Russia’s advance in Ukraine is slowing. Here’s what’s happening and why

Russia wants to trade gains on the battlefield and the impression that further advances are inevitable for a favourable deal in peace talks. Ukraine, meanwhile, wants to show that it can still fend off its giant neighbour.

Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin are both willing to discuss peace negotiations. Picture: AFP.

The Russian army’s advance in Ukraine is slowing, just as President Trump is pressing for talks.

The slowdown comes at a critical time for both sides. Russia wants to trade gains on the battlefield – and the impression that further advances are inevitable – for a favourable deal in peace talks proposed by Trump. Ukraine, meanwhile, wants to show that it can still fend off its giant neighbour.

In the first month of 2025, Russia was taking on average nearly six days to occupy an area the size of Manhattan, according to data from DeepState, a Ukrainian group that monitors the front lines. That is more than twice as long as in November. Gains in February have slowed further.

The heavy losses for small geographical gains set up the brutal arm-wrestle that will most likely characterise Russia’s war in Ukraine this year: Can the Russians sustain or even accelerate their assaults and gain enough ground to force Ukraine, struggling with a lack of manpower, and its allies to seek an accommodation? Or will the offensives peter out in the face of Ukraine’s dogged resistance?

Ukrainian soldiers operate self-propelled howitzers on the frontline near Pokrovsk. Picture: Getty Images.

How Russia is pushing in Ukraine’s east

Russian forces are persistently pressing forward at several points along the front line, taking advantage of superior resources, especially manpower. After heavy aerial bombs and artillery blast a path, Russian troops scurry forward house by house taking heavy losses.

Ukraine, short on infantry, relies mostly on explosive drones to pick off the soldiers as they seek to advance. Kyiv and its Western allies said Russian daily casualties increased every month in the last five months of 2024.

So far, the Russians are still nibbling forward. They have taken the small cities of Kurakhove and Selydove, both with pre-war populations of around 20,000, and swept around the south and west of the city of Pokrovsk, a key target in the east. They are also pressing in other cities, such as the high point of Chasiv Yar, and, reinforced by North Korean shock troops, battling to take back territory in their own Kursk region occupied by Ukraine since last summer.

Ukrainian servicemen ride a T-72 tank in the Kharkiv region. Picture: AFP.

Why Russian gains are slowing

Russia’s gains accelerated last fall, particularly in areas to the west of the occupied regional capital of Donetsk. But they have slowed over winter, in part because a lack of foliage makes infantry easy to spot and target with aerial drones, but possibly because of growing exhaustion on the Russian side, analysts said.

It took the last half-year for Russian forces to seize Ukrainian territory equivalent to the land area of Rhode Island, at the cost of tens of thousands of troops. Recruitment is getting tougher, and Russia is having to increase payments to attract volunteers, including those from prisons.

In October last year, a senior US defence official said that Russia had suffered some 600,000 casualties since the start of the war in February 2022, and that the accelerated advance was increasing losses. Ukraine’s top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskiy, said Russia lost as many people last year as in the first two years of the war.

Drones are changing the face of warfare in Ukraine, where both Moscow and Kyiv use them for armed attacks. Picture: AFP.

Russia’s big push to encircle one city

Russia’s most significant advance has come to the south of the eastern city of Pokrovsk. The city was long on a major supply route for Ukrainian forces in the east via a highway and railroad. But Russia has swept through villages and towns to the south and is approaching the road on the city’s east and west flanks.

A senior US military official said Russia had concentrated tens of thousands of troops in a very small area, advancing by sheer force of numbers while creating easy pickings for Ukrainian troops. A small counter-attack by Ukraine recently regained one village.

Russia strikes back on its own territory

A key Russian goal is to eliminate the Ukrainian military presence in Russia’s Kursk province. Russian counter-attacks, together with the front-line deployment of thousands of North Korean troops, has shrunk the territory Ukraine holds to around half its greatest extent.

But Ukraine is clinging on by deploying some of its best-equipped units to the area. Ukraine’s leaders say they want to hold part of Kursk as a buffer zone and as a bargaining chip in any future peace negotiations. Critics of that approach say it has sucked in troops sorely needed elsewhere on the front line.

A woman walks through an open-air exhibition of destroyed Russian military vehicles in Kyiv. Picture: AFP.

What’s happening with Russia’s tanks?

After three years of war, Russia has burned through about half of its vast stocks of mostly Soviet-era tanks and armoured vehicles – and many of the rest are older models in poor shape, according to an analysis by a group of open-source intelligence analysts who examine satellite images of Russian stores.

The huge losses show the cost of Russia’s advances, and how difficult they will be to sustain. With stocks of armoured vehicles ebbing, Russia has used civilian vehicles and motorbikes in assaults, but mostly is relying on unprotected infantry, which have taken heavy casualties.

At the current tempo, Russia will run critically low on battle tanks and armoured personnel carriers by late 2025, said George Barros, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank. However, Russia’s partners, especially North Korea, could help by providing armoured vehicles from their own stockpiles, he said.

Dow Jones.