Russian forces are advancing into Ukraine at the fastest pace since the early days of the 2022 invasion, occupying an area half the size of London in the past month, analysts and war bloggers say.
The war is entering what some Russian and Western officials say could be its most dangerous phase after Moscow’s forces made some of their biggest territorial gains and the United States allowed Kiev to counterattack with U.S. missiles.
“Russia has set new weekly and monthly records for the size of occupied territory in Ukraine,” the independent Russian news group Agentstvo said in a report.
The Russian military captured nearly 235 square kilometers (km2) in Ukraine last week, a weekly record for 2024.
Russian forces had captured 600 square km in November, he added, citing data from DeepState, a group with close ties to the Ukrainian army that studies combat footage and provides maps of the front.
Russia began advancing more quickly into eastern Ukraine in July even as Ukrainian forces carved out a slice of its western Kursk region. Since then, according to open source maps, the Russian advance has accelerated.
Russia currently controls 18% of Ukraine, including all of Crimea, just over 80% of the Donbas, which includes Luhansk and Donetsk, and more than 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions, as well as just under 3% of Ukrainian territory. Kharkiv region, according to open source maps.
Neither side publishes accurate data on its losses, although Western intelligence estimates casualties number hundreds of thousands dead or wounded, while swaths of eastern and southern Ukraine have turned into wastelands.
The largest drone strike of the war
Russia’s strong push to the front lines in eastern Ukraine has also coincided with the intensification of nightly drone attacks on Ukrainian cities.
Russian forces staged the largest-ever drone attack on Ukraine overnight, cutting electricity across much of the western Ternopil region and damaging residential buildings in the Kiev region, Ukrainian officials said on Tuesday.
Of 188 drones used overnight, Ukraine shot down 76 and lost track of 96, likely due to active electronic warfare, the air force said. Five drones headed towards Belarus.
“The enemy launched a record number of Shahed UAVs and unidentified drones…,” it read. Russia uses cheaply produced “suicide” drones and low-cost “decoy” drones, which jam Ukrainian air defenses.
“Unfortunately, there was damage to critical infrastructure and private and residential buildings were damaged in several regions due to the massive drone attack,” the Air Force said in a statement, adding that no casualties were reported.
Zelenskyj calls for strengthening of air defense
The Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in a report that “the advance of Russian forces into southeastern Ukraine is largely the result of the discovery and tactical exploitation of vulnerabilities in Ukrainian lines.”
The report also states that Russian forces recently advanced “at a significantly faster pace than in all of 2023.”
President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that Russian forces are advancing much more effectively and that Russia will achieve all its war objectives in Ukraine.
Putin’s foreign intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin, said Tuesday that Russia is categorically against “freezing the conflict” because Moscow needs a “solid, long-term peace.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly said that peace cannot be established until all Russian forces are expelled and all territory captured by Moscow, including Crimea, is returned.
But outnumbered by Russian troops, the Ukrainian army is struggling to recruit soldiers and provide equipment to new units.
Zelenskyy said he believed Putin’s main goals were to occupy the entire Donbas, which spans the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and to oust Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region, parts of which they have controlled since August.
The president recently called on Ukraine’s Western partners to focus their efforts on helping improve the nation’s air defense capabilities in response to Russia’s drone and missile attacks.
“The world has air defense systems that can also defend against this type of threat,” he said. “This is what we all need to focus on.”
