Russian forces have continued their advance into Ukraine during the past week and claim to have seized eight villages along a battlefront now 1,250km (780 miles) long.

“At this time, the Russian armed forces fully hold the strategic initiative,” Russian President Vladimir Putin told a meeting of military commanders on Tuesday, which marked his 73rd birthday.

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Going from north to south, according to the Russian defence ministry, Ukraine ceded Otradnoye in the Kharkiv region, Mayskoye, Siversk Maly, Kuzminovka and Fedorovka in Donetsk, Verbovoye in Dnipropetrovsk and two villages in Zaporizhia, Novovasylivka and Novohryhorivka.

Putin claimed that Russian forces had seized almost 5,000 square kilometres (1,930 square miles) of Ukraine this year.

On September 25, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, independently assessed the real figure to be closer to 3,434sq km (1,325 square miles).

Putin also said Russian forces possessed two-thirds of Kupiansk, a city in the northern Kharkiv region. The ISW assessed the Russian occupation was at 14 percent of the city.

Putin’s territorial claim for 2025 represents less than 1 percent of Ukraine and has come at great cost.

On Monday, “I Want to Live”, a Ukrainian government initiative offering Russian soldiers safe passage if they surrender, said 281,550 Russian soldiers were killed, wounded or lost in action in the first eight months of 2025, based on leaked Russian military documents.

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Of these, 86,744 were confirmed killed, but almost 34,000 were missing and possibly dead.

The losses were comparable with those of the Russian forces that overran Poland and Prussia in 1939, said the initiative, but “modern Russian generals … have been unable to capture Pokrovsk for several years.”

Al Jazeera was unable to verify the toll. Neither Russia nor Ukraine regularly announce the number of troops killed among their armies.

Pokrovsk, with a pre-war population of 60,000, is a town in Donetsk that Russia has been trying to capture for more than a year.

Just 17km (11 miles) northwest of Pokrovsk lies Dobropillia, which Russian forces recently tried to capture as part of an enveloping movement from the north.

Instead, Ukraine’s command has said, they got pushed back, losing 178sq km (69 square miles) and at least 3,500 personnel since the end of August.

The changing air war

From October 2 to 8, Russia struck major cities behind the front line, flying 1,523 drones and 93 missiles into Ukraine’s airspace.

Five people were killed on Saturday when almost 500 drones disoriented air defences enough to let a ballistic missile and 13 cruise missiles through.

Two nights earlier, there had been another large combined strike.

“We managed to shoot down only half of the missiles,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Ukraine recorded that it has destroyed more than 10,000 missiles and drones in September.

>But analysts noted a higher than usual rate of penetration by ballistic missiles. They are hard to intercept because of their terminal speed, but Patriot missiles have eliminated many of them in the past.

In the past week, Ukraine stopped only one out of 14, and three out of 21 in all of September.

The Financial Times reported that the rate at which Ukraine intercepted ballistic missiles had dropped from 37 percent in August to 6 percent in October.

Oslo University missile expert Fabian Hoffmann also suggested that Ukraine could be conserving Patriot interceptor missiles, firing one at each incoming target rather than two or three, as it has done in the past. He also suggested Russia could have developed a better map of where Ukraine has deployed its Patriot systems, and be targeting around them.

Russia targets gas facilities

In addition to demoralising Ukrainians, Russia has targeted gas facilities ahead of winter.

Thursday night’s attack aimed at infrastructure of the state gas and oil company, Naftogaz.

“A significant portion of our facilities has been damaged. Some of the destruction is critical,” said Naftogaz chief executive Sergii Koretskyi.

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As a result, Ukraine plans to increase gas imports by 30 percent this winter, said energy minister Svitlana Hrynchuk.

Zelenskyy said he had instructed electricity companies to stock backup equipment against anticipated strikes.

Ukraine strikes back

Ukraine has launched a fierce aerial campaign of its own this year to starve Russia’s military and economy of petrol, and it has met with success.

Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, said that at certain points during September, up to 38 percent of Russia’s refining capacity had been disabled.

Industry sources told Reuters monthly Russian gasoline imports from neighbouring Belarus had jumped fourfold in September to 49,000 tonnes. Diesel imports jumped to 33,000 tonnes.

“Fuel production decreased by one million tonnes, and the deficit reached 20 percent of domestic needs,” Kovalenko wrote. That meant Russia was more dependent on expensive imports, he said. “China, which receives Russian oil at a 40 percent discount, sells gasoline back with a 40 percent markup. As a result, Moscow loses on both fronts.”

On Saturday, Ukraine’s General Staff said their drones had struck the Kirishinefteorgsintez Oil Refinery near Leningrad for the third time this year. Geolocated footage showed fires at the facility, considered one of Russia’s five largest.

Two days later, Kovalenko said a refinery was struck in Russia’s Bryansk region.

On Monday, Ukraine’s General Staff said they had struck Russia’s Sverdlov Plant, one of Russia’s largest explosives manufacturers for artillery shells and aerial bombs.

Ukraine also struck the Feodosia oil transhipment terminal in Crimea, which handles cargoes of crude oil and petroleum products. Robert Brovdi, the commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces, said Russia used the terminal to supply its occupation forces in Kherson and Zaporizhia by train.

Across the Black Sea from Feodosia, Ukrainian drones struck the Tuapse oil refinery for the second time in a week.

And two Ukrainian drones struck the Tyumen Refinery, more than 2,000km (1,240 miles) east of Ukraine.

Ukraine’s defence production

Ukraine aims at these distant targets with its own, low-cost drones. This year, it has attempted to ramp up domestic defence production to $20bn, which Zelenskyy this week said represented a tenfold increase since the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022.

He has been asking Western companies to invest in Ukraine, and has been offering reciprocal Ukrainian joint investments in Western defence industries.

He declared the two-way financing policy to be a success.

“Our production potential for drones and missiles alone will reach $35bn next year,” he told the third International Defence Industries Forum in Kyiv.

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Digging up the Tomahawk

As US President Donald Trump continued to consider a Ukrainian request for Tomahawk missiles with a 2,500km range (1,550-mile), Russia said the prospects for peace were slimmer.

Trump and Putin met at Anchorage in Alaska on August 15, fuelling speculation that a truce deal was in the offing.

The momentum from that moment is being “largely exhausted by the efforts of opponents and supporters of the war”, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Wednesday. “This is the result of destructive activities, primarily by the Europeans.”

Since Trump’s election last November, Russia has portrayed him as a reasonable interlocutor and Ukraine’s European allies as the main impediment to peace.

Putin set the tone of disappointment on Sunday, telling Russian state television that if Trump supplied the Tomahawks, “This will lead to the destruction of our relations, or at least the positive trends that have emerged in these relations.”

Asked by White House reporters on Monday if he had made a decision, Trump said, “I’m not looking to escalate that war.”

Also worrying Moscow have been reports in both Reuters and The Wall Street Journal on October 1 that the US would provide Ukraine with intelligence needed to strike deep inside Russia. The sources spoke anonymously.