A recent series of Ukrainian counteroffensives in the eastern and southern parts of the contact line has resulted in the liberation of hundreds of square kilometers from Russia.
Ukrainian progress over the past few weeks is the most significant since the large-scale foray into Russia in the summer of 2024.
The Ukrainian military has gone on the counteroffensive, making some important progress in southeastern Ukraine.
In early February, General Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Commander in Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, confirmed reports that the Ukrainian military was on the counteroffensive in Zaporizhzhia Oblast. Although the counteroffensives are local in nature, they are liberating territory, including small urban centers.
In a recent intelligence estimate, the British Military Intelligence assessed that the Ukrainian counteroffensive is making decent progress. Ukrainian forces have liberated more than 200 square kilometers of territory.
The Ukrainian military has repeatedly shown that it can conduct maneuver warfare and combined arms operations effectively.
In the fall of 2022, the Ukrainian forces revealed their counteroffensive skills by sweeping through hundreds of square miles of territory in just a few days in eastern and southern Ukraine. A large-scale counteroffensive in southern Ukraine failed in 2023 largely due to the concentration of Russian defensive works that made the battlefield resemble a World War I field. In August 2024, the Ukrainians once more showed their counteroffensive capabilities through a surprise attack inside Russia’s Kursk Oblast. Although the attack was criticized at the time for unnecessarily expending Ukrainian resources, Ukraine captured a pocket of Russian territory that took Russian and North Korean forces several months and hundreds of thousands of troops to recapture.
These were large-scale counteroffensives with grand objectives. On the other hand, the current counterattack is local in nature and designed more to ease pressure on Ukrainian defensive positions elsewhere on the battlefield, offering Ukrainian forces a much-needed respite to regroup and improve their fortifications.
“It is likely these efforts have disrupted Russian momentum and delayed Russian offensive operations towards Orikhiv city from the east,” the British Military Intelligence assessed.
Located in southeastern Ukraine, Orikhiv is an important logistics hub and key to the overall defense of the central Zaporizhzhia Oblast. The Ukrainian military has fortified the city, following its standard defensive practice. Indeed, the Ukrainians are currently fighting a flexible defense underpinned by a belt of fortified urban centers. The Russian forces have shown a great difficulty in urban combat, relying on an attritional strategy to overcome Ukrainian resistance.
“Further north, Ukrainian forces maintain control of the city of Kupiansk, a former rail logistics hub in Kharkiv Oblast, securing the boundaries to mitigate against continued Russian infiltration attempts,” the British Military Intelligence added.
Although a limited number of Russian troops are still in the city, occupying high-rise buildings and harassing Ukrainian forces, the important logistics hub remains firmly in Ukrainian hands.
The Ukrainian military launched a counterattack in and around Kupiansk in the final days of 2025 with the goal of securing the important urban center.
Although it would take much more for the Ukrainian forces to regain the strategic initiative on the battlefield, the ongoing counteroffensive shows that the Kremlin does not have the firm grasp over the war it claims to have.
Feature Image: Ukrainian artillery on the field. (Photo by 148th Separate Artillery Zhytomyr Brigade, Armed Forces of Ukraine/X)
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