Kyiv, Ukraine \u2013<\/strong> The Russia-Ukraine war\u2019s harshest winter has brought ceaseless pressure from Moscow along the front line and significant aerial attacks that have left millions of Ukrainians without power and heat.<\/p>\n Even though Russia keeps pushing towards Ukrainian strongholds in the southeastern region of Donetsk and plans a spring-summer offensive, for the first time in almost three years, Kyiv began regaining some territory.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n The gains amounted to 460sq km (117.6sq miles), or about 10 percent of what Kyiv lost to Moscow in 2025, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.<\/p>\n Moscow\u2019s inability to replenish its front-line losses is the main factor, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cRussia is losing a lot of people, up to 35,000 a month,\u201d he told Corriere Della Sera, an Italian daily, on March 3.<\/p>\n Because of the losses inflicted by Ukraine, Russia\u2019s army \u201cstopped growing. Losses equal the number of newly mobilised soldiers. They are close to a crisis,\u201d he was quoted as saying.<\/p>\n The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a US think tank, said the gains were more modest \u2013 257sq km (100sq miles) \u2013 but admitted that the porous front line and multiple grey areas complicate a better calculation.<\/p>\n Ukrainian counterattacks were especially successful in the eastern region of Dnipropetrovsk, where the presence of Russian troops had been insignificant and is now reduced to only three towns.<\/p>\n \u201cAlmost the entire territory of Dnipropetrovsk has been liberated,\u201d Major General Oleksandr Komarenko, Ukraine\u2019s chief strategist, said in televised remarks.<\/p>\n In the neighbouring Zaporizhia region, where Moscow had occupied almost three-quarters of the total area and advanced towards the eponymous administrative capital, Ukrainian forces have regained nine towns since January.<\/p>\n \u201cThese counterattacks are generating tactical, operational and strategic effects that may disrupt Russia\u2019s Spring-Summer 2026 offensive campaign plan,\u201d the ISW said.<\/p>\n According to Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, former deputy head of the Ukrainian military\u2019s General Staff, the gains are \u201ctactical but very meaningful\u201d.<\/p>\n But he told Al Jazeera that while Ukraine \u201camassed some reserves\u201d to advance in Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhia, Russians keep pushing forward in key areas in Donetsk towards the towns of Sloviansk, Liman, Siversk and Kostiantynivka.<\/p>\n To Romanenko, lower recruitment numbers throughout Russia are key to Moscow\u2019s losses.<\/p>\n \u201cFor three months, they\u2019ve had nothing to create their reserves with,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In 2025, Moscow\u2019s aggressive recruitment fuelled by a persuasive campaign and hefty signing bonuses of tens of thousands of dollars replenished the losses, and the monthly number of newly mobilised servicemen sometimes approached 60,000, he said.<\/p>\n But this year, Russia\u2019s recruitment spree seems to be hobbled by financial problems caused by Western sanctions as the people needed to feed the front line seem exhausted.<\/p>\n Russian President Vladimir Putin appears wary of a public outcry that would stem from a full-scale mobilisation.<\/p>\n \u201cPutin is afraid of conducting a full mobilisation. He\u2019s looking for other ways,\u201d Romanenko said.<\/p>\n One of them is the forced enlistment of university students, especially ones with low grades, as drone operators.<\/p>\n Several Russian universities from St Petersburg, Russia\u2019s second largest city and Putin\u2019s hometown, to Khabarovsk near the Chinese border, force male students to undergo drone flying training, the Movement of Conscientious Objectors, a Moscow-based rights group, said this month<\/p>\n Sometimes, the universities offer payments of 100,000 rubles ($1,260) a month on top of the Ministry of Defence\u2019s salary if the newly trained operators enlist.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019re scaling up the process to form drone units. They pressure students into becoming drone operators,\u201d Romanenko said.<\/p>\n Kyiv\u2019s advances have so far not turned the table on the war, but they have definitely irked Moscow.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Kremlin is utterly displeased from the morale standpoint because their conception, their confidence that they are pushing along the entire front line is falling apart,\u201d Kyiv-based analyst Igar Tyshkevych told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Washington\u2019s and Israel\u2019s strikes on Iran have postponed the resumption of United States-brokered peace talks between Kyiv and Moscow.<\/p>\n Other observers are sceptical about the significance of Kyiv\u2019s territorial gains.<\/p>\n They \u201ccan hardly be called significant even considering the Russian army\u2019s very modest success\u201d, Nikolay Mitrokhin of Germany\u2019s Bremen University told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n By using amassed reserves in vulnerable front-line spots, Ukraine \u201cmanages in some cases to get back some territory\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n The spots are mostly \u201cpolitically sensitive\u201d areas in the northern region of Kharkiv and Dnipropetrovsk that Russia declared annexed after \u201creferendums\u201d held in 2022, he said.<\/p>\n The liberation of Dnipropetrovsk was part of a larger counteroffensive that also unfolded on the border with Zaporizhia, but it failed, he said.<\/p>\n Another less-publicised development is taking place in the Black Sea.<\/p>\n In February, Ukraine began a \u201csystemic expulsion\u201d of Russia\u2019s Black Sea Fleet from its main harbour, the southern port of Novorossiysk, Mitrokhin said.<\/p>\n On March 1, drone strikes damaged five Russian warships, including one capable of launching Kalibr cruise missiles.<\/p>\n The fleet was evacuated to Novorossiysk from the port of Sevastopol in annexed Crimea in 2023 after Ukrainian aerial and sea drones and missiles destroyed its largest ships.<\/p>\n The attacks on Novorossiysk followed last year\u2019s destruction of air defence systems in Crimea and of Russian aircraft that monitored sea drones, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cUkraine has enough drones, keeps producing new ones, but Russia has about two-thirds of its warships on the Black Sea,\u201d Mitrokhin said. \u201cMost importantly, they have nothing to flee to.\u201d<\/p>\n The smaller vessels could be evacuated up the Volga-Don Canal but not to the Caspian Sea, where Ukrainian drones can easily reach them, but towards the upper Volga or the Moskva Rivers, where Moscow\u2019s air defence systems can protect them.<\/p>\n The bigger warships in Novorossiysk \u201cshould only hope for their air defence or that the war is over faster than they are drowned\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Kyiv, Ukraine \u2013 The Russia-Ukraine war\u2019s harshest winter has brought ceaseless pressure from Moscow along the front line and significant aerial attacks that have left millions of Ukrainians without power and heat. Even though Russia keeps pushing towards Ukrainian strongholds in the southeastern region of Donetsk and plans a spring-summer offensive, for the first time […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14700,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14699\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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