500 days of the Russia-Ukraine war

General view of the commercial seaport, Odesa, Ukraine. The island had become a symbol of Ukraine's resistance after Russia had taken it. Ukraine bombarded the Russian garrison, forcing them to retreat from Odesa in June last year, paving the way for Ukraine to start grain exports.

Clouds of smoke from a fire were caused when Russian missiles hit an oil storage facility in Odesa, Ukraine, on April 3, 2022. Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24 2022, triggering the largest military attack in Europe since World War II.

Service members of the Carpathian Sich Battalion, Ukraine, are seen on a tank on a frontline near Lyman, Donetsk region, Ukraine, December 8, 2022. Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, seizing territories that Ukraine has been clawing back slowly, despite depleting artillery, a see-saw that has marked the war. For instance, Lyman, a major rail hub in Eastern Ukraine, damaged by Russian rocket fire last weekend, was initially captured by Russian forces but retaken by Ukraine's army in October.

Oleksandr Pashchenko, a farmer, stands next to cluster bomb carriers he collected from his fields in a village Zelenyj Hai, Ukraine, November 11 2022. The US announced plans to supply Ukraine with cluster munitions, a widely banned controversial weapon. Ukraine reiterated that they would use these munitions only for the de-occupation of their internationally recognised territories from the Russians. Russia has been using cluster munitions for much of the war.

Men are treated in the hospital after they were wounded in cluster bomb attacks on June 30, 2022, in Sloviansk, Ukraine. Cluster munitions, prohibited by over 100 countries, including France, Germany and UK, typically disperse large numbers of tiny, deadly bomblets that can kill indiscriminately over a wide area. Those that fail to explode pose a danger to civilians when they stumble on them, particularly children. Russia, Ukraine and the United States have not signed the Convention, which bans the use of the weapon.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky and Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala visit the Velvet Revolution Memorial in Prague, Czech Republic, July 7, 2023. To drum up support for its membership bid to The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an intergovernmental military alliance between 31 member states, Zelenskyy is on a tour of several NATO states like the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Turkey. Although NATO has made a membership pledge to Ukraine, some of the countries in the alliance are wary of any step that may take NATO closer to war with Russia.

A soldier with the call sign Gerych (right) from the 3rd Assault Brigade talks on a radio at the base of a mortar unit near Klishchiivka on July 4 2023, in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. As of last weekend, Ukraine's troops were pushing forward toward Bakhmut in their counteroffensive launched against Russia in early June. Russian accounts of fighting in this sector differ from Ukraine's, though.