Every week we wrap up the must-reads from our coverage of the Ukraine war, from news and features to analysis, visual guides and opinion.
Victory is ‘inevitable’, says Zelenskiy
Ukraine’s president has declared victory to be inevitable as his country marked the anniversary of the moment Russian tanks poured across the border and missiles flew, an event he described as “the longest day of our lives”, report Peter Beaumont, Luke Harding and Isobel Koshiw.
Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Ukrainians had survived “a year of pain, sorrow, faith and unity” and paid homage to cities that have become bywords for Russian war crimes, such as Bucha, Irpin and Mariupol, describing them as “capitals of invincibility”.
The president later cautiously welcomed China’s proposed peace plan but said it would be acceptable only if it led to Vladimir Putin pulling his troops out from all occupied Ukrainian territory. He said he “wanted to believe” Beijing was interested in a “fair peace”. That meant not “supplying weapons to Russia”, he told reporters in Kyiv, adding: “I’m doing my best to prevent that from happening. This is priority number one.” Western leaders are sceptical of the proposal, and argue that Beijing does not have the international credibility to act as a mediator
Meanwhile, further sanctions were agreed and the first Polish tanks arrived in Ukraine. The G7 and EU and US announced a range of further economic, military and financial sanctions against Russia, Jennifer Rankin and Julian Borger reported. The G7 warned that third countries that help Russia evade sanctions would face “severe costs”. Poland’s prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, confirmed that four Leopard tanks had been delivered to Ukraine, saying “We will support Ukraine until complete victory over Russia.”
Patrick Wintour reported on the redoubled diplomatic efforts to convince states that abstained or remained neutral at this week’s UN general assembly, with US secretary of state Antony Blinken urging them not to be fooled by Russian calls for a temporary or unconditional ceasefire, and warning that China’s peace proposals drew “false equivalence” by calling on both sides to stop fighting.
Biden’s surprise visit to Kyiv
After a week of freezing temperatures, Kyiv woke on Monday morning to a perfect blue sky. Spring had arrived. And so had someone else, wrote Luke Harding. For Joe Biden to safely visit Ukraine, the White House spirited him out of the country in the middle of the night and made reporters traveling with him swear a temporary oath of secrecy.
Whatever the long route to Kyiv, the images on Monday morning told their own remarkable story. Biden and Zelenskiy emerged together from St Michael’s Cathedral, one of an ensemble of religious buildings in the ancient heart of the city. In front of them was St Sophia, a second great cathedral built in the 11th century, when Moscow was just bog and forest.
The pair went on a brief walkabout. As they passed a mural of St Michael and his angels, an air raid siren rang out. For Kyivans this was business as usual. But it underscored the huge symbolic importance of Biden’s visit, ahead of the anniversary on Friday of Russia’s bloody invasion. And it said something too, perhaps, about the 80-year-old president’s steely and daring resolve.
Biden and Putin’s duelling speeches
From Kyiv, Biden travelled to Warsaw, Poland, where – a few hours after Putin had delivered his state of the nation – the US president gave the western view. In their speeches, Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin could not have been further apart in their interpretations of the past year, Patrick Wintour wrote. But in one aspect they were agreed: this is a war intended to remain on the territory of Ukraine, but is being elevated into something far wider – a battle of survival between the west and Russia. Both men also implicitly tied their own futures to the outcome of this war, saying their opponent was bound to lose.
Biden claimed Putin’s year of war has left behind “burned-out tanks and Russian forces in disarray” but he also warned of “very bitter days” ahead in the defence of democracy in eastern Europe, Julian Borger reported.
Putin suspends participation in nuclear treaty
Vladimir Putin used his speech to Russia’s leaders to announce that he was suspending the country’s participation in New Start, the last major remaining nuclear arms control treaty with the US, in a speech devoted to the one-year anniversary of Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine. The full implications of Putin’s threat were not immediately clear. Russia has already suspended mutual inspections of nuclear weapons sites and participation in a bilateral consultative commission, Andrew Roth and Julian Borger explained. Experts in the US said it was about dividing opinion.
What is New Start? Signed by then US president Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitry Medvedev, in 2010, the New Start treaty caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the United States and Russia can deploy. Together, the US and Russia own 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons. We have an explainer here.
The muted Russian protest against the war
Andrew Roth reported on the families of dead Russian soldiers, who are supportive of the military operation. Fifteen minutes before midnight, a young Russian conscript named Danila, who had been sent to fight in Ukraine, picked up his phone to write a message to his family and friends back home in a small town in the Samara region. It was 31 December.
