Ukraine claws back southern territory as Russia's war enters fifth year

"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday told the AFP that Ukrainian forces had regained 300 square kilometres (115 square miles) of territory in southern Ukraine, without specifying the time period. His commander in chief, Oleksandr Syrskii, two days later, said those southern gains were 400sq km (155 square miles), and had come since the end of January."

"The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, attributed Kyiv's successes to the fact that Ukraine persuaded Starlink to disconnect illegal Russian terminals in the theatre, and the fact that the Kremlin itself partly disabled the Telegram messaging service. Russian troops used both services for essential military communications, it said."

"European leaders have publicly noted that over the past three years, it has seized 1.5 percent of Ukraine or less at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. The battle for Pokrovsk, for example, a city in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, appears to have ended in victory for Russia in recent weeks, but the campaign took two years for a town with a pre-war population of 60,000."

Ukraine marked the fourth anniversary of Russia's invasion with territorial gains in the south and strengthened air defenses that protected Kyiv from recent drone and missile barrages. President Zelenskyy reported reclaiming 300 square kilometers, with military commander Syrskii citing 400 square kilometers gained since late January. Ukrainian counterattacks disrupted Russian spring offensive preparations by exploiting communication vulnerabilities—Starlink disconnected illegal Russian terminals and Telegram was partly disabled, forcing reliance on compromised military communications. Despite these successes, Russian advances continue at enormous human cost, capturing only 1.5 percent of Ukrainian territory over three years. The prolonged two-year campaign for Pokrovsk, a logistics hub with pre-war population of 60,000, exemplifies Russia's operational inefficiency and the devastating toll of the conflict.

Read at www.aljazeera.com