Russia’s rate of advance over the last two years, even during its fiercest offensive campaigns, has been among the slowest in modern war, per a new analysis by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The assessment by CSIS researchers Seth G. Jones and Riley McCabe, published on Tuesday, examined Russia’s three major pushes on the front lines following its seizure of Avdiivka in February 2024.
“After seizing the initiative in 2024, Russian forces have advanced at an average rate of between 15 and 70 meters per day in their most prominent offensives, slower than almost any major offensive campaign in any war in the last century,” the researchers wrote.
They used their findings to dispute recent statements by Russian leaders, including the country’s president, Vladimir Putin, that the Kremlin has been gaining significant momentum in recent months.
These three offensive directions — toward Kupiansk in northern Ukraine and Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar in the east — have been the source of the war’s most intense battlegrounds in the last two years.
Russian forces have said at various stages in 2025 that they’d taken all three major hubs, though Ukraine says that it still maintains pockets of fighting presence there and has been pushing back.
Slower than the Battle of the Somme
But even in Pokrovsk, where Russia advanced the fastest, the Kremlin’s troops took roughly 70 meters of territory per day, totaling 50 kilometers, or roughly 31 miles, over the last two years, Jones and McCabe wrote.
The pair calculated the rate of advance based on the straight-line distance by which battle territory shifted, which doesn’t account for the total area of territory seized.
Based on this method, Jones and McCabe assessed a Russian rate of advance of 23 meters per day for Kupiansk and 15 meters per day for Chasiv Yar.
All three were slower than the brutal five-month French and British advance at the Somme in World War I, which took an average of 80 meters of German territory per day, researchers wrote.
Compared with other major combined-arms offensives in modern history, Russia’s recent advances have been “moving at mere fractions of the pace of historical campaigns,” they added.
Jones and McCabe highlighted the Soviet Union’s advance on the Leningrad front in 1943, which they said progressed at an average pace of 1,000 meters a day, and the 1918 Battle of Belleau Wood, where they said US forces advanced 410 meters a day in Germany.
Ukraine’s 2022 counteroffensive in Kharkiv, meanwhile, seized 7,400 meters a day, while its temporary incursion into Kursk took 1,250 meters a day, the researchers added.
A war of attrition and few maneuvers
Part of the reason behind Russia’s slow advance has been the nature of the war, Jones and McCabe noted. The attritive style of the conflict favors the defender heavily, especially with the mass introduction of first-person-view drones.
“The eastern front line, for instance, continues to be saturated with drones. As a result, vehicle movement is difficult within 15 kilometers of the front line,” they wrote.
To be sure, Kyiv still faces a slew of emerging and severe challenges, including high rates of draft dodging and desertion, waning US military support, and Russia innovating with its attack drones to pound Ukrainian energy infrastructure in the winter.
Overall, Russia has seized roughly 75,000 square kilometers, or 28,900 square miles, of Ukraine since its full-scale invasion began in 2022, Jones and McCabe wrote.
“These gains and Russia’s overall progress on the battlefield, especially in the last two years, fall decisively short of Moscow’s goal to militarily conquer Ukraine,” the researchers added.
Still, they added that a more recent Russian offensive toward the city of Huliaipole in the southern Zaporizhzhia region has been more successful.
Since this push began in November 2025, Russia has been advancing there at an average rate of 297 meters a day, their assessment said.
Moscow’s high casualties in the last year or so, however, also pose another challenge to its ability to sustain its assault.
Russian deaths and injuries on the battlefield have outnumbered Ukraine’s by a ratio of 2:1 or even 2.5:1, Jones and McCabe wrote, citing figures from CSIS, the UK’s defense ministry, and other sources such as news outlets and interviews with officials.
“There were roughly 415,000 Russian casualties in 2025 alone, with an average of nearly 35,000 casualties per month,” they added.