“We congratulated each other, wished each other the best for the new year, and then he was gone,” said a close friend who wrote with him that night.
Minutes later, a US-made Himars rocket slammed into Professional Technical School No. 19 in Makiivka, a city in eastern Ukraine under Russian occupation. It took nearly 50 days for Danila’s remains to be identified beneath the rubble. His family spent weeks calling local hospitals and a military hotline, where they were told to wait for news that never seemed to come.
A year of the Ukraine war
In a special series to mark a year of the war that many doubted would happen until the day that it did, on 24 February 2022, the Guardian’s editors and journalists have put together a series of stories looking at the war from different perspectives. First, there is the year as experienced by Ukrainians. When Viacheslav Bozhko, 29, thinks about the time before the war, it seems distant, he told Clea Skopeliti. “It feels like a different life. Pretty much everything has changed,” he said. “It feels like the war has been going for much longer than that.”
Then, there is the war as it is experienced by Russians. Julia*, 31, who works in education and lives in central Moscow, says language used in conversation has palpably changed over the past 12 months, which she feels is indicative of a cultural shift, reflecting that many Russians are on a war footing these days, or even celebrating Russia’s aggression. “The rhetoric of my colleagues and family has become violent. For example, they quote things [the Russian foreign minister, Sergei] Lavrov says, containing mafia expressions and prison slang. Speaking like this is very uncharacteristic of these people, she told Jedidajah Otte.
Back in Ukraine, there are very few civilians still living and fighting on the frontlines. Luke Harding spoke to a special air intelligence unit – known by the name Vortex – which operates from a line of forward trenches dug around Huliaipilske. Once home to 1,000 people, the village is now a ghostly wreck. The Russians are less than two miles away.
The Guardian’s reporters on the ground have told the stories that have stayed with them the most. For Daniel Boffey, it was the day he arrived in Bucha, north of Kyiv, shortly after the Russians had retreated from the town. “It will live with me for ever. The violence perpetuated there was so overwhelming, from the pools of Russian blood in the cratered homes to the bodies freshly buried in the front gardens. But it was the testimony of Zinaida Grynenko, 61, that made the most profound impression. Her son-in-law had been found dead the previous morning. She had been led to the man’s body, riddled with bullets, as she had emerged from her cellar after weeks in hiding. Zinaida was yet to break the news of the man’s death to her daughter. Despite standing outside her own home, she seemed so utterly lost.”
Or you could look at the war in data and maps. A new Guardian analysis of Institute for the Study of War data shows that, after once having seized as much as 51,000 sq miles (132,000 sq km) of Ukrainian land, Russia has since lost a fifth of this. The environmental toll is staggering, Jonathan Watts reports, with a hundred and sixty nature reserves, 16 wetlands and two biospheres are under threat of destruction, six hundred species of animals and 880 species of plants are under threat of extinction and up to 40% of arable land not available for cultivation.
Finally, with no sign that the war will end soon, Peter Beaumont takes stock and looks at who is winning, and what the coming months might bring. The picture looks very different to the first weeks of the war, he writes. Dan Sabbagh assessed the potential outcomes of the war.
Then there are the photographs. XX and XX, XX and XX. Here are the year’s most evocative of a country under siege.
UN calls for immediate Russian withdrawal
The UN voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to demand Russia immediately and unconditionally withdraw from Ukraine, marking one year since Moscow’s invasion by calling for a “comprehensive, just and lasting peace”.
The resolution saw 141 countries in favour with seven against and 32 abstentions, including China, Patrick Wintour reported.
Ukraine’s allies for their part had tried to maximise consultations, and in the resolution put a heavy emphasis on the willingness of Ukraine to seek dialogue. Ukraine was also persuaded to remove planned references to taking the Russian leadership to a special tribunal for committing war crimes. Several speakers said such a move would only make the search for peace more elusive.
Six countries joined Russia to vote no - Belarus, North Korea, Eritrea, Mali, Nicaragua and Syria. Among those abstaining, Thailand said it did not want to become involved in a morality play, while South Africa claimed the resolution would not advance the cause of peace.
The Chinese deputy envoy to the UN, Dai Bing, said the west was throwing fuel on to the fire by arming Ukraine. That would only exacerbate tensions, he said. Earlier in the week, Helen Davidson covered the moment China’s new foreign minister, Qin Gang, expressed concern about the war in Ukraine escalating and possibly “spiralling out of control”.
“We urge certain countries to immediately stop fuelling the fire, stop shifting blame to China, and stop hyping up Ukraine today, Taiwan tomorrow,” he said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy hailed the vote as “a powerful signal of unflagging global support for Ukraine”.
