Russia makes rapid advances in Ukraine, seizing area half the size of London

Moscow: Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers have said.

Russian troops swept through swaths of Ukraine at the start of the war before being pushed back to its east and south. The 1000-kilometre front line has been largely static for two years, until the latest, smaller advances that began in July.

The Russian army has captured almost 235 square kilometres over the past seven days, a weekly record for 2024, according to a report by independent Russian news group Agentstvo.

Russian army snipers change their position while fighting with Ukrainian armed forces at an undisclosed location in Ukraine. Credit: Russian Defense Ministry/AP

“Russia has set new weekly and monthly records for the size of the occupied territory in Ukraine,” it said.

Russian forces had taken 600 square kilometres in November, it added, citing data from DeepState, which studies combat footage and provides frontline maps.

On Tuesday, Russia’s Defence Ministry reported the capture by its forces of another village, Kopanky, in Kharkiv region, another focus of Russian military activity north of the main theatre of fighting in Donetsk region.

In a post on Telegram on Monday, Ukraine’s third separate assault brigade said it had cleared the village of Russian soldiers.

Ukrainian media quoted Nazar Voloshyn, a spokesperson for the Khortytsya group of troops, as saying Kyiv’s forces had repelled a Russian advance on the logistical centre of Kupiansk, also in Kharkiv region. It was the second time this month that the Ukrainian military reported rebuffing an attack on Kupiansk.

Pasi Paroinen, a military analyst with Finland’s Black Bird Group, said Russian forces had taken control of an estimated 667 square kilometres this month, citing data he said could include some October gains noted with a delay.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who replaced his defence minister in May, has repeatedly said forces are advancing much more effectively, and that Russia will achieve all its aims in Ukraine, although he has not spelt them out in detail.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he believes Putin’s main objectives are to occupy the Donbas, spanning the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and oust Ukrainian troops from Russia’s Kursk region, parts of which they have controlled since August.

A source on Ukraine’s General Staff said on Sunday that Ukraine now held about 800 of the 1376 square kilometres of Kursk that they held initially and would hold it “for as long as is militarily appropriate”.

Russia controls 18 per cent of Ukraine including all of Crimea, just over 80 per cent of Donbas and more than 70 per cent of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in the south, as well just under 3 per cent of the eastern Kharkiv region, according to open source maps.

Latest advance

The thrust of the advance has been in Donetsk region, with Russian forces pushing towards the town of Pokrovsk and into the town of Kurakhove. Russia has increasingly encircled territory and then pummelled Ukrainian forces with artillery and glide bombs, according to Russian analysts.

Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, said Russia held the complete strategic initiative on the battlefield.

A Ukrainian unit prepares to mine territory between Ukrainian and Russian positions with remotely controlled mines at the Pokrovsk front line, Ukraine, last week.Credit: Getty Images

Neither side publishes accurate data on their own losses, though Western intelligence estimates casualties to number hundreds of thousands killed or injured, while swaths of eastern and southern Ukraine have turned into wastelands.

Ukrainian officials say it is hard to expand mobilisation without knowing when Western military assistance is going to arrive and how reliable it will be.

The General Staff of Ukraine’s military said in an update that its forces had repelled 23 Russian attempts to advance along the Kurakhove part of the front line that evening. It said 25 attacks had been repelled near Pokrovsk,

Russian war bloggers say that if Russia can pierce the Ukrainian defences around Kurakhove, they will be able to push westwards towards the city of Zaporizhzhia while securing their rear to allow a swing towards Pokrovsk.

Ukrainian military officials acknowledge the situation in the east is the worst it has been all year. Zelensky has blamed several factors including delays of up to a year in equipping brigades, partly because of the long time the US Congress took to sign off on a major Ukraine assistance package.

The war is entering what some Russian and Western officials say could be its most dangerous phase. Russia is reported to be using North Korean troops in Ukraine and Kyiv is now using Western-supplied missiles to strike back inside Russia.

Moscow, which like North Korea has not confirmed or denied the presence of the troops, used a hypersonic intermediate-range missile on Ukraine last week, and Ukraine reported the biggest Russian drone attack on its territory so far on Tuesday.

Reuters