we have not lost our statehood,” Zelenskyy said on social media, adding that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “not achieved his goals.”
“He has not broken Ukrainians; he has not won this war,” Zelenskyy said.
Zelenskyy urges Trump to visit
However, as the corrosive war of attrition enters its fifth year, a U.S.-led diplomatic push to end Europe’s biggest armed conflict since World War II appears no closer to finding compromises that might make a peace deal possible.
Negotiations are stuck on what happens to the Donbas, eastern Ukraine’s industrial heartland which Russian forces mostly occupy but have failed to seize completely, and the terms of a postwar security arrangement that Kyiv is demanding to deter any future Russian invasion.
In a speech at a makeshift memorial in Kyiv’s central square, where thousands of small flags and portraits show photos of fallen soldiers, Zelenskyy said he wanted U.S. President Donald Trump to visit and witness for himself Ukrainian suffering.
“Only then can one truly understand what this war is really about,” Zelenskyy said.
Trump, who says he wants the fighting to stop, has repeatedly changed his tone toward Putin and Zelenskyy over the past year.
The war in Europe’s somber numbers
The number of soldiers killed, injured or missing on both sides could reach 2 million by spring, with Russia sustaining the largest number of troop deaths for any major power in any conflict since World War II, a report last month from the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated.
European leaders see their countries’ own security at stake in Ukraine amid concerns about Putin’s wider goals and has demanded its leaders be consulted in the ongoing U.S.-brokered talks.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz wrote on X that “for four years, every day and every night has been a nightmare for the Ukrainians — and not just for them, but for us all. Because war is back in Europe.”
“We will only end it by being strong together, because the fate of Ukraine is our fate,” he added.
Putin’s dangerous gamble
Putin believes that time is on the side of his bigger army, Western officials and analysts say — and that Western support will trail off and that Ukraine’s military resistance will eventually crumble.
But French President Emmanuel Macron described the war was “a triple failure for Russia: military, economic, and strategic.”
The war “has strengthened NATO—the very expansion Russia sought to prevent—galvanized Europeans it hoped to weaken, and laid bare the fragility of an imperialism from another age,” Macron said on X.
The war has brought widespread hardship for Ukrainian civilians. Russia’s aerial attacks have devastated families and denied civilians power and running water.
It has drawn in countries far beyond Ukraine, giving the conflict a global dimension, and threatened to worsen shortages, hunger and political instability in developing countries.
While NATO countries have come to Ukraine’s aid, Russia has been helped by North Korea, which has sent thousands of troops and artillery shells; Iran, which has provided drone technology; and China, which the United States and analysts say has provided machine tools and chips.
A war with global dimensions
Among the European officials visiting Kyiv on Tuesday were the President of the European Council, Antonio Costa, the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and Finnish President Alexander Stubb, as well as seven prime ministers and four foreign ministers.
The only American listed among the official guests in Kyiv ceremonies was Lt. Gen. Curtis Buzzard, a U.S. officer who represents NATO in Ukraine.
With Ukraine unable to sustain its fight against Russia without foreign help, NATO countries are now providing military help, purchasing American weapons after the Trump administration broke with earlier Washington policy and stopped giving arms to Kyiv.
The European Union has also sent financial aid, but has sometimes met with reluctance from members Hungary and Slovakia.
British Armed Forces Minister Al Carns said Russia’s war on Ukraine was “the most defining conflict” in decades.
“I don’t think anyone of us would be able to guess (when the war started) the scale and size of what has taken place,” he said.
The war has brought a “revolution in military affairs,” especially through the rapid development of drone technology by both sides, according to Carns. Drones now account for the vast majority of battlefield casualties, he said.
The United Kingdom on Tuesday announced a new package of military and humanitarian support for Ukraine, including sending teams of British military medics conducting medical mentoring inside Ukraine, drawing on battlefield experience from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The cost of rebuilding war-battered Ukraine would amount to almost $588 billion over the next decade, according to World Bank, the European Commission, the United Nations and the Ukrainian government.
That is nearly three times the estimated nominal GDP of Ukraine for last year, they said in a report Monday.
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Associated Press reporters across Europe contributed to this story.
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