¿En realidad sigue la guerra rusa contra Ucrania?

La respuesta corta es sí. ¿La respuesta larga? No sólo sigue ocurriendo, sino que está creciendo en escala, cambiando de táctica y redefiniendo lo que está en juego para el mundo entero.

Han pasado tres años desde que tanques, aviones, misiles, aviones no tripulados y tropas terrestres rusas penetraron en Ucrania, ocupando hasta el 27% del país en su momento álgido. Desde entonces, Ucrania ha recuperado aproximadamente la mitad del territorio arrebatado. Sin embargo, la guerra sigue su curso, con las fuerzas ucranianas resistiendo los incesantes ataques rusos, mientras los diplomáticos trabajan con sus socios en Europa y Estados Unidos para negociar un final justo y duradero de la guerra.

Se ha descrito como la mayor y más destructiva guerra en Europa desde la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Ambos bandos desplegaron un gran número de tropas y equipos en un frente de 1.200 kilómetros, casi la distancia entre Nueva York y Atlanta.

Miles de soldados, civiles, periodistas y trabajadores humanitarios han perdido la vida desde el comienzo de la guerra. Para frenar el derramamiento de sangre, más de 50 países han intervenido para proporcionar ayuda militar crítica, incluidos proyectiles de artillería, sistemas de defensa antiaérea y tanques, ayudando a Ucrania a mantener la línea contra un enemigo numérica y tecnológicamente superior.

Si busca una forma sencilla de ponerse al día, esta parte es para usted. A continuación se ofrece una visión general de la situación actual: desde las intensas batallas que aún se libran en el frente hasta la evolución de las contraofensivas ucranianas, las audaces operaciones en territorio ruso y los continuos ataques contra infraestructuras civiles. Se trata de una guía general que le ayudará a comprender la situación actual de la guerra y quizá le anime a seguir uno de los acontecimientos más importantes de nuestro tiempo.

Donde la guerra es más encarnizada

La línea del frente de Ucrania, de 1.200 kilómetros de longitud, está dividida en comandos regionales denominados Grupos Táctico-Operativos (OTG). Estos términos son la forma en que Ucrania organiza sus fuerzas y recursos para luchar en un campo de batalla tan extenso.

En el este, el OTG Donetsk Luhansk es responsable de algunos de los combates más intensos y destructivos de la guerra. Chasiv Yar se ha convertido en un importante punto álgido. La ciudad está situada en un terreno elevado al oeste de Bakhmut y, si Rusia la toma, tendrá vía libre para adentrarse en la región de Donetsk controlada por Ucrania.

Justo al sur de allí, Pokrovsk está siendo duramente asaltada. Es un centro de transporte, una importante ciudad minera y, lo que es más importante, es una de las últimas ciudades importantes que Rusia necesita para reclamar el control total de la región de Donetsk tras ocuparla en 2014. Están lanzando todo contra ella.

Más al sur se encuentra la OTG de Zaporizhzhia, que bordea el río Dnipro. Las fuerzas ucranianas mantienen un punto de apoyo cerca de la ciudad de Orikhiv, donde se libran encarnizados combates con las tropas rusas. Esta zona se ha convertido en un punto crítico, en el que ambos bandos han lanzado repetidos asaltos para hacerse con el control de rutas de suministro y posiciones estratégicas clave. Si Ucrania logra avanzar en esta zona, podría cortar las líneas de suministro rusas a Crimea y amenazar su control del sur.

En el noreste, cerca de la frontera rusa, el OTG Kharkiv Starobilsk está haciendo frente a los nuevos asaltos rusos cerca de las ciudades de Kupiansk y Vovchansk. No se trata sólo de distracciones, ya que Rusia está tratando de extender las defensas de Ucrania y posiblemente preparar el terreno para un mayor avance hacia Kharkiv, la segunda ciudad más grande del país. Como mínimo, están tratando de acercar su artillería, haciendo la vida en Kharkiv aún más insoportable mientras la ciudad sigue siendo atacada por cohetes de grueso calibre, bombas planeadoras y drones.

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Más al norte, a lo largo de la frontera rusa, el OTG Kursk-Siversk cubre la región de Sumy y la zona fronteriza circundante. Aunque en esta zona se producen menos ofensivas terrestres a gran escala, permanece bajo la amenaza constante de bombardeos transfronterizos, ataques de drones e intentos de sabotaje. La presión rusa en esta zona pretende mantener a Ucrania en vilo, obligar a Kyiv a defenderse en todas partes a la vez y evitar que concentre sus fuerzas en frentes más activos.

En el OTG de Kherson, que también incluye operaciones dirigidas contra emplazamientos militares rusos en Crimea, las fuerzas ucranianas siguen ejerciendo presión a lo largo del río Dnipro mediante incursiones y ataques de drones de largo alcance. Ucrania se mantiene activa en la zona, con el objetivo de estirar las defensas rusas y mantener bajo amenaza a los invasores rusos en Crimea, una región simbólica y estratégicamente vital. La OTG de Kherson también defiende infraestructuras costeras y ciudades portuarias esenciales para la economía ucraniana y las exportaciones mundiales de grano.

But Ukraine is also fighting in other ways: launching long-range drone and missile strikes against military targets inside Russian territory and Crimea, hitting oil refineries, ammunition depots, and supply lines, and defending cities like Kyiv and Odesa from near-daily air attacks. 

