Four years ago today, war returned to Europe. In the early hours of Feb. 24, 2022, missiles streaked across the sky and artillery fire shattered the silence as Russian forces struck cities across Ukraine. Tens of thousands of troops poured over the borders in a sweeping, four-pronged advance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin believed this “special military operation” would be swift and decisive, a lightning strike that would seize Kyiv, collapse the Ukrainian command structure, topple its leadership, and force a political settlement before the world could react. He imagined it would happen much in the way that he had seized Crimea from Ukraine nine years earlier. It could all be over in as little as three days.

But Ukraine refused to follow the script.

Four years later, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is still in Kyiv. Ukrainian forces continue to contest every kilometer of the battlefield with relentless ferocity. And the will of the people has hardened like iron. What began as a lightning assault has slowed into a brutal war of endurance—one measured not in days but years.

Many in the West insist the strain on Russia cannot last—that the nation will falter, its system fracture, and Putin himself will be swept aside. But biblical prophecy reveals something far different: He is only just getting started.