Why did Russia invade Ukraine and has Putin lost the war?

When Vladimir Putin sent up to 200,000 troops into Ukraine on February 24, he thought he could sweep the capital Kyiv in a matter of days and oust the government.

Russian forces quickly captured large areas but failed to surround Kyiv.

Yet in the coming months they were forced into a series of humiliating retreats, first to the north and now to the south.

So far, they have lost more than half of the territory captured at the beginning of the invasion.

What was Putin's original goal?

Even now, the Russian leader describes the biggest invasion of Europe since the end of World War II as a "special military operation" rather than a full-scale war that has left millions of Ukrainians displaced within their country and beyond.

Sending troops into Ukraine from the north, south and east on February 24, he told the Russian people his goal was to "demilitarize and demobilize Ukraine".

His declared goal was to protect people facing what he called eight years of oppression and genocide by the Ukrainian government - claims for which there is no evidence.

It was prepared as an attempt to prevent Nato from entering Ukraine.

Another goal was recently added: to ensure the neutrality of Ukraine.

The main agenda was to overthrow the government of the elected president of Ukraine.

The enemy has designated me as target number one; My family is target number two," said Volodymyr Zelensky.

Russian troops made two attempts to storm the president's residence, according to his adviser.

It didn't make sense

Repeated Russian claims of Nazism and genocide in eastern Ukraine are completely unfounded but have become part of Russia's repeated narrative since its proxy forces seized parts of Luhansk and Donetsk regions in the country's east in 2014, leading to a war with Ukraine.

"It's confusing, sometimes they can't even explain what they mean," complained Ukraine's foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba.

The opinion of the Russian state news agency Ria Novosti in early April made it clear that "arresting leaders and ensuring as well as destroying the culture of Ukraine justice is inevitable" in the effect of erasing the modern state of Ukraine.

It was published as details emerged of war crimes committed by Russian forces against civilians in Bucha, near Kyiv.

An independent report later accused Russia itself of government incitement to genocide.

As for joining Nato, even before the invasion Ukraine had reportedly agreed to a temporary deal with Russia to withdraw from the Western defense alliance.

Russia does not want its neighbor to join Nato, as it fears this would encroach too closely on its territory.

By March, President Zelensky had publicly admitted joining Nato would not happen: "It is a fact and must be recognized."

Ukraine committed to becoming a non-aligned, non-nuclear state, but talks broke down.

How Putin changed his war aims

A month into the invasion and it was clear the Russian team didn't plan.

Vladimir Putin significantly lowered his expectations, declaring the first phase largely complete.

The troops retreated from around Kyiv and Chernihiv and regrouped in the northeast.

The main goal was now the "liberation of Donbas" - broadly referring to the two industrial regions of eastern Ukraine, Luhansk and Donetsk.

The reason for withdrawing was the inability to understand the agility of the Ukrainian forces or to find ways to conduct its operations.

An early sign of Russia's poor equipment was a 64 km (40 mi) armored convoy that stopped near Kyiv.

The most recent Russian retreat from the southern city of Kherson on November 11, its intention was to destroy the supply lines and disrupt the systems from the main, according to the commander-in-chief of Ukraine, General Valeriy Zaluzhny.

Russian proxy forces had already captured a third of the Donbas in 2014 in what has turned into a quiet war but no agreement has been reached.

By late March they had claimed most of Luhansk but more than half of Donetsk.

Capturing the devastated port city of Mariupol in Donetsk in mid-May gave Vladimir Putin one of his biggest victories and gave Russia a much-needed strip of land from the border with Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014.

Russian troops still hoped to seize more territory in the south.

A senior general previously spoke of a land grab on the Black Sea coast beyond Odesa towards the breakaway region of Moldova.

"Control of southern Ukraine is another way to Transnistria," Major General Rustam Minnekayev said.

By early July, the Russian leader was also able to claim full control of Luhansk, as Ukrainian forces were losing 50 to 100 soldiers a day to heavy Russian attacks.

Putin defending himself

But the arrival of Western weapons, especially US Himars missiles, soon took its toll on Russian logistics facilities and arsenals in the east and Ukraine's expected offensive in the southern Kherson region was also underway.

In September, Vladimir Putin announced a "registration of 300,000 reserve troops" with the aim of bolstering his forces 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) to the east.

Russians fled the call in droves as the war drew closer to home.

Defending himself, he announced that two eastern and two southern regions - Kherson and Zaporizhzhia - were being occupied, although neither was under full Russian control.

