WATCH: Where the Ukraine war stands, one year on

One year after Russia invaded Ukraine, the scars of the deadly war are clear, even as the battles continue.

“It’s going to be a long, drawn-out, very difficult war for both sides,” the PBS NewsHour foreign affairs correspondent Nick Schifrin told digital correspondent Nicole Ellis in a March 7 conversation.

Watch the conversation in the player above.

In the areas Schifrin visited on a recent reporting trip to Ukraine, “Ukrainian soldiers had not moved for three months, six months, nine months. They were in trenches, they were in defensive positions. They were hidden in trees, firing Soviet-era munitions, driving Soviet-era tanks,” with little ability to do more than simply hold their ground, he said.

On the Russian side, hundreds of thousands of troops have been drawn from Russian prisons, both officially and through a private military company called the Wagner Group. Casualty estimates are well into six figures from both sides.

Despite the heavy losses, Schifrin said, “There is no political space on the Ukrainian side for any concessions.

“The Ukrainians are … fighting an existential battle that they believe is for their very right to exist, given the words that Russian President Vladimir Putin uses about Ukraine,” Schifrin said. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s ongoing political popularity shows that “there is no interest in his giving up anything.”

Putin and Russia seem equally unlikely to budge, Schifrin added. “What is more likely is this war will continue for a long time.”

The U.S. government’s best hope is that the modernized equipment and training it has provided will help enable the Ukrainians to seize the upper hand, but it’s unlikely that Ukraine will be able to regain all of its territory, Schifrin said.

The United States tops the list of countries giving financial support to Ukraine, having provided more than $75 billion in aid since the start of the war, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. But whether the U.S. can or will maintain its support of Ukraine for a long time to come depends in large part on the results of the next presidential election, Schifrin said.

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