Russia’s summer offensive in eastern Ukraine, launched in May, is showing battlefield gains across multiple fronts, probing and attacking with small, fast-moving units as fighting escalates daily.
With its advance, Russia has shifted the war’s rhythm. In May, Russian forces seized roughly 173 square miles, more than double April’s gains, according to DeepState, a Ukrainian group that maps the conflict using combat footage. Most gains came south of Kostyantynivka, in the Donetsk region, and near the Russian border in the northern Sumy region.
In a new development this spring, both sides have turned to motorcycles and civilian cars to quickly cross open terrain. Ukraine, which relies heavily on drones to hold its positions, is using civilian vehicles to resupply its defensive lines, while Russia uses them in assaults.
“It’s a kind of renaissance of the cavalry, but with internal combustion engines,” said Col. Viktor Kevliuk, a Ukrainian Army reservist and an analyst at Ukraine’s Center for Defense Strategies, a think tank.
Here are the areas where the front is moving.
Sumy
In recent months, Russian troops have captured at least a dozen villages in the Sumy region. The advance is tiny, but in frequent steps, with small assault groups, often just two or three Russian soldiers, who probe Ukrainian positions in waves.
“Where the last surviving infantry is holding out, the next assault group arrives to build on any success,” Colonel Kevliuk said.
Ukraine has one defensive advantage. The terrain is full of ravines, so movement is only possible on roads, according to Andrii, an intelligence officer with an air assault brigade operating near the city of Sumy, who asked to be identified only by his first name in keeping with military protocol.
The city is home to more than 200,000 civilians, including many displaced from fighting along the border, and is now under growing threat as Russia advances. Russian forces overran it in their initial invasion in 2022, but Ukraine recaptured it later that year.
Pasi Paroinen, a military analyst with the Finland-based Black Bird Group, said Russian forces were seizing high ground north of Sumy and pushing toward dense forests that dominate the city’s northern and northeastern approaches. If Russia captures four villages — Khotyn, Yunakivka, Pysarivka, and Kyyanytsia — that would threaten the city itself.
If the battles shift into the forests, commanders warn, it could require additional infantry reinforcements from Ukraine, as drone surveillance becomes less effective through the leaves.
Kostyantynivka
Kostyantynivka, a Ukrainian operations hub, will likely become Russia’s main effort in the coming months, with other fronts serving the supporting role of preventing Ukraine from sending reinforcements to this fight, said Mr. Paroinen.
The first step is to try to isolate Kostyantynivka from multiple directions, in a “semi-encirclement,” he said, isolating Ukrainian units while maintaining a narrow, hazardous corridor for retreat. The idea would be to advance eastward across the T-0504 road; northward from Toretsk; and westward from the hilltop town of Chasiv Yar.
This would not be easy. Russian forces have been trying to capture Chasiv Yar for two years, since the nearby city of Bakhmut fell in the spring of 2023. So long as Chasiv Yar remains contested, Russia’s advance to Kostyantynivka will be slowed. Also, to the south, Russian forces are bogged down in urban fighting in Toretsk.
In some areas near Kostyantynivka, Russia has a manpower advantage of up to 20 to 1, Ukrainian commanders in the area say.
“Our task is to block their actions,” said Captain Filatov, a commander deployed along the line. His soldiers regularly engage in close-range combat while slowing retreating, he said.
A unit of a few dozen hundred typically repels 10 to 15 assaults per week, with as many as four in a single day, he said.
At the same time, frontline airstrikes have intensified, even after Ukraine’s destruction of at least a dozen Russian strategic bombers. At the start of May, Russia was carrying out 11 airstrikes a day. That pace has picked up to 17 in June, said Lt. Col. Dmytro Zaporizhets, spokesman for Ukraine’s Luhansk Operational Tactical Group.
Throughout the Donbas — parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions — Russian has concentrated drone units and is targeting roads, threatening supply lines.
Analysts say Russian advances in the Donbas follow a systematic pattern. The troops first isolate Ukrainian positions, targeting logistics and reinforcements with drones, then pound them with artillery and aerial bombs, then attack in small units, often on motorcycles. Then they repeat the process farther down the line.
Pokrovsk
West of Kostyantynivka lies Pokrovsk, also in the Donetsk region, where Russian forces are also pressing forward with superior manpower, said Sr. Lt. Vasyl Yemelianov, an artillery commander in the area.
Russian forces are closing in on Pokrovsk from several directions, similar to their semi-encirclement strategy around Kostyantynivka.
Still, the city remains in Ukrainian hands while Russian efforts have recently shifted farther west, with some troops crossing the administrative border between the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
But the front, here and elsewhere, remains fluid, with Russian forces looking for weaknesses and Ukrainian troops scrambling to hold defensive lines.
Liubov Sholudko and Sofia Diadchenko contributed reporting.
Maria Varenikova covers Ukraine and its war with Russia.
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