MORE: Ukraine has regained the operational initiative on most key battlefield directions and has been contesting Russia’s strategic initiative since late 2025, writes @nataliabugayova. ⬇️ Ukraine has slowed Russian battlefield advances to a footpace in 2026 and has grown the already staggering human cost of the Russian advance. Ukraine has retaken significant territory from Russia in 2026, and at the theater level has nearly zeroed out Russian gains for the year. ISW has observed evidence to assess that Russian forces have only made a net gain of about 100 square kilometers thus far in 2026 thanks to Ukrainian counteroffensives, which have liberated at least 1,046 square kilometers, for example. The daily Russian net rate of advance in 2026 is so far less than a square kilometer per day — literal footpace. Russia’s summer offensive has failed. Russia’s fall offensive is likely to fail as well. Russian President Vladimir Putin has failed to accomplish any of his stated war aims in Ukraine to date. Putin did not force the Ukrainian government to capitulate, nor did he destroy the Ukrainian military. Russia is nowhere close to taking the rest of the Donetsk region, including the Fortress Belt – one of Putin’s stated war aims. Ukraine has forced the Kremlin to confront dilemmas inside of Russia that would have been unthinkable not long ago. Ukraine’s deep strike campaign has triggered fuel shortages in Russia, degrading at least 30 percent of its refining capacity, and forced Moscow to choose which infrastructure to protect with air defense assets. Ukrainian advances and strikes are challenging Putin’s promises of Russia’s economic stability, security, and greatness. Ukraine’s 2026 battlefield progress is not transient or accidental — it is a result of Ukraine’s maturing warfighting capabilities and military transformation that occurred over 2025 and 2026. Ukraine has significantly grown its intermediate-range and deep-strike campaigns, expanded military production, matured operational art concepts, and is increasingly focused on the long-term warfighting strategy. Ukraine is working on its ballistic missile program, which, if successful, will put key Russian defense industrial and military infrastructure at even greater risk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Ukrainian forces have defeated the 2026 Russian campaign to seize Donetsk Oblast. Russian forces intended to conduct a deep encirclement of the entire Fortress Belt from the Lyman direction in the north and the Dobropillya direction in the southwest, linking up near Barvinkove, Kharkiv Oblast. This wide encirclement would have largely completed the seizure of unoccupied Donetsk Oblast. The Ukrainian counteroffensive known as Operation Vivaldi in the Lyman direction has completely disrupted this Russian plan by inflicting an operational defeat on the northern Russian pincer. This Ukrainian success will force the Russian military to reconstitute and likely fundamentally rethink its approach to accomplish its goals in this area. There is therefore no basis to assess that Russian forces will be able to take the rest of Donetsk Oblast in any short period of time, as Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to claim, or even to forecast that Russian forces will ever be able to complete their seizure of this region by force.