Ukraine's territory taken by Russia this year 'six times last year'

Photo Source: Yonhap News

Russian forces have recently accelerated their advance on Ukraine's eastern front lines, taking about six times more territory than last year, but Ukrainian forces' operation to invade Russia's Kursk in August has failed to achieve that goal, according to analysts.

According to the BBC on the 20th local time, the US think tank War Research Institute and ISW analyzed social media videos and reports on troop movements and found that Russian forces occupied an additional 2,700 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory this year.

This is about six times larger than all of Ukraine's territory (465 square kilometers) occupied by Russian forces last year.

Russian forces that invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, threatened the capital Kyiv at the outset before being pushed east by Ukrainian counterattacks, and fighting between the two sides has since stalled with more than a thousand kilometers of front lines between them.

But this year, Russia has steadily expanded its occupation around the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, and Ukrainian forces are on the verge of losing even the logistical hub of Pokrovsk in the region.

Russia's advance has accelerated, especially in recent months, and it has been analyzed that the newly occupied area alone has reached 1,000 square kilometers between September and two months.

Marina Miron, a defense researcher at King's College London, predicted that if Russia continues to advance quickly, there is a "probability" that the eastern front of Ukraine will actually collapse.According to

ISW, the total amount of Ukrainian territory currently occupied by Russia is estimated to be 116,649 square kilometers.

Ukraine, on the other hand, captured 1,171 square kilometers in the first month since advancing into Russia's Kursk region in August, but Russian forces have now recaptured 593 square kilometers, nearly half of them.

The Russian military, which was considered to have failed to respond to Ukraine's advance into Kursk, is currently preparing to launch a massive offensive to retake its territory with 50,000 troops, including North Korean troops.

Recent videos in the Kursk region suggest that Russian forces are suffering significant losses in terms of troops and equipment due to fierce fighting, but it seems clear that the Russian territory occupied by Ukrainian forces is decreasing.

Ukraine's attack on Kursk significantly boosted the morale of the Ukrainian military, showing at the time that Ukraine could also hit mainland Russia.

Ukraine reportedly deployed the most experienced elite attack brigade to Kursk for this purpose. The offensive is also said to have been aimed at dispersing Russian elite troops concentrated on Ukraine's eastern front to Kursk.

But Russian President Vladimir Putin has not returned elite troops in Ukraine to the country despite the humiliation of taking over the mainland for the first time since World War II, and as a result, the Ukrainian military is in a situation where its main forces are tied to Kursk.

Some Western military experts warn that Kursk is becoming a "strategic disaster" for the Ukrainian military.

"The operation was aimed at gaining leverage in political negotiations (for a ceasefire) and militarily getting Russian troops out of the Donbas and liberating Kursk," Miron said. "But what we're seeing now is that Ukraine is tied up in the Kursk region."

It added that Russia's control of more territory could lead to Russia's greater negotiating power in future end-of-war negotiations.

U.S. President Donald Trump, who will take office on January 20 next year, has expressed his position to end the war through negotiations with Russia based on the "current boundary" between the two sides of the military.

Researcher Miron said, "I am confident that when negotiating, as Russia has emphasized, it will follow the battlefield situation," adding, "Russia has a much better bargaining chip than Ukraine."