As Russia\u2019s all-out invasion grinds into its fourth summer, Ukraine\u2019s beleaguered and exhausted units, like the 100th Brigade, continue to be slowly ground down by a larger army, with more men, more weapons, more ammunition, and a Kremlin determined to force Kyiv capitulate.<\/p>\n
Russia has ramped up the pace of operations on the battlefield in recent weeks. Whether that constitutes its anticipated summer offensive, or if that effort is still to come, is an open question.<\/p>\n
Either way, Moscow is expected in the coming months to hit a gruesome milestone: <\/strong>1 million of its own troops killed or wounded<\/strong><\/a>. That is well in excess of all casualties suffered by Russia and the Soviet Union in all the conflicts since World War II combined.<\/p>\n The summer offensive is not yet under way, said Ivan Torres, a retired US Army major who is now senior Russian armed forces analyst for Rochan Consulting, a Polish research group.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Russians are currently transitioning to the summer campaign season, consolidating recent gains, reconstituting their forces, and bringing up reserve forces and equipment, all while maintaining pressure and offensive momentum,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat [the Russians] want by end of the summer offensive is to take all of Donetsk [region]. They\u2019ve made slow incremental advances but with very, very high casualty rates,\u201d said Rajan Menon, director of the Grand Strategy Program at Defense Priorities, a Washington think tank.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a snapshot of where things stand more than 40 months into Europe\u2019s largest land war since 1945.<\/p>\n A small market in the village of Stets’kivka, near the front line, in the Sumy region, on June 12.<\/p>\n Sumy<\/strong><\/p>\n The 1,100-kilometer front line where Ukraine has struggled to hold back Russian forces stretches roughly from the lower reaches of the Dnieper River near the southern city of Kherson to the northeast near the cities of Pokrovsk and Toretsk, then north to Chasiv Yar and Kupyansk near the Russian border region of Belgorod.<\/p>\n But 300 kilometers northwest of Kupyansk, Russian troops are bearing down on Sumy, a city with a prewar population of 255,000.<\/p>\n Sumy sits on a major highway that runs north to the Russian border and the Kursk region, which Ukraine invaded last August, embarrassing the Kremlin. In late April, Russian troops, bolstered by around 11,000 North Koreans, finally pushed the last Ukrainian units out of Kursk.<\/p>\n In recent weeks, Russian commanders launched a focused, small-scale offensive from the north targeting Sumy. As of July 3, Russian forces were around 20 kilometers outside the city.<\/p>\n Russian officials have justified the push toward Sumy as an effort to create a \u201cdeep buffer zone\u201d along the border. Asked about the offensive during a St. Petersburg investment conference in mid-June, President Vladimir Putin issued a thinly veiled threat to seize the city.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have a goal to take Sumy. But in principle, I don\u2019t rule it out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Days later, on June 26, Ukraine\u2019s top commander claimed that the Russian advance on Sumy had been stopped.<\/p>\n \u201cBased on the results of May and June, we can say that the wave of attempts at a \u2018summer offensive\u2019 launched by the enemy from Russian territory has been choked off,\u201d General Oleksandr Syrskiy said<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/a> \u201cAs of this week, the advance of Russian troops in the border area of the Sumy region has been stopped, and the line of combat contact has been stabilized.\u201d<\/p>\n Sumy \u201cis a supporting effort, though an important one,\u201d Torres said. \u201cIt keeps significant Ukrainian forces tied down in a noncritical operational direction while allowing the Russians to gain control of an essential piece of terrain.\u201d<\/p>\n Chasiv Yar<\/strong><\/p>\n Russian troops have been pushing into the height-of-land Donetsk region city of Chasiv Yar since the spring of 2024 after seizing the larger city of Avdiyivka in February that year.<\/p>\n Ukrainian forces kept Russian soldiers at bay for much of 2024, relying on an irrigation canal as a natural defense. As of this week, however, Russian units occupied around 90 percent of the city, according to the open-source analyst group DeepState.<\/p>\n In recent days, Russian forces have also pushed toward Kostyantynivka from the south, said Viktor Kevlyuk, a reserve Ukrainian army colonel and analyst at the Center for Defense Strategies, a Kyiv think tank.<\/p>\n \u201cThe situation is difficult, the enemy has minimal progress, it cannot even achieve tactical success in the area of Chasiv Yar, which would contribute to a breakthrough,\u201d he said in an e-mail.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/fd31c128-9daa-4b8d-84b2-08dda7e0bdb7_w250_r1_s.jpg\"\/)
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