What began as a war of tanks and trenches has rapidly evolved into something else entirely — a battlefield dominated by drones. It started with cheap, consumer drones modified by soldiers to drop grenades or crash into Russian military vehicles. Today, drones handle everything from reconnaissance and artillery spotting to air defense integration and jamming enemy signals.

Ukraine now uses autonomous ground drones to deliver supplies, evacuate wounded, and even carry explosives into Russian positions. At sea, unmanned naval drones have destroyed or damaged a third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet — including the Moskva, the fleet’s flagship.

Taking the fight to Russia

One of the biggest and frankly most surprising shifts in the war has been Ukraine’s ability to launch attacks against military targets inside Russia. We’re talking about boots-on-the-ground raids and long-range drone strikes against targets deep into Russian territory.

On August 6th, 2024, Ukrainian-aligned fighters—including Russian nationals fighting for Ukraine—carried out a surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, which borders Ukraine's Sumy region. It wasn’t a quick raid and retreat like those before. It was a calculated gambit designed to shatter the illusion that Russian territory is untouchable. 

However, the operation had a deeper strategic purpose. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that the Kursk operation successfully redirected Russian forces, easing pressure on Ukrainian defenses in Sumy, Kharkiv, and Pokrovsk. He noted that the situation near Pokrovsk stabilized as a result, making it harder for Russian forces to reoccupy the area.

Armed groups crossed the border, overwhelmed local defenses, seized equipment, and filmed themselves doing it. For a brief but dramatic stretch, they operated freely on Russian soil while the Kremlin scrambled to contain the fallout, both militarily and politically.

Russia’s response—just silence, confusion, and the quiet realization that Ukraine had crossed a so-called red line and survived, and that’s the point, at least partly.

Russia has long styled itself as a nuclear superpower with borders too dangerous to breach. But Ukraine, with far fewer troops and less equipment, has found ways to take the fight back across that line. Ukrainian drones have struck oil refineries, airbases, radar systems, and military factories in Belgorod, Kursk, Tatarstan, and beyond. Some attacks have reached targets more than 1,000 kilometers from the Ukrainian border.

These strikes aren’t just symbolic. They’re part of a broader strategy to stretch Russian forces and deny them the ability to regroup. Every time Ukraine hits military infrastructure inside Russia or sends a sabotage group over the border, Russia is forced to move troops, redeploy air defenses, and lock down areas it thought were secure. That’s time, manpower, and equipment not being used to launch another major offensive elsewhere.

Ukraine knows it can’t win this war with brute force alone. It has to stay unpredictable. These incursions keep Russia off balance and, perhaps most critically, prevent it from massing large numbers of troops to launch offensives into potentially vulnerable parts of Ukraine.

But even far from the frontlines, the war is very much present and being fought on multiple fronts, every single day.

Russia’s strikes on civilians

Beyond the battlefield, Russia has waged a second war — one aimed directly at everyday life in Ukraine. Homes, hospitals, schools, power grids, even nuclear plants — nothing has been off-limits. According to the Institute for the Study of War, Russia’s goal isn’t just to win militarily, but to prolong the war, wear down Ukraine’s population, and outlast Western support. It’s a brutal experiment in testing the limits of human will — and so far, Ukrainians have refused to break.

As of early 2024, Russia has damaged or destroyed over 250,000 residential buildings across Ukraine and has displaced more than 3.4 million people. In some cities like Mariupol and Siverskodonetsk, entire neighborhoods—up to 90% of housing stock—have been flattened. Russia has repeatedly targeted schools, damaging or destroying over 576 educational institutions in 2024 alone. 

Children now learn in underground shelters or online when power and internet are available. Russia hits hospitals almost as frequently as military sites: the World Health Organization has verified over 2420 attacks on healthcare facilities, killing at least 209 people and injuring 743 more.

Then there’s Ukraine’s energy grid. Russia has systematically targeted Ukraine’s heating and power systems, especially in winter. Since the full-scale invasion began, 18 major heat and power plants, 815 boiler houses, and 152 central heating points have been damaged or destroyed. In one attack alone in late 2024, over a million households were plunged into darkness and cold. The objective is clear: freeze the country into submission.

Perhaps the most dangerous chapter of this campaign has been Russia’s occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant—the largest in Europe. Held hostage since March 2022, the plant has faced shelling, power cuts, and near-misses that could have triggered a continent-wide disaster. It operates under constant threat, often relying on a single external power line to keep cooling systems running.

And yet, Ukraine endures. Civilian crews work around the clock to restore power. International partners help fund reconstruction and keep the economy from collapsing. Aid groups deliver supplies, rebuild schools, and repair homes as fast as they can. There’s even a push to modernize, decentralizing energy grids and building in renewables to make the country less vulnerable in the future.

This war isn’t just being fought with missiles and drones. It’s being fought in kitchens with candles, in basements turned into classrooms, in hospitals running on backup generators. And in every corner of the country, the message remains the same: Ukraine is still standing, and the war is nowhere near over.

Ukraine, together with the United States and other international partners, has repeatedly and publicly pursued ceasefire negotiations with Russia. From early efforts in 2022 to more recent diplomatic outreach in 2024 and 2025, the Ukrainian position has remained clear: peace is on the table, but not at the cost of its sovereignty or territorial integrity.

Russia, however, has either refused to engage seriously or used the talks as cover to regroup and continue its assaults. Despite mounting international pressure, Moscow has shown little interest in ending the war, choosing escalation over peace with every opportunity.