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By Brendan Cole
Senior Reporter
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Russia's war on Ukraine has reached one thousand days of conflict marking one of three grim milestones since Vladimir Putin's full-scale invasion.
Ukraine's commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Tuesday: "For 1,000 days, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have been confronting the enemy on the front line, which stretches over 1,000 kilometers."
Also approaching four figures is the cost in anti-aircraft systems for Russia, according to Ukraine's defense ministry, whose latest figures on Tuesday said 999 had been lost.
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In addition, the 29,548 tally of car and cistern losses approached a record 30,000, adding to the milestones racked up during the conflict.
There are also continuing high losses of Russian personnel, which according to Kyiv, are at 724,050 dead and wounded and a recent daily average of around 1,500 casualties could see the three quarter of a million mark hit within the next month.
However, it is difficult to get an exact number of personnel losses as both sides keep tight-lipped about these figures. Newsweek has contacted the Russian Defense Ministry for comment.
Syrskyi described Ukraine's fight from the "frozen trenches of the Donetsk region to the burning steppes of the Kherson region under shells, Grads [rocket systems], KABs [Russian glide bombs]," as he described how his country was "fighting for the right to life—[for] us and our children.
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Syrskyi also noted how there had been "1000 days of victories and losses," and these include tens of thousands of military and civilian casualties, lost and recaptured territory and the destruction of civilian infrastructure.
"People are very tired after what has happened over these one thousand days because everyone has lost someone in this war, a lot of people have died and we have spent nights in bomb shelters," said Anna Karika, head of Research and Development (R&D) at the humanitarian group Rescue Now Foundation.
"This all adds to the tiredness that Ukrainian society feels," she told Newsweek from Kyiv on Tuesday.
Among the reasons Putin gave for launching of the war on February 24, 2022 was as a response to NATO's encroachment on Russia's borders and an ambition to "de-Nazify" Ukraine. This was dismissed by Kyiv and most analysts who saw Putin's couched imperial aims as imposing regime change and creating a Kremlin puppet state.
But the swift conflict Putin reportedly expected did not eventuate and, during the early days of the war, the Russian Airborne Forces' (VDV) assault on an airport in Hostomel, six miles from Kyiv failed due to a Ukrainian counter-attack.
"Had that fallen and Russia actually been able to execute its strategy, the war would certainly have been different," Zev Faintuch, head of research and intelligence at security firm Global Guardian told Newsweek.
This showed Ukraine's resilience and signaled a shift towards a prolonged conflict, which has since included Russian retreats from Kherson, Kharkiv and its Black Sea Fleet hub of Sevastopol, thanks to drone and missile strikes.
"As soon as Russia started to pull back from the north, that's when it became more apparent this war would last 1000 days if not longer," he said. "Ukraine is massive and it's hard to have a 1000 kilometer-long frontline and maintain those positions."
Faintuch said during the lead up to the war he expected the least likely scenario would be a full scale invasion. "We thought they would try to try to link their fronts from Crimea to the Donbas, call it a day after that and try to get cement those gains and bring those regions into what Russia believes to be within its sovereignty."
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"The other big surprise was how ineffective Russia's military was in those first few months, and that really comes down to extraordinarily poor planning and logistics."
Whether the war will last another thousand days depends on how a continuing conflict is defined, especially if a settlement is mooted to pause the war, akin to what happened between 2014 and 2022, and whether that is considered a frozen, active or "lukewarm" conflict, according to Faintuch.
Putin's illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014 was followed by hostilities between Russia and Ukraine in the eastern Donbas region, until the full-scale invasion of February 24, 2022.
"If we were to include that kind of fighting under the banner of conflict then it's very conceivable that this lasts another thousand days."
Ukraine has received the boost of getting the green light from the U.S. to use ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) inside Russian territory which could help its operation in Kursk, where North Korean and Russian troops have amassed.
However, Ukraine enters the winter with question marks over continued U.S. support under the incoming Trump administration and gradual Russian gains in the Donbas region. On Sunday, Russia launched one of its largest aerial attacks against Ukraine's energy grid, killing and injuring civilians across the country.
"We're just preparing to get through this winter to do what we can do to help our country to survive," said Karika.
"We have lost a lot of people in this war already and we believe that wasn't just for nothing," she said, "of course we can stay strong and work forward in the next 1000 days," she said.
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