The Russian offensive in eastern Ukraine is stalling just as officials in Moscow prepare to engage with a US push to end their three-year war, according to a Bloomberg analysis of open-source battlefield data.
Russian forces fighting the Ukrainians lost territory overall for the first time in more than a year during the week ending March 10, the analysis shows. Ukrainian troops have been pushing back the Russians around the strategic city of Pokrovsk, a key logistics hub for supplying Kyiv’s forces in the Donetsk region.
At the same time, Moscow reclaimed about a quarter of the territory in the Russian region of Kursk that Ukraine had been holding. Dislodging Ukraine from Kursk Region would remove a potential bargaining chip which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has been hoping to leverage in talks with Moscow.
US President Donald Trump has been turning up the pressure on Kyiv as he seeks to drive Zelenskiy into a settlement and last week he halted arms transfers and some intelligence-sharing with Ukraine. The Institute for the Study of War suggested that may have contributed to Ukraine’s losses in Kursk. The freeze on US intelligence has largely been lifted, Trump said on Sunday.
Russian gains in Ukraine have been decelerating since November last year but Russia still maintains an advantage in air power and has continued to attack Ukraine’s cities, killing four with a ballistic missile strike in the city of Kryvyi Rih last Wednesday.
On Tuesday, Kyiv launched a record number of drones on Moscow shortly before Ukrainian and US officials met in Saudi Arabia for talks.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
About The Author
