Russia’s spring-summer offensive has failed to produce operationally significant gains more than four months after it began in mid-March, even as Moscow intensifies missile, drone and glide-bomb attacks on Ukraine’s cities and infrastructure, the Institute for the Study of War assessed.
ISW mapped 37.85 square kilometres of confirmed Russian gains in July, or 121.56 including infiltration, both far below the 455.74 square kilometres Russia captured in July 2025. Repeated infiltrations around Kostyantynivka have not seized the city.
Ukraine’s General Staff estimated 42,860 Russian casualties in July, the highest monthly total it has reported in 2026, equivalent, on ISW’s calculation, to roughly 1,132 casualties per square kilometre gained. The estimate cannot be independently verified. ISW attributes the slowdown to Ukrainian counterattacks, intermediate-range strikes and drone dominance, which restrict Russian vehicle movement and mechanized maneuver.
Russia is compensating above the battlefield. ISW said Russia expended ballistic missiles faster than its estimated monthly ballistic-missile production, increasingly using S-400 and Zircon missiles in land-attack roles to compensate for shortages. Its July 31-August 1 barrage concentrated on Kyiv Oblast to exploit Ukraine’s Patriot interceptor shortage: nine people were killed and at least 27 injured in Kyiv’s Solomianskyi district alone, including four children, after Ukraine intercepted only one of 27 ballistic missiles fired that night.
Unable to break through on the ground, Russia is now racing to exhaust Ukraine’s finite interceptor stocks faster than Western allies can replace them.
