Pasi Paroinen, a military analyst with Finland’s Black Bird Group, said Russian forces had taken control of an estimated 667 square kilometres this month, citing data he said could include some October gains noted with a delay.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who replaced his defence minister in May, has repeatedly said forces are advancing much more effectively, and that Russia will achieve all its aims in Ukraine, although he has not spelt them out in detail.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said he believes Putin’s main objectives are to occupy the Donbas, spanning the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and oust Ukrainian troops from Russia’s Kursk region, parts of which they have controlled since August.

A source on Ukraine’s General Staff said on Sunday that Ukraine now held about 800 of the 1376 square kilometres of Kursk that they held initially and would hold it “for as long as is militarily appropriate”.

Russia controls 18 per cent of Ukraine including all of Crimea, just over 80 per cent of Donbas and more than 70 per cent of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions in the south, as well just under 3 per cent of the eastern Kharkiv region, according to open source maps.

Latest advance

The thrust of the advance has been in Donetsk region, with Russian forces pushing towards the town of Pokrovsk and into the town of Kurakhove. Russia has increasingly encircled territory and then pummelled Ukrainian forces with artillery and glide bombs, according to Russian analysts.

Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, said Russia held the complete strategic initiative on the battlefield.

Neither side publishes accurate data on their own losses, though Western intelligence estimates casualties to number hundreds of thousands killed or injured, while swaths of eastern and southern Ukraine have turned into wastelands.

Ukrainian officials say it is hard to expand mobilisation without knowing when Western military assistance is going to arrive and how reliable it will be.

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The General Staff of Ukraine’s military said in an update that its forces had repelled 23 Russian attempts to advance along the Kurakhove part of the front line that evening. It said 25 attacks had been repelled near Pokrovsk,

Russian war bloggers say that if Russia can pierce the Ukrainian defences around Kurakhove, they will be able to push westwards towards the city of Zaporizhzhia while securing their rear to allow a swing towards Pokrovsk.