CNN
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US President Donald Trump is pushing for a quick end to the war in Ukraine, but it’s proving more difficult than he thought.
A heated meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has left the White House reeling, with some top US officials suggesting Zelensky step down from power. The meeting came after top US and Russian officials met for peace talks in Saudi Arabia – cutting Ukraine out of negotiations.
Ukraine and its European allies have been stunned and scrambling to adapt to the new approach from the United States, and now Europe is trying to come together in support of Ukraine, crafting a plan to stop the fighting which will be presented to the US.
In the three years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion, Ukraine has lost swaths of land, managing to regain some thanks to military aid from its Western allies. Millions of Ukrainians have been uprooted with thousands killed or injured.
Here’s where things stand in Ukraine, in four graphics:
Ukraine has lost 11% of its land since 2022
At the start of the war, Ukraine held back troops from its capital, Kyiv, and later secured victories in parts of the northeast Kharkiv and southern Kherson regions. But it also sustained major losses in eastern areas around Donetsk and Bakhmut.
Since the 2022 invasion, Ukraine has lost control of about 11% of its land, according to CNN analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based conflict monitor. When factoring in land already lost to Russia and Russian-backed separatists since the conflict began in 2014, the total land Ukraine has lost to Russia since 2014 is about 18%, per CNN calculations.
In 2014, Russian forces illegally annexed Crimea from Ukraine, shortly after the events of the Maidan Revolution sparked political turmoil in Kyiv. Later that year, Russian-sponsored separatists took control of parts of the Donbas region, gains that have remained in Russian hands to the present day.
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion on February 24, 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin expected to seize all of Ukraine in a matter of days, according to the Institute for the Study of War. What happened instead was three years of intense fighting, thanks to Ukraine counteroffensives armed by tranches of aid coming from its Western allies.
Here’s an overview of where the money for Ukraine’s war efforts has come from:
The United States has been the biggest single contributor of funding for Ukraine since the war began in 2022, giving about $123 billion in military, humanitarian and financial help — aid that may be in peril under the Trump administration.
Trump, who promised to end the war in Ukraine swiftly, was critical about US funds being sent to Ukraine throughout his 2024 campaign. Recently, he’s suggested taking a transactional approach to aid, saying the US should receive access to rare earth minerals in return, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has rejected.
“I told them that I want the equivalent, like $500 billion of rare earth, and they’ve essentially agreed to do that, so at least we don’t feel stupid. Otherwise we’re stupid. I said to them, we have to get something. We can’t continue to pay this money,” Trump told Fox News earlier this month.
Ukraine has already been affected by the recent suspension of USAID activity. The funding freeze has led Ukrainian NGOs and charities to make cuts including laying off staff and temporarily shutting down suicide helplines and HIV detection projects. In the last three years, Ukraine has been the biggest recipient of USAID funds.
Millions of Ukrainians have fled their homes, either to other parts of Ukraine or other countries, in the years since Russia began seizing land and following the invasion.
Just over 6.3 million Ukrainian refugees are living in Europe, including about 1.2 million in Germany, nearly 1 million in Poland and 390,000 in the Czech Republic, according to data through the end of 2024 from the UN’s refugee agency.
There were 1.2 million Ukrainian refugees living in the Russian Federation, per the UN’s latest estimate as of June 2024.
Thousands of civilians have died
More than 40,000 civilians have been killed or injured in Ukraine during the conflict, with many of the deaths caused by explosive weapons, according to the UN Human Rights Office.
At least half of those killed (6,203) were adult men and 669 were children.
CNN’s Stephen Collinson, Christian Edwards, Anna Chernova, Edward Szekeres, Ivana Kottasová and Maria Kostenko contributed to this report.
