Ukraine's front lines were little changed in July amid a marked slowing of Russia's momentum, according to AFP's analysis of data from the Institute for the Study of War.
The Russian army gained a total of less than 40 square kilometres (15 square miles) in July, after gaining 30 square kilometres the previous month. The gains were down sharply from a year earlier, when the Russians were advancing by an average of 405 km³ per month.
In April and May 2026, Moscow lost control of 403 km³, as its offensive slowed from the end of 2025. Kyiv, meanwhile, has been carrying out effective strikes on Russia and occupied Ukraine.
In July, the few Russian gains were made in the regions of Donetsk (eastern Ukraine), Zaporizhzhia (south) and Sumy (northeast). The front did not move in the Kharkiv region (northeast).
The Ukrainian army, for its part, continued to gain ground (28.5 square kilometres) in the Dnipropetrovsk region (center-east), confirming a trend that began in December 2025.
The ISW's estimates exclude advances claimed by Russia but neither confirmed nor denied by the institute. The ISW works with the Critical Threats Project, an offshoot of the American Enterprise Institute, or AEI.
More than four years after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Russia occupies a little more than 19 percent of the country, including 7 percent in Crimea and in areas of the industrial Donbas basin that were already under Russian or pro-Russian separatist control before the invasion of February 2022.
Most of the Russian gains were made during the first weeks of the conflict, with every gain in territory coming at the cost of many lives.
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