Russia's long-running offensive in eastern Ukraine is running out of momentum. From Kupiansk in the north to the approaches of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk in the south, Moscow's forces are being held to near-zero net gains, pushed back in several sectors, and are now losing ground they spent more than a year capturing. Ukrainian counteroffensives are under way around what analysts call the "iron belt" — the Sloviansk–Kramatorsk sector, the most fortified part of the front — and even Russian military maps now acknowledge the attacks.
Counterattacks bite across multiple axes
The Institute for the Study of War's September assessments confirm the scale of the reversal: since March 2026, Russian forces have been held to near-zero net gains across the entire theatre, while Ukrainian forces have contested the initiative at both the strategic and operational levels for the first time since the August 2024 Kursk offensive. Successful Ukrainian counterattacks have been reported in the Kupiansk, Oleksandrivka and Lyman directions, and Ukrainian troops have regained lost ground in and around Kupiansk, defeating subsequent Russian efforts to retake it.
In the Lyman sector, Oleksandrivka — previously claimed as occupied by Russia — is now at least partially back under Ukrainian control, a shift the channel Denys Davydov reports is confirmed even by Russian and pro-Russian sources. The channel reports three Ukrainian counterattack axes in the sector, including one toward Yampil, with partial success. On the southern front, Ukraine has confirmed a counterattack toward the village of Zaporizhzhia (not the city) near Komar, close to Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, and claims to have liberated the nearby village of Mirne, with Ukrainian forces reportedly crossing the main river to build a foothold for an operation on Komar from two directions.
Meanwhile, Russian claims of dramatic success are falling apart under scrutiny. Russia's defence ministry published a map on September 24 claiming Ukrainian forces were encircled near a town in the Kupiansk direction — but ISW observed that Russian forces are at least 10.2 kilometres from the town's outskirts, and Ukrainian sources say the settlement is not even in the grey zone. It is the latest in a pattern of inflated Russian battlefield claims.
The Lyman salient destroyed
The most dramatic reversal has come northwest of Lyman in Donetsk Oblast, where Ukrainian forces have dislodged Russian troops from a salient between the Nitrius and Zherebets rivers that Moscow spent well over a year building. Analysts put Russian territorial losses there at 100 to 150 square kilometres. The salient had threatened the northern flank of Slovyansk and the entire Donetsk Oblast fortress belt; its destruction removes one of the most dangerous Russian lodgements in the east.
The cause, according to analysts, is familiar: Russia simply does not have enough forces and reserves to hold the line — the same manpower deficit that doomed its positions in northern Ukraine in the autumn of 2022. Even the Kremlin-connected Rybar channel has acknowledged Ukrainian gains in the sector, noting Russian counterattacks in August were reversed and that Ukraine began attempts to recapture Shandryholove and Zarichne by the first week of September.
A manpower crisis Moscow cannot hide
Behind the battlefield setbacks sits a deeper crisis. ISW reports that Russian commanders are pressing Putin for a massive mobilization aimed at restoring their ability to seize and hold the initiative — an admission from within the Russian military that the current force cannot do the job. The reported cost so far has been staggering: Russian milbloggers and ISW reporting cite more than 1.5 million Russian personnel casualties over the course of the war.
In a press conference this week, Putin claimed the Russian army fields 1.5 million soldiers and blamed Ukraine for initiating attacks on Russia, including long-range strikes on refineries, while warning of a response. He also raised alleged violations of Russian-speakers' rights in the Baltic states, saying Russia would "act accordingly" while insisting it would not attack Europe. On diplomacy, Russian officials including Dmitry Peskov say Moscow expects any meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy to end with Ukraine signing an agreement on "denazification and demilitarization" — in other words, capitulation — while Trump has reportedly pressed Zelenskyy to accept Putin's proposal for talks in Moscow, according to Reuters reporting cited by the channel.
The contrast with the recent past is sharp. Between May and November 2025, Russian forces managed net advances of roughly 2,400 square kilometres. In the six months that followed, they suffered net losses of territory they had previously seized and gained only about 360 square kilometres net — a collapse in momentum that has fundamentally changed the trajectory of the war.
A war of attrition turning against the aggressor
Four and a half years into its full-scale invasion, Russia faces a grim arithmetic: an offensive that cannot advance, an army bleeding manpower it cannot replace without politically toxic mobilization, and a Ukrainian military that has learned to counterattack with integrated drone and infantry operations. The east front is not collapsing overnight — but it is slipping from Moscow's grasp, kilometre by kilometre.
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