In Moscow's telling, the invasion of Ukraine is a story of steady encirclements and methodical advance: Defence Ministry briefings announce new conquests daily, state television maps bloom ever redder, and flag-planting videos circulate as proof of victory. But independent tracking tells a different story: Russia's claimed gains shrink sharply under scrutiny, and some "victories" paraded online were never won at all.
The numbers don't add up
According to the Institute for the Study of War, Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov claimed on August 30 that Russian forces had seized 3,500 square kilometres of territory and 149 settlements since March 2025. ISW's own assessment found only roughly 2,346 square kilometres and 130 settlements — a gap of more than a thousand square kilometres, so blatant that even influential pro-Russian military bloggers rounded on the defence ministry and Gerasimov for it.
Other independent measures point the same way. A Danish data analysis found Vladimir Putin's territorial-gains claims running up to five times higher than reality. The Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded in July 2026 that Russian advances rank among the slowest of any war in a century: during April and May 2026, Russia suffered a net territorial loss of roughly 400 square kilometres — its first net loss since August 2024 — and troops are advancing by about 50 metres a day around Kostiantynivka. A senior NATO official put the current pace at 3.79 square kilometres per day, down from a reported 16 last year.
This attrition explains why Moscow needs the fiction. CSIS estimates Russian battlefield casualties at 1.4 million, including 400,000 to 450,000 dead, with monthly losses of 30,000 to 34,000 against recruitment of only around 27,000. NATO officials say the army increasingly relies on convicts, indebted citizens and foreigners, and the casualty ratio is now nearly eight Russians to one Ukrainian, largely due to AI-enabled drones.
AI flags and phantom encirclements
When real ground can't be held, invented ground will do. Frontline analysts describe how Russian infiltration groups of two or three soldiers slip forward, plant a flag for the cameras, then are killed by Ukrainian drones or retreat — a planted flag does not equal control, yet these moments are packaged as conquests.
Some of the "evidence" doesn't survive basic inspection. OSINT analysts have found AI artifacts in Russian victory clips: a planted flag sinking unnaturally into a roof — a classic generation glitch — and a "six-metre-tall" soldier, an infamous AI giveaway. In at least one case, a genuine Ukrainian clearing-operation video was AI-altered and repackaged as proof of a Russian capture. Russian maps have likewise painted territory red that was never taken, including a claimed "encirclement" of Ukrainian forces in northern Kharkiv that never happened.
Not all of the deception goes unchallenged from within the pro-war camp: ISW documented Russian milbloggers themselves accusing the ministry of inflating its scorecard. And Ukrainian commentators concede the pressure runs both ways — some Ukrainian clips are AI-enhanced for hype too, even if no Ukrainian fake-flag operations have been documented so far.
What the ground actually shows
The most telling indicator comes from DeepState, the Ukrainian mapping project that typically records Russian gains. In recent days it has confirmed Ukrainian advances — a rare reversal — including Russian forces pushed behind the Zherebets river on the Lyman axis and Ukrainian gains near Kupiansk, where Denys Davydov's channel reports National Guard Khartia units with Colombian volunteers cleared Zapadne between September 21 and 23.
ISW assesses that the Kremlin is intensifying this propaganda campaign to influence Western decision-making: projecting an inevitable Russian victory while the actual front creeps forward at walking pace through a drone-saturated kill zone.
None of this means Ukraine faces an easy fight — Russia's grinding pressure on the Donbas fortress belt continues at enormous human cost. But four and a half years into a war Moscow expected to win in weeks, the map of Russian claims and the map of Russian control are two very different documents. One is drawn in Moscow. The other is drawn by the drones.
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