Russian forces are advancing into Ukraine at their fastest pace since the early days of the war in 2022, capturing an area half the size of London over the past month, war analysts and bloggers say. The war is moving into what many Russian and Western officials see as its most dangerous phase, as Russian forces have made some of their biggest territorial gains and the United States has allowed Kiev to use US missiles to strike deep into its territory. Russia, reports Reuters.
“Russia has set new weekly and monthly records for the size of occupied Ukrainian territory,” the independent Russian news group Agentstvo said in a report.
The Russian military has occupied nearly 235 square kilometers in Ukraine over the past week, a weekly record for 2024, according to the report. Russian forces gained 600 square kilometers in November, citing data from DeepState, a group with close ties to the Ukrainian military that studies battle footage and creates maps of the front line. Russia began a rapid advance into eastern Ukraine in July, shortly after Ukrainian forces launched an offensive in Russia’s western Kursk region. Since then, Russian advances have escalated, according to the maps.
Russian forces are moving into the town of Kurakhove, a step closer to the Pokrovsk logistics hub in Donetsk, and have exploited weaknesses in Kiev’s troops along the front line, analysts said.
“Russian forces have recently been advancing at a faster pace than the pace of 2023,” said the report by the Washington Institute for the Study of War. According to Monday’s update of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, 45 battles of varying intensity were taking place on the front line in Kurakhovo that evening. “The advances of Russian forces in southeastern Ukraine are the result of the discovery and tactical exploitation of weaknesses in the Ukrainian lines,” the Institute’s analysts said in their report.
Russia says it will achieve all its goals in Ukraine, regardless of what the West says or does. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly said that peace cannot be achieved until all Russian forces leave and territory occupied by Moscow, including annexed Crimea.
But with outnumbered Russian forces, the Ukrainian military is struggling to recruit soldiers and provide equipment for new units. Zelensky has said he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin’s main goals are to conquer all of Donbas, including the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and drive Ukrainian troops out of the Kursk region, parts of which have been controlled by Ukrainians since August.