Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest pace since the beginning invasion phase in 2022 and over the past month they have captured an area the size of half the city of London, Reuters reported, citing analysts and military bloggers.
Russian troops captured significant territory in Ukraine in early 2022, but were then pushed back to the east and south of the country. The 1,000 kilometer long front line was relatively static for two years until July, when the last, more limited Russian advances began.
Some Russian and Western officials say the war is entering perhaps its most dangerous phase after media reports surfaced that Russia had deployed North Korean troops to Ukraine and Kiev began using Western-supplied missiles to strikes back at Russia.
Moscow, which like North Korea has neither confirmed nor denied the presence of North Korean troops, used a medium-range hypersonic missile against Ukraine last week, and today Kiev reported the largest Russian drone attack on its territory since the beginning of the war.
„Russia sets new weekly and monthly records for the size of the occupied territory in Ukraine”, according to a report by the independent Russian news group “Agency”.
The Russian army has captured almost 235 square kilometers of territory in Ukraine in the past week, a record for 2024, the report said. Russian forces captured a total of 600 square kilometers in November, the document added, citing information from the organization “Deep State” (DeepState).
According to Passi Paroinen, a military analyst for the Finnish “Black Bird Group” (Black Bird Group), Russian forces have established control over 667 square kilometers of territory this month. He referred to data that he said may contain information from the month of October, marked with a slight delay.
President Vladimir Putin, who replaced the defense minister in May, has repeatedly said that Russian forces are advancing much more effectively and that Russia will achieve all of its objectives in Ukraine, although he has not elaborated on them, according to Reuters .
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky believes that Putin's main goals are to occupy the entire Donbas region, which includes Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and to push Ukrainian troops out of Russia's Kursk region, part of which they have controlled since August.< /p>
A source in the Ukrainian General Staff said on Sunday that Ukraine controls an area of about 800 square kilometers of the initially captured 1,376 square kilometers in Kursk Oblast and that the Ukrainian side will hold it “as long as it makes military sense&rdquo ;.
Russia controls about 18% of the territory of Ukraine, including the entire Crimean peninsula, slightly more than 80% of Donbas, more than 70% of Zaporozhye and Kherson regions in the south of the country, and just under 3% of Kharkiv region in eastern part of the country, show open access maps of the conflict.
The main axis of Russian advance is in the Donetsk region, where Russian forces are advancing towards the city of Pokrovsk and the city of Kurakhovo. Russia is increasingly relying on encirclement, then striking Ukrainian forces with artillery and guided bombs, Russian analysts say.
The head of Russian foreign intelligence Sergei Naryshkin said today that Russia has fully taken the strategic initiative on the battlefield.
Neither side has released exact figures for its own losses, but Western intelligence estimates put the number of dead and wounded in the hundreds of thousands, with vast swathes of eastern and western Ukraine devastated, Reuters commented.
According to Russian military bloggers, if Russia manages to break through the Ukrainian defenses around Kurakhovo, it will be able to advance west towards the city of Zaporozhye, while securing its rear to advance towards Pokrovsk.
Official representatives from the Ukrainian armed forces admit that the situation in the eastern part of the country is the worst since the beginning of the year. According to Zelensky, this is due to several factors, including delays of up to a year in manning brigades, in part because of the long delay before the US Congress signed off on a major aid package for Ukraine.
Earlier this month, he said some of these brigades would enter combat: “To stop the Russian army, new reserves will now arrive, equipped with the equipment we have been waiting for so long,”, he said.