In recent weeks, Russian troops have gained ground from Ukraine across the entire front line.
In some cases, they are seizing land that the Ukrainians had reconquered in fierce battles last year. And in a surprise offensive, Moscow made its biggest territorial gains since the end of 2022.
This is a sobering situation for Ukraine, one that could damage the morale of its soldiers and deteriorate the public mood. Analysts say Russia is expected to increase its gains in coming months while Ukraine awaiting American military aid to reach the battlefield.
Here’s a closer look at some of Russia’s recent advances.
Russia appears poised to take over Robotyne.
Russian Ministry of Defense requested last week that his troops had captured Robotyne, a small village in the Zaporizhzhia region in southeastern Ukraine. The village had been recaptured by Ukrainian soldiers in Augusta very famous, if rare, success in kyiv’s disappointing summer counter-offensive.
Ukraine has denied this claim, but Plans A detailed description of the battlefield, compiled by independent analysts from satellite images and video footage of the fighting, showed that Russian troops coming from the south had reached the northernmost part of the village.
“Robotyne should be seen as a gray area mainly controlled by the Russians,” said Black Bird Group analyst Emil Kastehelmi. He said that “the main Ukrainian forces withdrew from there”, but that they continued to target Russian forces from the north of the village, mainly with attack drones, and prevented them from securing there for the moment a permanent presence.
The village, made up of a few streets and which had a few hundred inhabitants before the war, no longer has any strategic importance for Russia and is nothing more than ruins. But its loss would be a symbolic blow to Ukraine after it fought so hard to win it back last year.
The Ukrainian army in the south released aerial images of Robotyne in mid-April. Piles of rubble lie along a dirt road, among bare trees. All around, green fields are dotted with craters, some several meters wide.
“This is what Robotyne looks like now,” The Ukrainian military said.
Moscow extends its control to the East.
Further east, Russian troops settled in Klishchiivka, a settlement that Ukraine regained the upper hand in September in one of its most significant advances at the time.
The Russian Defense Ministry announced Tuesday that its troops had captured the village. But pro-Kremlin Russian military bloggers have disputed that claim, and independent groups that map the battlefields say Russia currently controls only about half the village. Ukraine has not commented on this assertion.
Klishchiivka lies just south of Bakhmut, a town which Russian troops captured after months of fighting about a year ago.
Russian control of Klishchiivka could ease pressure on its troops in Bakhmut and facilitate their operations to capture the Ukrainian stronghold of Chasiv Yar, a hilltop town that is one of Moscow’s main targets, located just west of Bakhmut .
Capturing Chasiv Yar would give Russian forces control of dominant pitches in the region and expose towns that Ukraine uses as military logistics centers in the eastern Donetsk region to increased artillery fire. Russian troops entered the eastern edge of Chasiv Yar but did not cross the canal that separates this outskirts from the rest of the city.
Moscow illegally annexed the Donetsk region in 2022, but does not fully control it. Analysts say capturing the part that remains under Ukrainian control is one of Russia’s main goals.
In the north, civilians flee a second time.
Russia’s biggest advances so far this year have taken place in northeastern Ukraine, near the city of Kharkiv, where Moscow opened a new front about two weeks ago and seized the settlements that Ukraine had liberated in the fall of 2022.
Analysts say the aim of the new offensive is twofold: to strain Ukrainian forces, already outnumbered and outgunned, to make it easier for Russia to breach Ukrainian defenses elsewhere; and push Ukrainian forces away from the border to prevent them from targeting Russian towns with their artillery.
Russia continued attacks on villages outside Kharkiv and also stepped up airstrikes on the city itself. THURSDAY, Oleh Syniehubovhead of the Kharkiv regional military administration, said a Russian missile attack on a printing house killed at least seven people and injured 16 others.
The Ukrainian army has deployed elite brigades which so far appear to have blocked the Russian advance in the Kharkiv region. Yet Russian troops now control more than 70 square miles of Ukrainian land in the region, including a dozen settlements.
The offensive forced thousands of residents to relive an ordeal they had already endured: fleeing advancing Russian troops and seeing their villages destroyed by bombing. Mr. Syniehubov said nearly 11,000 people had been evacuated from the region over the past two weeks or so.
