The advance of Russian troops in the Donetsk region has slowed sharply — DeepState
Last week, the pace of Russian troop advances in the Donetsk region slowed significantly, and the total area of Ukrainian territory occupied by Russia decreased.
This marks the third time in the past year that the occupied area has decreased. According to analysts, this is due to counteroffensive operations by the Ukrainian Defense Forces in the Synelnykivskyi District of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
In the Dobropillia, Kostiantynivka, and Sloviansk sectors of the Donetsk region, the enemy captured only 17.33 square kilometers last week, compared to 26.7 square kilometers the week before.
However, along the border between the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions, 43.37 square kilometers shifted from the occupied zone to the so-called “penetration zone” (gray zone) at the beginning of the week.
In other sectors of the front, the area under occupation did not increase. In particular, no advances by the occupiers were recorded in the Huliaipole sector in Zaporizhzhia Oblast or in the Vovchansk sector in Kharkiv Oblast, as had been the case the week before last. At the same time, the infiltration zone expanded in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions as a result of enemy actions.
In contrast, the penetration zone in the Donetsk region mostly shrank, meaning that in many places, the enemy’s advance consisted of consolidating their positions within the “gray zone.”
In total, the area under occupation last week, according to DeepState, decreased by 26.04 square kilometers, while the week before last it increased by 33.28 square kilometers. The area of penetration increased by 47.84 square kilometers over the week, while the week before that it had increased by 42.45 square kilometers.
Thus, according to DeepState data, last week the occupied area decreased by an average of approximately 3.8 square kilometers per day, while the area of incursion increased by 6.8 square kilometers.
The week before last, the area under occupation grew by an average of 4.8 square kilometers per day.
As previously reported, in the final months of 2025, the average daily increase in the area under Russian occupation fluctuated between 8 and 14 square kilometers. At the end of January 2026, it began to decline, and in mid-February, the Defense Forces began gradually pushing back the enemy in the Oleksandrivka sector in the Dnipropetrovsk region and adjacent areas of the Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions, and in May they were able to repeat this success. In the interim, in March, the area under enemy occupation grew by 4–5 square kilometers per day, and in June and early July, by 2–3 square kilometers per day.
This was reported by the analytical project DeepState.
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