Fabrice Deprez reports in the Financial Times:
Russia may have more difficulty advancing in 2026 than it did in 2025. Footage released last week showed soldiers from the Ukrainian 425th assault regiment fighting in the ruins of Ternove, a village mapped a month ago 3km into Russian-held territory, beyond the “kill zone”. The Ukrainian operation, which kicked off in early February, signals a real ability to push back Russian forces. Late autumn, a similar push — carefully planned — reversed Russian gains in the Kharkiv region. This time, Ukrainian troops also took advantage of Elon Musk’s decision to deny Russian troops access to Starlink. The push “demonstrated that Ukraine can still conduct successful offensive operations, even with relatively few infantry, exploiting weak points along the line with proper planning and preparation.”
Kyiv has seized on a rare frontline advance to broadcast to an exhausted population and to western allies distracted by the Iran war that Ukraine is still in the fight. Ukrainian paratroopers and assault units over the past month moved into the “kill zone” — a medley of camouflaged Ukrainian and Russian infantry positions where any movement can trigger drone strikes — and cleared several settlements, according to Ukraine’s leadership.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and the country’s top military commanders have hailed the successful push in the plains of the south-eastern Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions, where Russian troops had made their biggest advances in 2025 as proof of Ukraine’s resilience four years into the full-scale war. But the challenges for Ukraine remain significant, as Moscow’s troops are gearing up for an expected intensification of fighting in the coming months, analysts say. Oleksandr Komarenko, a major general in Ukraine’s general staff, told Ukrainian media last week they had “liberated almost the entire territory of the Dnipropetrovsk region” previously controlled by Russian forces. “We believe they were quite successful, we have restored control over somewhere around 400–435 sq km [of territory],” Zelenskyy said last week after returning from a trip to the eastern front.
Black Bird, a Finnish war-monitoring group, said Russian troops in February lost more Ukrainian territory than they captured for the first time since November 2023. But Russian soldiers have advanced in other areas, including at the southern edge of the Zaporizhzhia front. Analysts warn that Ukraine faces a difficult year, as it emerges from its worst winter since the beginning of the Russian invasion and both sides brace for fighting to intensify in coming months. Ukrainian forces are still wrestling with chronic manpower shortages. Progress in the south has been heavily reliant on a small pool of “firefighters” — seasoned units deployed in hotspots to plug defensive gaps or exploit Russian weaknesses.
The flip side of that strategy, analysts say, is that moving these troops can leave other parts of the front line exposed. Across the battlefield, the arrival of spring means the return of foliage used by Russian assault groups to hide from reconnaissance drones and move deeper into Ukrainian lines. Russian forces took near-full control of the strongholds of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region and Huliaipole in the south. They have also been edging closer to Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, the last major cities in Ukrainian-controlled Donbas, which Moscow still demands Kyiv withdraw from as part of any eventual peace deal.
Russian progress has remained particularly slow in March, but the war-tracking project DeepState said last week the relative lull in fighting coincided with Russian forces regrouping and replenishing reserves. “The ground is drying up, it will soon be green, we’re entering the summer campaign,” wrote Oleksandr Solonko, a Ukrainian serviceman and popular commentator. Ukrainian drone operators, who have been at the heart of their country’s defensive strategy, “are going to become an even higher-priority target”, he warned. The Ukrainian leadership’s claims that its forces had seized more than 400 sq km of territory in the past weeks could not be independently verified, with most open-source monitoring groups making more conservative estimates. DeepState founder Roman Pohorily said the 400-sq km figure was exaggerated. “I don’t know where they get it from, to be honest,” he told Ukrainian media.
Black Bird estimated that Russian forces had been pushed out of 213 sq km of Ukrainian land on the southern front line. But with Russia having advanced in other parts of the front, the net total of Ukrainian gains in February is an estimated 37 sq km, according to the Finnish group. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, centre, and the country’s top military commanders have hailed the successful push in the south-eastern Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
The Ukrainian operation, which kicked off in early February, does signal a real ability to push back Russian forces, analysts say. Late autumn, a similar push — carefully planned and initially kept out of media reports — reversed significant Russian gains in the Kharkiv region. This time, Ukrainian troops also took advantage of Elon Musk’s decision to deny Russian troops access to the Starlink satellite service. The push “demonstrated that Ukraine can still conduct successful offensive operations, even with relatively few infantry”, said military analyst Rob Lee of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. “There are weak points along the front line which can be exploited with proper planning and preparation.”
Ukraine has turbocharged the production of drones, which are now routinely used to deliver food, water and ammunition to frontline positions. The military has also intensified the use of aerial drones able to strike at a distance of between 50km and 200km — a “middle strike” range where Russia has held the advantage. The increased use of drones of all type, including ground robots delivering supplies to frontline units, “is one of the most significant achievements on the Ukrainian side”, said Oleksiy Melnyk, a military analyst at the Razumkov centre and former officer in the Ukrainian Air Force.
Given all this, said Lee, “there are reasons to believe that Russia may have more difficulty advancing in 2026 than it did in 2025”. Footage released last week showed soldiers from the Ukrainian 425th assault regiment fighting in the snowy ruins of Ternove, a village that DeepState mapped a month ago some 3km into Russian-held territory, beyond the “kill zone”.
The Ukrainian operation “denied Russian forces the jumping-off positions from which they intend to launch the summer campaign”, according to the Centre for Defence Strategies, a Kyiv-based security think-tank. Recommended InterviewWar in Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy says war in Ukraine at ‘beginning of the end’ Zelenskyy on Saturday claimed this month’s advance was as successful as last year’s progress around Kupiansk. “We saw how they began moving troops there from the Donetsk direction because they feared we might move beyond those 430km,” he said.
Robert Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine’s unmanned systems force, last week said its units had destroyed 19 Russian air defence elements since the beginning of the month, including two on Thursday. Footage of a Ukrainian-built FP-2 drone hitting a train loaded with fuel some 150km behind the frontline accompanied the message. “Ukrainian society needs good news,” said Melnyk. “It’s clear that Russian propaganda has been successful in creating this narrative that Russia is winning. The main objective of these messages is to show that it’s not the case.”
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