FILE PHOTO: A satellite view of Vuhledar, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Donetsk region, Ukraine, September 25, 2019. 2024 Planet Labs Inc./via REUTERS/File Photo
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia took 196.1 square km of Ukrainian territory over the week of Oct. 20-27, making it the swiftest weekly advance for Russian forces this year, according to the Russian media group Agentstvo which analysed Ukrainian open source maps.
The 2-1/2-year-old war in Ukraine is entering what Russian officials say is its most dangerous phase as Russian forces advance and the West ponders how the war will end.
Russian forces, which President Vladimir Putin ordered into Ukraine in February 2022, advanced in September at their fastest rate since March 2022, according to open source data, despite Ukraine taking a part of Russia's Kursk region.
"The Russian army has not had such a rapid weekly advance since at least the beginning of this year," Agentstvo, which is considered by Russia to be a "foreign agent", said on its Telegram channel.
It said it had used raw data from Ukraine's Deep State open-source intelligence analysts to make the conclusion.
Agentstvo said that last week, the Russian army took 95 square kilometers near the town of Vuhledar and 63 square kilometers near the town of Pokrovsk. Both are in the Donbas area of eastern Ukraine.
Agentstvo said that Ukrainian defences in the Donbas were weakened by Kyiv's decision to sent troops into Russia's Kursk region as Russia did not transfer troops from Donbas to Kursk.
The advance of Moscow's forces, which control just under a fifth of Ukraine, has underlined Russia's vast numerical superiority in men and materiel as Ukraine pleads for more weapons from the Western allies that have been supporting it.
Russia controls Crimea, which it annexed from Ukraine in 2014, about 80% of the Donbas - a coal-and-steel zone comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions - and over 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
