Summary
- Russia gained 235 sq km (91 sq miles) in the past week.
- The advance has accelerated significantly since July.
- Moscow’s troops are closing in on the strategic town of Kurakhove.
- The pace of advance is the fastest since early 2022.
MOSCOW, Nov 26 (Reuters) – Analysts and war bloggers said on Tuesday that Russian forces have advanced in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, capturing an area half the size of London over the past month.
Russian troops initially swept through large parts of Ukraine in early 2022 before Ukrainian forces pushed them back to the east and south. The 1,000 km (620-mile) front line remained largely static for two years, until the latest, smaller-scale advances began in July.
The war is entering what some Russian and Western officials warn could be its most dangerous phase. Reports indicate that Russia is using North Korean troops in Ukraine, while 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, launched a hypersonic intermediate-range missile at Ukraine last week. On Tuesday, Ukraine reported the largest Russian drone attack on its territory so far.
Independent Russian news group Agentstvo reported that Russia set new weekly and monthly records for the size of the occupied territory in Ukraine.
The Russian army captured nearly 235 sq km (91 sq miles) in Ukraine over the past week, setting a weekly record for 2024. The report also noted that Russian forces had taken 600 sq km (232 sq miles) in November, citing data from DeepState, which analyzes combat footage and provides frontline maps.
Military analyst Pasi Paroinen from Finland’s Black Bird Group said Russian forces have taken control of an estimated 667 sq km (257 sq miles) this month, citing data that might include some October gains recorded with a delay.
President Vladimir Putin, who replaced his defense minister in May, has repeatedly claimed that Russian forces are advancing much more effectively and that Russia will achieve all its goals in Ukraine, although he has not specified them in detail.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he believes Putin’s main objectives are to occupy the entire Donbas, covering the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and to oust Ukrainian troops from Russia’s Kursk region, parts of which they have controlled since August.
A source from Ukraine’s General Staff said on Sunday that Ukraine now holds around 800 of the 1,376 square kilometers of Kursk they initially controlled and will maintain it “for as long as is militarily appropriate.”
According to open source maps, Russia controls 18% of Ukraine, including all of Crimea, just over 80% of Donbas, more than 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in the south, and just under 3% of the eastern Kharkiv region.
RUSSIAN PROGRESS
The advance has primarily focused on the Donetsk region, with Russian forces pushing towards the town of Pokrovsk and into Kurakhove. Russian analysts report that Russia has increasingly encircled territory and then bombarded Ukrainian forces with artillery and glide bombs.
Sergei Naryshkin, head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), stated on Tuesday that Russia holds the complete strategic initiative on the battlefield.
Neither side releases accurate data on its own losses, but Western intelligence estimates casualties in the hundreds of thousands, with large areas of eastern and southern Ukraine turned into wastelands.
Ukrainian officials say it is difficult to expand mobilization without knowing when Western military assistance will arrive and how reliable it will be.
In its Monday update, the General Staff of Ukraine’s armed forces reported that 45 battles of varying intensity were ongoing along the Kurakhove section of the front line that evening.
Russian war bloggers claim that if Russia can break through the Ukrainian defenses around Kurakhove, they will be able to push westward toward the city of Zaporizhzhia while securing their rear and positioning for a move towards Pokrovsk.
Ukrainian military officials acknowledge that the situation in the east is the worst it has been all year. Zelenskiy has blamed several factors, including delays of up to a year in equipping brigades, partly due to the long approval process in the U.S. Congress for a major Ukraine assistance package.
