It is exactly a year to the day since Russian fighter jets first struck Kyiv and a huge battery of Moscow’s tanks rolled across the border of Ukraine, as Vladimir Putin began his shock assault on Russia’s sovereign neighbour.
Twelve months on, and it has long been clear that the lightning strike expected by Mr Putin to see his troops seize Kyiv in just 10 days has instead turned into a grinding war of attrition – on a scale not seen in Europe for decades.
