Ukraine has taken back large areas from the Russians, recently 26 settlements were liberated

Ukraine’s military command said its forces retook 26 settlements around Oleksandrivka in southeastern Ukraine in an operation lasting more than six months, Euronews reported on 14 August.

Twelve of the liberated settlements are in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, 10 in Donetsk region and four in Zaporizhzhia region. Kyiv authorities said the counteroffensive was designed to blunt Russia’s spring-summer offensive and push Russian troops out of Dnipropetrovsk region, which Moscow had been trying to carve into a buffer zone. (Look at the maps!)

The Ukrainian Airborne Assault Forces Command said Kyiv’s troops had liberated more than 745 square kilometres of territory. The Institute for the Study of War, which tracks the war through open-source mapping, gave a more conservative estimate of roughly 626.69 square kilometres across the Oleksandrivka direction and the northern edge of the adjoining Hulyaipole sector, while saying its methodology “likely underestimates Ukrainian advances.”

ISW analysts said the operation showed Ukraine can still mount coordinated, mechanised counterattacks after more than four years of largely static, attritional fighting. The US-based think-tank attributed the gains to maturing Ukrainian operational planning, attacks on Russian air-defence systems and logistics, Ukraine’s edge in tactical drone warfare, and the 1 February cutoff of Starlink connectivity for Russian units operating inside Ukraine.

ISW said the fighting near Oleksandrivka forced Moscow to choose between reinforcing its defences there or diverting troops and equipment to offensives elsewhere, a dilemma it described as sharpened by Russia’s declining recruitment rate. Over the same six-and-a-half-month period, ISW calculated that Russian forces lost roughly 233.74 square kilometres across the entire front while seizing or infiltrating 382.98 square kilometres of new territory.