Ukraine claws back southern territory as Russia’s war enters fifth year

Ukraine marked the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion with territorial gains in the south and improved air defences that kept the lights on in Kyiv, despite two barrages of drones and missiles during the past week.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday told the AFP that Ukrainian forces had regained 300 square kilometres (115 square miles) of territory in southern Ukraine, without specifying the time period.

His commander in chief, Oleksandr Syrskii, two days later, said those southern gains were 400sq km (155 square miles), and had come since the end of January.

“You can’t say that we’re losing the war … The question is whether we will win,” Zelenskyy said.

The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, attributed Kyiv’s successes to the fact that Ukraine persuaded Starlink to disconnect illegal Russian terminals in the theatre, and the fact that the Kremlin itself partly disabled the Telegram messaging service.

Russian troops used both services for essential military communications, it said.

Although limited in scale, Ukrainian counterattacks may have done enough to throw Russian preparations for a spring offensive off balance, said the ISW.

Open source intelligence suggests that Russia’s campaign has been flagging for a long time.

European leaders have publicly noted that over the past three years, it has seized 1.5 percent of Ukraine or less at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.

The battle for Pokrovsk, for example, a city in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, appears to have ended in victory for Russia in recent weeks,

but the campaign took two years for a town with a pre-war population of 60,000.

“Pokrovsk was operationally significant given its use as an important logistics hub, but Russian strikes denied Ukrainian forces the ability to fully leverage the town for logistics as early as July 2025,” said the ISW. “Pokrovsk had long ceased to be an operationally significant town by the time Russian forces intensified their push to capture the town in Winter 2025.”

Putin’s air campaign

On Tuesday, the fourth anniversary of Russia’s war, Zelenskyy noted that “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin understands he is not capable of defeating Ukraine on the battlefield, and the ‘second army in the world’ is fighting against apartment buildings and power plants.”

He was referring to Russia’s aerial campaign against the four-fifths of Ukraine that remain free, where he noted that “the Air Force has started performing better.”

Russia attacked Ukraine during the week with just more than 1,500 drones and at least 90 missiles, but the two biggest attacks came two days before and two days after the anniversary.

On Sunday, Russia launched 197 drones and 50 missiles. Ukraine downed all but 26 drones and 31 missiles.

Then, on Thursday, Russia launched 420 drones and 39 missiles. Ukraine neutralised 90 percent of the drones and 30 missiles. “We indeed managed to protect very important facilities,” Zelenskyy said.

To achieve even this success rate, Russia appears to be using all of its production capacity.

“All the ballistics that come to us are made at the end of 2025 – the beginning of 2026. That is, we are actually being attacked with missiles from the factory,” said defence ministry adviser Serhiy Beskrestnov.

Ukraine’s Air Force said it had destroyed 3,855 long-range missiles used to target rear areas since the beginning of the war, as well as 67,000 long-range drones.

Ukraine strikes back

Ukraine has launched a strategic campaign to damage the Russian weapons and fuel supply chains. During the past week, that campaign saw significant successes.

On February 21, Ukrainian-made FP-5 “Flamingo” missiles struck the Votkinsk missile factory in Russia’s Udmurtia – about 1,200km (745 miles) from the Ukrainian border.