Ukrainian forces have begun 2024 largely on the defensive, withering under renewed Russian assaults at multiple points all along a 900-mile front stretching from the plains of the Black Sea coast to the thickly forested Russia-Belarus-Ukraine border region.
However, maps using information from reports by the Institute for the Study of War show that despite constant offensives and huge reported losses, Russian gains have been meager. Moscow's troops are believed to have seized less than 25 square miles of territory since the end of February, when Russian soldiers finally captured the fortress city of Avdiivka in eastern Donetsk Oblast. This advance was the most significant Russian battlefield victory since the capture of Bakhmut—also in Donetsk—in May 2023, both victories coming at huge cost to the settlements themselves, the Ukrainian defenders, and the Russian attackers.
The carnage in Bakhmut and Avdiivka is emblematic of the attritional warfare along much of the front. The fluid mechanized combat of the early invasion period has given way to artillery duels and trench warfare, with ambitious offensive efforts by both sides often blunted by fortified defenses, mines, and constant first-person view (FPV) drone strikes.
Neither side appears to have enough of an edge to force a major breakthrough of enemy lines and precipitate the kind of strategic battlefield victory that would reinvigorate stalled peace talks.
Both Kyiv and Moscow consider the war existential, and neither has shown genuine public willingness to negotiate or offer concessions. With pivotal elections looming in Europe and the U.S., the Kremlin seems hopeful it can outlast Ukraine's distracted Western partners. Kyiv, meanwhile, is desperately working to keep European Union-NATO focus on what many consider a new war of independence.
The current fighting can generally be divided into four theaters: Luhansk in the northeast, Donetsk in the east, Zaporizhzhia in the southeast, and Kherson in the south.
In the northeast, Russian forces are pushing towards the city of Kupyansk seeking to capture the remainder of Luhansk region, which along with Donetsk region to the south has been at the heart of Kyiv's battle with Moscow-controlled separatists since 2014.
Fierce fighting is also ongoing in Serebryanskyy Forest to the west of Lyman, which sits close to the administrative borders of Luhansk and Donetsk.
In southern Donetsk Oblast, the fall of Avdiivka offered Russian forces an opportunity to push deeper into Ukraine's disrupted and overwhelmed defensive lines.
Kyiv appears to have largely halted the Russian advance in the rural areas to the west of the devastated settlement, though fighting continues amid gradual Russian gains.
Combat continues around the edges of Bakhmut, which perhaps more than any other city has become a symbol of the bloody eastern front. Russian forces—led by Wagner Group mercenaries augmented with former prisoners—took the city in May 2023. Fighting has continued around its flanks ever since.
The southeastern Zaporizhzhia region was the focus of Ukraine's failed summer 2023 counteroffensive. Kyiv hoped success here would sever the so-called land bridge of occupied territory connecting the Crimean Peninsula to western Russia, which stands as one of the Kremlin's most significant battlefield achievements.
Russian troops are now back on the front foot there, seeking to reverse the minor territorial gains won by attacking Ukrainian units last summer. Despite minor Russian advances, little of note has changed so far in 2024.
The southern Kherson region was the site of one of Ukraine's most buoying successes of the war, with the liberation of its eponymous main city in November 2022 after several months of striking battlefield victories nationwide.
But since then, the city—which sits on the banks of the Dnieper River, known as the Dnipro among Ukrainians—has been under near constant artillery fire from Russian positions on the eastern bank of the waterway. The river forms a formidable front line, even more so following the destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam in June 2023.
Still, Ukrainian forces have maintained a steady tempo of small but significant amphibious raids across the Dnieper. Kyiv's units even managed to establish and maintain several footholds on the Russian-occupied eastern bank. This cross-river fighting—and Russia's inability to collapse the Ukrainian bridgeheads—has been the most significant development on this front.
Uncommon Knowledge
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David Brennan is Newsweek's Diplomatic Correspondent covering world politics and conflicts from London with a focus on NATO, the European ... Read more
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