The maps show how much Russian territory Ukraine is believed to have captured just over a week after its invasion

Ukrainian servicemen riding in a BMP-1 infantry fighting vehicle near the border with Russia on August 10, 2024.

Viacheslav Ratynskyi

• Ukrainian forces have advanced miles into Russia since launching their cross-border incursion.
• In the shock invasion, Kiev captured at least 1,000 square kilometers, according to some estimates.
• Ukraine’s progress can be seen in maps published by the Institute for the Study of War.

Ukraine made one of the boldest and riskiest moves of this war last week, launching a new offensive in which its forces invaded Russia, stunning Moscow, Kiev’s international partners and mainstream observers of the conflict.

The Kremlin is scrambling to respond to Ukraine’s shocking incursion into Russia’s western Kursk region, now in its tenth day and marking the biggest attack by a foreign enemy on Russian soil since World War II.

Kiev claimed earlier this week that its forces had captured about 1,000 square kilometers (about 386 square miles) of Russian territory — nearly as much as Moscow has captured in Ukraine this year — and more than 80 settlements in that area since the beginning of the attack in August. 6.

Although the overall objective of the incursion remains somewhat unclear, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suggested that the operation could contribute to future negotiations.

“Our advance in the Kursk region is going well today – we are achieving our strategic objective,” he said in his late-night address to the nation on Wednesday. The “exchange fund” for our state has also been significantly replenished.”

These advances were documented by the Institute for the Study of War, which published daily maps showing territories believed to have been taken by the Ukrainians. The creation of these maps is based on undisputed Russian sources and other available information about the Ukrainian invasion.

The claimed limit of Ukrainian advances as of August 7.

Institute for the Study of War

The claimed limit of Ukrainian advances as of August 9.

Institute for the Study of War

The claimed limit of Ukrainian advances as of August 12.

Institute for the Study of War

The claimed limit of Ukrainian advances as of August 14.

Institute for the Study of War

While these maps show Ukraine’s progress, at least as well as it can be understood in the current fog of war, it is unclear exactly how much territory the military actively holds.

Still, the rapid progress of the past 10 days has undoubtedly been significant – considering its autumn 2022 counteroffensive in the Kharkiv region – but the pace of operations appears to have slowed as Kiev faces increasing Russian resistance.

According to the Biden administration, the ongoing operation in Ukraine has prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin to “make adjustments” to the deployment of his forces.

John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said Russia had redirected some units from operations in and around Ukraine to the Kursk region, although it was unclear how many forces had been moved and how many more might go.

Ukrainian servicemen ride a self-propelled howitzer near the Russian border in Ukraine’s Sumy region on August 11.

REUTERS/Viacheslav Ratynskyi

“We are seeing signs that they are trying to consolidate in and around the Kursk area as a result of the Ukrainian operations there,” Kirby explained to reporters on Thursday. “Doing that means you’re taking assets that were in one place doing one thing, and now they have to go do another.”

He added that this “definitely presents a dilemma in the decision-making process”.

Intense fighting in the Kursk region has forced more than 130,000 civilians to flee the area, and Ukraine said its forces also took hundreds of Russian prisoners of war during the operation.

Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces have captured the town of Sudzha and are setting up a military commander’s office there, Zelenskyi said Thursday, citing a new report from Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi.

Sudzha, which is adjacent to a key gas terminal, is the largest city in Russia that the invading Ukrainian forces appear to have captured so far.