Russia’s advance in Ukraine slows as casualties per square kilometer rise 3.5-fold, Radio Svoboda reports
Ukrainian drone operators say Russian infiltration units moving on foot lose all but one soldier out of every fifteen.
Russia's advance in Ukraine has slowed significantly, with casualties per square kilometer rising three and a half times according to Radio Svoboda's report based on Ukrainian project DeepState data. Russian forces once seized 450-550 square kilometers each month at their peak in 2025, but this has declined to as low as 27 square kilometers in July 2026.
A comparable Russian project, Slivochny Kapriz, also recorded a sharp slowdown from 550-600 square kilometers a month to 112 in June. Northern Donbas, which held roughly 5,000 square kilometers under Ukrainian control at year-end 2025, would take a year and a half to capture even using Slivochny Kapriz's more generous estimate. Despite the slowdown, Ukrainian military estimates of Russian losses remain high, averaging 32,800 Russian casualties per month from February to June 2026, with total losses estimated at 1.4 million since the invasion began.
Western officials have offered similar figures, with UK intelligence chief Anne Keast-Butler estimating 500,000 Russian servicemen killed as of May 2026, and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio estimating 7,000 Russian soldiers lost each week. The cost of a square kilometer has tripled, rising from 85 losses per square kilometer in 2025 to 290 in 2026.
Drones are now cited as the main reason for the slowed advance, as they make rapid breakthroughs impossible. Ukrainian drone operators attribute the decline in Russian advances to a decline in the training level of Russian troops, with some commanders now resorting to absurd tactics like dropping supplies for infiltrated soldiers to force forward movement, at a catastrophic cost of only one soldier surviving for every 15.
Russian infiltration groups of two to six fighters can cover 15-20 kilometers on foot, making them easy targets for Ukrainian drones. President Zelenskyy has claimed that Vladimir Putin is preparing to announce a new mobilization wave after the September State Duma elections, aiming to recruit 300,000 to 500,000 people. The Kremlin denies these plans, but analysts point to a November 2025 law allowing reservists to be sent into combat zones without a formal mobilization declaration, and a recent law expanding the pool of people eligible for military service contracts during mobilization and martial law.
Written by urgent.news from Euromaidan Press's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — it may contain errors, so check the original before relying on it.
