https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/09/28/world/europe/russia-ukraine-war-map-front-line.html
It would help if it showed total territory gained but I guess that shows too much truth. Keep in mind Russia will start an offensive soon which will probably be very definite and up the ante some more.
When is the offensive coming? I keep hearing that Russia is planning it but not when or where.
I assume in winter since that is when tanks have better maneuverability
They probably aren't going for the Ukrainian strategy of loudly publicizing when and where they'll attack.
There's a speculation that the reason Russia stopped exporting diesel recently is because they might be stocking it up for the offensive.
I don't think Russia wants more territory this year. They don't want to extend the frontline unnecessarily.
I don't think it would be something extravagantly huge, but probably just take what's left of the relevant oblasts they need, since also Western support doesn't seem to last much longer, but maybe it could be prolonged more year.
Russia will wait until Ukraine stops attacking, and do some push in Kupyansk-Marinka, and retake the lost part of the defensive line near Verbove, and some lost high ground south of bakhmut and rabotino.
I think they will try to grind the ukrainians and bait them into attacks rather than launch big attacks themselves. Depends on how well they defend, if ukrainian line collapses in some line, they may push further
Even this is misleading. It shows a lot more territory gained and lost in the first months in 2022 than was actually the case. They have counted territory that the Russians simply drove through and never occupied on their way to Kiev as "Russian gains" so they could brag about retaking it all when Russia simply pulled out when the Kiev operation no longer had a purpose.
In reality the most you could count as occupied by Russia in northern Ukraine at the start of the conflict were small strips of territory along the main roads. They didn't even really enter most localities, and those they did they just passed through. This is the problem with relying on those maps you saw circulate online at the start of the conflict. They were either purposely misleading or did not understand what was really happening.
I lean toward the latter explanation as i think that Russia intended to give the impression of holding more than they actually did. Most people don't understand with what a small amount of forces they started this. They went in with at most 80,000 troops all spread out over an incredibly large area, because their intention was not to take and occupy territory but to cause enough of a shock to get Kiev to come to the negotiating table.
It was only after the negotiations failed due to western intervention that they changed their approach toward the one we see today of a war of attrition. They never had the ability to hold as much as they were giving the impression of having taken with the forces they had at the time, nor did they need to do so for the new strategy that they switched to, hence why it made sense to abandon what was an unnecessary dead weight in the new phase of the conflict.
The territory changes since December 2022 have been very small. Almost like someone is continually arming one side to artificially keep a conflict going for no reason to make it as bloody as possible.
Really makes you think
