Editor’s note: The article was originally published in June. It has been updated in light of recent events. Beginning in late August, Ukraine’s armed forces launched a counteroffensive to retake occupied areas in the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk regions of the country. Throughout September the counteroffensive successfully retook a large area of the east, and in October Ukraine announced gains in its counteroffensive in the south. In an address on 4 October, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said, “The Ukrainian army is carrying out a pretty fast and powerful advance in the south of our country as part of the current defence operation.”
It has now been more than seven months since Russia‘s escalation of the war in Ukraine. Some political leaders, concerned with instability in Europe, food shortages, rising energy prices, the deepening cost-of-living crisis and the threat of Vladimir Putin using nuclear weapons, have called on Ukraine and Russia to agree to a return to the status quo before the invasion, or even a “pause” in the war, essentially leaving Ukraine without full control of its territory.
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