Ukraine says it has recaptured more of its territory than Russia managed to seize this year, despite restrictions on U.S. satellite services essential to its defense.
Russia responded by striking dozens of Ukrainian energy facilities and using cluster bombs in attacks that injured civilians.
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“Our soldiers have liberated more territory since the beginning of autumn than the Russians managed to conquer,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a public speech.
Ukrainian General Staff spokesman Andriy Kovalev denied Russian claims that 1,800 square kilometers (700 square miles) of Ukrainian territory had been seized during the fall.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank that uses open-source location-based information to assess territorial movements, said Ukraine had made a net gain of 241 square kilometers (93 square miles) since September 1, eliminating any Russian territorial gains this year.
Russian losses suggest that the effectiveness of its forces is declining.
Russian casualties – that is, the number killed or seriously injured – hovered around 30,000 per month from January to May, but increased steadily over the summer. According to Ukrainian estimates, Russia lost 46,230 troops in September, its highest monthly losses of the year, and 37,000 so far in October.
Oct. 21 marked the highest daily losses of the entire war, at 2,250, said Robert Brovdi, commander of the Unmanned Systems Forces of Ukraine, as his unit’s mortality rate hit a new record.
In total, Ukraine estimates that there have been more than 350,000 Russian deaths and injuries since the start of the year.
Much of Ukraine’s territorial gains were made through Operation Vivaldi, a Ukrainian counteroffensive that halted a Russian pincer movement aimed at reconquering the remaining fifth of the eastern Donetsk region, about 5,500 km² (2,000 square miles).
General Andriy Biletskyi, who led Ukraine’s Third Army Corps to victory in that campaign, said he had eliminated a Russian bridgehead on the west bank of the Jerebets River and crossed to the east bank, shortening his own front line and concentrating artillery and unmanned aerial firepower, thereby stabilizing its defense.
The Pincer’s defeat, Biletskyi said, had left Russia with the unsavory option of a frontal assault on the “fortress belt” of the heavily defended towns of Kramatorsk, Sloviansk and Druzhivka.
Russia has “temporarily abandoned this plan, although it plans to resume it,” Biletskyi told Ukrainian newspaper Suspilne. Russian military expert Andrei Marochko told Russia’s official TASS news agency that Ukraine was strengthening fortified cities.
Russia has responded to its weakening military fortunes by increasing the ferocity of its attacks on civilians.
On October 22, it launched three ballistic missiles equipped with fragmentation warheads toward kyiv, Zelensky said.
“This warhead explodes above ground and is specially designed to inflict maximum damage to people and equipment in an area of 400 meters by 400 meters,” said Serhiy Beskrestnov, senior adviser to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry. “45 submunitions explode in the air.”
One of the warheads hit an area between the kyiv-Pechersk Lavra Cathedral and a monastery.
“In theory, there was not even a military object nearby,” Zelensky said. “It’s a deliberate choice of weapons, a deliberate choice of area.”
The Russian Defense Ministry said it targeted an assembly building for the long-range FP-5 drones and FP-9 missiles that Ukraine uses against it, as well as other drone manufacturing sites.
But more than anything else, Russia is relentlessly targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, despite US President Donald Trump declaring an energy ceasefire for both sides on October 11.
Since then, there have been more than 170 strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Zelenskyy said.
“Russia is not achieving any significant results on the front line. Therefore, it is directing all its aggression and hatred towards terrorizing civilian infrastructure: electricity, heating and now water. The goal is clear: to exhaust the people,” Prime Minister Serhiy Khoretskyi told the BBC.
Since taking office on July 16, he said, Russia has attacked Ukraine’s energy infrastructure 2,147 times.
Ukraine has been hampered in its defense by the United States, which on October 8 reportedly stopped providing early warning of incoming ballistic missiles for the second time this year.
Zelensky said the early warning was restored on Oct. 20, but three other U.S. actions detrimental to Ukraine’s defense had not been reversed.
One of these was Trump’s lifting of sanctions on oil exports imposed on Russia in order to reduce the price of diesel, which he made official with an executive order on October 16. Putin said on October 21 that Russia’s first shipment of 40,000 tons of diesel to the United States would leave within two or three days.
Another problem is that the United States has not delivered Patriot interceptors, which are its most effective defense against ballistic missiles, to Ukraine, although it has already supplied a dozen per month and Europe has paid for them.
But the biggest problem was that Ukraine’s ability to fly its drones at more than 150 km/h (100 mph) using the Starshield satellite navigation system remained suspended.
Ukraine said it could not intercept fast-reaction drones at such speeds, and that its attacks on Russian logistics, as well as the resupply of its own front lines by drones, were also made more vulnerable.
Starshield was created as a military app from Elon Musk-owned Starlink, and he and the White House shared blame for making the decision to restrict it throughout the week. Trump said on October 22 that Starlink and Starshield services were close to being restored.
After initially observing Trump’s energy ceasefire, Ukraine has resumed targeting Russian energy infrastructure, as part of an economic strategy to deprive Russia’s war machine of export revenues.
On October 18, it struck the St. Petersburg oil terminal, the largest oil unloading terminal in Russia. It also hit a data center serving Russian social media platform Vkontakte, disrupting services.
Other facilities were likely targeted. The Russian Defense Ministry said it shot down 1,015 Ukrainian drones over various regions that night.
The United States appeared to leverage its waiver of diesel sanctions and suspension of Starshield services to push for a trilateral meeting between the United States, Russia and Ukraine.
U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff met with Zelensky in Oslo on October 20, then met with Putin in St. Petersburg the next day.
Putin’s adviser Yuri Ushakov told media that Russia had agreed “in principle” to meet on November 10. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the planned meeting would take place in Abu Dhabi.
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