Weeks later, Russia withdrew from the city of Kherson, the only regional capital captured in its 2022 war.

Under the newly appointed commander, General Sergei Surovikin, Russia changed its strategy in October and destroyed Ukraine's civilian infrastructure, destroyed 40% of its electricity system and carried out airstrikes across the country.

It had failed on the battlefield, so now the Kremlin's focus was on civilian morale.

Cities across Ukraine have been hit and two people were killed in Poland after a missile landed on a farm near its border with Ukraine.

The incident raised fears of Nato being drawn into the conflict, although the United States said there was no possibility of the missile being fired by Russia.

Russia's biggest deficits

The loss of the city of Kerson and the retreat of 30,000 Russian troops from the right bank of the Dnipro River overshadowed Russia's challenges on the battlefield and painted a broader picture of a failed invasion.

Withdrawal from around Kyiv and from Chernihiv in March was followed by a major retreat in September from the northeastern region of Kharkiv, leaving the major road and rail hub of Kupyansk and the strategic city of Izyum.

In late September, Ukrainian forces had also liberated another major facility, Lyman, four months after Russia captured it.

The failure spread beyond the battlefield.

Ukraine scored a symbolic victory by sinking a Russian navy ship in the Black Sea off Moskva in April.

Weeks later Russian troops were forced to flee the small Snake Island camp in the Black Sea.

Crimea has also witnessed Russian challenges.

In early October, an explosion badly damaged a bridge across the Kerch Strait, installed after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014.

The deadly attack on Russian supply lines was later followed by a Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol.

Although President Putin has tried to distance himself from such defeats, his authority appears to have been eroded internationally.

After a drone attack on Russian ships, the Kremlin suspended support for a Turkish-brokered deal to allow grain ships to travel safely through the Black Sea.

But when the United Nations and Turkey decided to continue the shipment regardless, President Putin lifted the deadlock.

As the German foreign minister observed, the international community refused to be fooled.

Has the raid failed?

By many measures, Russia is losing the war but it still controls all the territories it captured in 2014, including the coastline from Crimea to the Russian border.

Putin's program for the registration of reservists has not yet brought about significant changes.

For months, Russian forces have been trying to capture the Donetsk city of Bakhmut and have had limited success in nearby areas, but it is an indication of the extent to which their ambitions have diminished.

And if the Russian leader's goal was to push NATO back, that too has failed because Sweden and Finland have applied to join them, upset by Moscow's military threat.

How Putin's Message Has Changed

"For years, the Russian president has denied Ukraine as his own country, writing a long 2021 essay that "Russians and Ukrainians were one people" starting at the end of the 9th Century.

That message was repeated in two of his pre-war speeches, where he accused Kyiv of trying to eliminate the Russian language and NATO of trying to gain access to Ukraine.

He later denounced his neighbor as "unfriendly to Russia".

By September, the West was blamed for trying to "weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our country" when it was Kyiv's fault for its "desire to possess nuclear weapons".

It was actually independent Ukraine that agreed to hand over all nuclear weapons on its territory when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

At the same time, President Putin issued a series of nuclear threats, talking about using all the means at his disposal to protect Russia and cling to its occupied territories.

"We will certainly make use of all the weapons systems available to us. This is not nonsense," he warned.

Is Nato to blame?

Nato member states have increasingly sent Ukrainian air defense systems to protect their cities along with missile systems, tanks and drones that have helped turn the tide against Russian aggression.

But the war is not to blame, and anyway, it was the Russian invasion that convinced Sweden and Finland to formally request to join the military alliance.

While Russia said it was annexing four Ukrainian provinces at the end of September, Ukraine also said it was seeking immediate Nato membership.

Blaming Nato's eastward expansion is a Russian narrative that has gained ground in Europe.

Before the war, President Putin called on Nato to turn back the clock to 1997 and withdraw its forces and military infrastructure from Central Europe, Eastern Europe and the Baltics.

In his eyes, the West promised in 1990 that Nato would not expand even "one inch east" however, it did.

That was before the fall of the Soviet Union, though, the promise made to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev only referred to East Germany in the context of a reunified Germany.

Mr Gorbachev said later that "the subject of Nato expansion was never discussed" at the time.

It is Nato's collective defense commitment that worries President Putin the most.

Russian forces first invaded neighboring Georgia in 2008 and then sent troops into Ukraine six years later.

Nato maintains it had no intention of sending troops to the east until Russia illegally annexed Crimea in 2014.