MOSCOW--Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers said on Tuesday.
Russian troops swept through swathes of Ukraine in early 2022 before being pushed back to its east and south. The 1,000 km (620-mile) front line has been largely static for two years, until the latest, smaller-scale advances that began in July.
The war is entering what some Russian and Western officials say could be its most dangerous phase, with Russia reported to be using North Korean troops in Ukraine and Kyiv now using Western-supplied missiles to strike back inside Russia. Moscow, which like North Korea has not confirmed or denied the presence of the troops, used a hypersonic intermediate-range missile on Ukraine last week and Ukraine reported the biggest Russian drone attack on its territory so far on Tuesday.
"Russia has set new weekly and monthly records for the size of the occupied territory in Ukraine," independent Russian news group Agentstvo said in a report.
The Russian army captured almost 235 sq km (91 sq miles) in Ukraine over the past week, a weekly record for 2024, it said.Russian forces had taken 600 sq km (232 sq miles) in November, it added, citing data from DeepState, which studies combat footage and provides front line maps.
On Tuesday, Russia's Defence Ministry reported the capture by its forces of another village, Kopanky, in Kharkiv region, another focus of Russian military activity north of the main theatre of fighting in Donetsk region.Ukraine's third separate assault brigade, in a post on Telegram on Monday, said it had cleared the village of Russian soldiers.
And Ukrainian media quoted Nazar Voloshyn, a spokesperson for the Khortytsya group of troops, as saying Kyiv's forces had repelled a Russian advance on the logistical centre of Kupiansk, also in Kharkiv region. It was the second time this month that the Ukrainian military reported rebuffing an attack on Kupiansk.
Pasi Paroinen, a military analyst with Finland's Black Bird Group, said Russian forces had taken control of an estimated 667 sq km (257 sq miles) this month, citing data he said could include some October gains noted with a delay.
President Vladimir Putin, who replaced his defence minister in May, has repeatedly said that Russian forces are advancing much more effectively - and that Russia will achieve all its aims in Ukraine, although he has not spelled them out in detail.Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said he believed Putin's main objectives are to occupy the Donbas, spanning the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and oust Ukrainian troops from Russia's Kursk region, parts of which they have controlled since August,
A source on Ukraine's General Staff, said on Sunday that Ukraine now held around 800 of the 1,376 square kilometres of Kursk that they held initially and would hold it "for as long as is militarily appropriate."
Russia controls 18% of Ukraine including all of Crimea, just over 80% of Donbas and more than 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in the south, as well just under 3% of the eastern Kharkiv region, according to open source maps.
