For the second month in a row, the army of the aggressor state, russia, has continued to lose territory in Ukraine. By the end of May, the occupiers’ net territorial losses amounted to over 281 square kilometers. This is stated in a report by the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
According to ISW data, from December 2025 to May 2026, the russian army established control over an area of 40.6 square kilometers. This also includes territories where the infiltration of russian infantry groups was recorded.
"Russian forces, however, lost 281.1 square kilometers in the same time period when only considering territory that Russian forces control," the ISW report states.
Photo: ISW.
ISW calculations show that russian forces lost control of approximately 281 square kilometers during the aforementioned period. This is partly due to the fact that ISW added a "penetration" layer for russian forces to its map. Therefore, analysts emphasize that this does not mean that the Ukrainian Defense Forces have recaptured this specific territory.
A comparison of the russian federation’s military advances in 2025 with the same period last year shows that the pace of occupation has slowed significantly, even accounting for the infiltration of occupying infantry units.
From December 2024 to May 2025, russian troops occupied 515.84 square kilometers of territory, compared to the 40.64 square kilometers they managed to capture between December 2025 and May 2026.
Photo: ISW.
Thus, in 2026, russian troops captured or penetrated territory amounting to only 7.87% of what they had advanced into in 2025.
As the Ukrainian News agency earlier reported, on June 1, the Ukrainian analytical project DeepState stated that, according to its data, in May of this year, the russian army occupied 14 square kilometers of territory. This is the occupiers’ worst result since October 2023.
As a reminder, at the end of May, russian media outlets acknowledged that the russian army’s advance had slowed to its lowest rate in two years. They also complained that due to Ukraine’s leap forward in the field of UAVs, the situation on the front lines had reached a stalemate.
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