KYIV — Russian forces are advancing in Ukraine at the fastest rate since the early days of the 2022 invasion, taking an area half the size of Greater London over the past month, analysts and war bloggers say.
The war is entering what some Russian and Western officials say could be its most dangerous phase after Moscow's forces made some of their biggest territorial gains and the United States allowed Kyiv to strike back with US missiles.
"Russia has set new weekly and monthly records for the size of the occupied territory in Ukraine," independent Russian news group Agentstvo said in a report.
The Russian army captured almost 235 sq km in Ukraine over the past week, a weekly record for 2024, it said.
Russian forces had taken 600 sq km in November, it added, citing data from DeepState, a group with close links to the Ukrainian army that studies combat footage and provides frontline maps.
Russia began advancing faster in eastern Ukraine in July, just as Ukrainian forces carved out a sliver of its western region of Kursk.
Since then, the Russian advance has accelerated, according to open source maps.
Russia's forces are moving into the town of Kurakhove, a stepping stone towards the logistical hub of Pokrovsk in Donetsk, and have been exploiting the vulnerabilities of Kyiv troops along the frontline, analysts said.
"Russian forces recently have been advancing at a significantly quicker rate than they did in the entirety of 2023," analysts at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in a report.
The General Staff of Ukraine's armed forces said in its Nov 25 update that 45 battles of varying intensity were raging along the Kurakhove part of the frontline that evening.
The Institute for the Study of War report and pro-Russian military bloggers say Russian troops are in Kurakhove.
"Russian forces' advances in south-eastern Ukraine are largely the result of the discovery and tactical exploitation of vulnerabilities in Ukraine's lines," analysts at the Institute said in their report.
Russia says it will achieve all of its aims in Ukraine no matter what the West says or does.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has repeatedly said peace cannot be established until all Russian forces are expelled, and all territory captured by Moscow, including Crimea, is returned.
But outnumbered by Russian troops, the Ukrainian military is struggling to recruit soldiers and provide equipment to new units.
Zelensky has said that he believed Russian President Vladimir Putin's main objectives were to occupy the entire Donbas, which consists of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and oust Ukrainian troops from the Kursk region, parts of which they have controlled since August.
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