In January, Russian troops captured 245 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory. According to the analytical outlet DeepState, that’s nearly half the pace of November and December last year, when Russia’s advances were significantly faster.
DeepState analysts say the most assault activity this January was recorded toward Pokrovsk, Hulyaipole, Kostiantynivka, Lyman and Novopavlivka (Dnipropetrovsk region).
At the same time, Russian forces advanced fastest toward Sloviansk, making that sector one of the key areas for any further attempts to expand the Russian Armed Forces’ occupation zone.
“Thirty-three percent of all assaults were on the Pokrovsk sector, which is where the enemy’s main effort is. Hulyaipole rose to second with 21% of all attacks. Assault activity increased 1.75 times. They are followed by the Kostiantynivka (12%), Lyman (8%) and Oleksandrovsky (8%) sectors. The worst outlier was the Sloviansk sector, where nearly 20% of territorial losses came from just 3% of assaults,” the analysts note.
Russia, for its part, claimed significantly higher numbers. Russia’s Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov asserted in recent days that Russia had seized more than 500 square kilometers and 17 settlements.
Ukraine has not corroborated those figures, saying some of the “captured” settlements remain under the control of the Defense Forces.
For comparison, in September 2025, Russian forces occupied 259 square kilometers - the lowest monthly total since May of that year. Territory taken that month was 44% less than in August, amounting to just 0.04% of Ukraine’s total area. At that point, 19.04% of the country was under occupation.
By November 2025, the situation deteriorated sharply: Russian forces seized 505 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory - double September’s tally. That month, the Russian troops conducted 5,990 assaults, the highest monthly total of 2025.
According to DeepState, in 2025 as a whole, Russia occupied 4,336 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory - about 0.72% of the country’s area. From January 1, 2023 to January 1, 2026, the net increase in occupied territory reached 7,463 square kilometers, or 1.28% of Ukraine’s territory.
Specifically, over three years of full-scale war, the share of occupied territory changed as follows:
- Dnipropetrovsk region — from 0% to 0.6%
- Sumy — from 0% to 1%
- Kharkiv — from 1.9% to 4.7%
- Kherson — from 72% to 72%
- Zaporizhzhia — from 72.8% to 74.8%
- Donetsk — from 56.7% to 78.1%
- Luhansk — from 97.9% to 99.6%
DeepState also reports that the settlement of Kupyansk-Vuzlovyi in the Kharkiv region remains under the full control of Ukraine’s Armed Forces.
Small groups of Russian troops that infiltrated the settlement are being cleared to prevent any further buildup.
