Ukraine has declared the successful end of an operation in which it recaptured 745 square kilometres (287 square miles) of its territory this year in its southern region of Dnipropetrovsk. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced on Wednesday that the campaign was carried out “exactly as it was determined” and said almost 10,000 Russian soldiers were killed in the process. The counteroffensive deprived Russia of almost all the territory it had gained in Dnipropetrovsk since entering that region in June 2025, and pushed it back over the regional borders of Donetsk and Zaporizhia.
But this good news for Ukrainians was overshadowed by intensified Russian missile strikes against their cities, which remain increasingly defenceless after the exhaustion of Patriot interceptors. Combined strikes of drones and ballistic or hypersonic missiles hit Kyiv on August 8 and 11, plunged Odesa in darkness on August 9, and struck the city of Zaporizhzhia on August 11, killing at least nine people across all strikes. Zelenskyy said the Dnipropetrovsk operation alone had liberated 26 settlements.
The Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank that assesses territorial control using geolocated open-source information, conservatively assessed that Ukraine had clawed back at least 627sq km (242 square miles) in the area. The ISW assessed that across the front, Russia has suffered a net loss of 233sq km (90 square miles) this year. This is despite concerted Russian offensives in the eastern Donetsk region, whose capture Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly prioritised.
Russian assaults in June and July have been launched out of Pokrovsk towards Dobropillia, and out of Chasiv Yar towards Kostiantynivka. In both areas, Russia has captured territory and infiltrated large areas beyond it, but this has come at a cost. Russia suffered a reported 39,000 casualties in June and nearly 43,000 in July – its highest losses since January 2025.
One of the keys to Ukraine’s success on the battlefield has been its scaling up of short-range, first-person view (FPV) drone production, where it now fields 16 drones to every Russian 10. Such drones caused more than 70 percent of Russian casualties in June and July. Ukraine’s success in disarming Russia of its own FPV drones has also been climbing.
Ukraine downed more than 40,000 Russian drones in July, almost one and a half times as many as it downed in May, Ukraine’s defence ministry said. Russia has held command of the air throughout its war in Ukraine, unleashing glide bombs, long-range drones and missiles. It is now pressing that advantage by increasing ballistic and hypersonic missiles, deputy military intelligence chief Vadym Skibitskyi told the news service RBC Ukraine.
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