Good morning.
Ukraine marks four years today since Russia’s full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022.
I still remember that day clearly — hours spent scrolling through social media, videos, and breaking news, barely able to process the flood of information coming in.
For weeks, our morning editorials had been focusing on the same questions: whether Vladimir Putin would actually invade, when it could happen, and how it would unfold.
That day, I couldn’t stop thinking about the Ukrainians and Russians I had met years before in my life, and wondered how ordinary people on both sides were facing a war and caught up in the middle of history beyond their control.
On 24 February 2022 at 6 AM, we published a story written by my colleague Andrew Rettman, compiling the reactions of EU leaders. That was only the first of many for the day.
Back then, the EU was in a hurry to have its first sanctions proposal, targeting some of Russia’s most prominent TV personalities, as well as several Kremlin cronies.
Four years on, the 20th such sanctions package is being carefully negotiated, with sweat and tears, amid drama from Moscow-friendly Hungary and Slovakia, who are determined to keep Russian energy flowing.
Four years in, the conflict has hardened into what experts and journalists on the ground say is a war of attrition — fought in trenches and waged by drones.
Ukraine now faces immense military and fiscal pressure, and increased calls to accept a freeze of the conflict lines, territorial concessions, or some other face-saving off-ramp for Putin.
These have also been four years of geopolitical awakening for European countries, and a reminder thatearly warnings alone weren’t enough to prevent war.
Whatever comes next, this war has already reshaped Europe. Joint arms procurement, energy diversification, and creatively bypassing Hungarian vetoes would have been unthinkable in early 2022.
But Europe’s awakening has come at the price of immense human suffering in Ukraine.
Despite it all, Ukraine’s EU ambassador Vsevolod Chentsov told me in an interview that morale in the country has not collapsed.
“Physically, psychologically, definitely everyone is tired,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean that we are ready to give up. Putin underestimated, again, the resilience of the Ukrainian people.”
“The danger is that this war is accepted as something normal,” he warned. “Whatever they say about excuses and reasons — about historical truth, their understanding of reality, or being offended by Nato 30 years ago — sorry, it’s bullshit”.
Elena Sánchez Nicolás, editor-in-chief
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