Ukraine reclaimed 62sq km (24sq miles) of territory last month, its commander in chief revealed on Monday, contradicting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent claim to be advancing “in all directions”.

“The month in which the occupiers hoped for their breakthroughs and made maximum efforts for this became the month with comparatively the smallest territorial gains by the enemy in recent times,” Oleksandr Syrskii, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, claimed on his Telegram messaging service channel.

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Most of the gains were in Donetsk, Ukraine’s eastern region, where fighting has been intense for most of the war.

Russian forces there have been gunning for the towns of Dobropillia and Pokrovsk, but lost ground in both directions.

Towards Dobropillia, Russia captured 13.5sq km (5.21sq miles), but lost 25.5sq km (10sq miles), said Syrskii. “In the Pokrovsk direction, their gain was 5sq km (1.9sq miles), while our troops regained control over 26sq km (10sq miles),” Syrskii said.

He added that Ukrainian troops gained another 4sq km (1.5sq miles) on other sectors of the front.

Across the entire front, Russia made estimated gains of 499sq km (190sq miles) in August, said the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, but its losses contradict Putin’s recent claim in Beijing that all Russian troops in Ukraine were “advancing successfully, at different speeds”.

“Despite spreading propaganda … the Russians suffered blows,” said Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation.

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Dnipro Group of forces spokesman Oleksiy Belskyi, whose unit is defending Pokrovsk, said on Saturday that Russia was concentrating armoured vehicles and drones, and redeploying experienced units in preparation for a new offensive.

Although Russian advances have picked up some speed since the spring, last week Russia claimed to have captured only one village, Novoselivka in Dnipropetrovsk.

It also claimed to have “neutralised” a Ukrainian attempt to land reconnaissance troops on an island in the Dnipro River Delta.

Russian assaults have come at great cost.

Syrskii estimated Russian casualties since the beginning of the year at 299,210.

He described Ukrainian tactics as “containing the enemy and inflicting the maximum possible losses on them”.

Russia escalates drone attacks

Unable to win the war with ground assaults, Russia has sought to break Ukraine’s morale with long-range drone attacks on its rear cities. During the week of September 4-10, it unleashed a total of 1,811 drones and 63 missiles. Ukraine said it downed 87 percent of the drones and half the missiles.

Russia escalated this tactic overnight on Sunday with the largest such attack of the war, when 810 drones and decoys targeted Kyiv, along with 13 missiles.

Ukrainian Premier Yulia Svyrydenko said the cabinet offices had been struck for the first time, and photographed herself in front of the smouldering ruin.

“For the first time, the government building – its roof and upper floors – has been damaged due to a hostile attack,” she wrote on Telegram.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed to have targeted its biggest ever drone attack against drone manufacturing sites in and around Kyiv, “where long-range drones had been manufactured, assembled, repaired, stocked, and launched”, as well as “airbases in the central, southern, and eastern parts of Ukraine”.

Russia denies targeting civilians and claims to be aiming at military targets, even if those are sometimes nestled in urban spaces.

One of its attacks on Tuesday killed 24 retirees who were queueing up to collect their monthly pensions in the town of Yarova in Donetsk.

A new air defence ‘format’

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday told Ukrainians that nearly half the drones in the Kyiv strike were decoys sent “to complicate the situation” in air defence, and called the shooting down of several ballistic missiles “a significant achievement”.

Ukraine’s military intelligence has estimated for some time now that the Russian drone production – already at 90 a day – aims to deliver strike packages of more than 1,000 drones and missiles to overwhelm Ukrainian defences, and has been strategising on how to counter the threat.

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On September 4, Zelenskyy referred cryptically to “a certain format” of air defence that he and French President Emmanuel Macron had discussed for the first time.

“If we receive a positive signal from the United States, since technically much in this format of air defence depends on them – if we receive that positive signal, we will be glad to share this information,” Zelenkyy said.

A Ukrainian think tank, Price of Freedom, has proposed an air defence plan whereby 120 European aircraft would patrol Ukraine’s western skies, allowing its air force to focus more effectively on defensive and offensive operations in the contested eastern airspace. It was unclear if Zelenskyy was referring to this plan.

That same day, Syrskii said, “We are creating a layered system to counter enemy ‘Shaheds’ and ‘Gerans’,” referring to Russia’s kamikaze and decoy drones, respectively. “Our joint task is to form more such crews, train more fighter operators, and provide them with more effective means of destruction and radars.”

That new air defence “format” received renewed importance on Wednesday, when an estimated 19 drones crossed over into Polish airspace, forcing NATO to mobilise Polish F-16s, Dutch F-35s and Italian airborne early warning and control (AWACS) planes for the first time to shoot them down.

For the first time, also, NATO’s Article 4 was invoked in the context of the Ukraine war by Polish Premier Donald Tusk. The article says “Parties will consult together, whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.”

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said the airspace violation was “an act of aggression that created a real threat to the security of our citizens”, and called it “unprecedented”.

Russian opposition newspaper Verstka recorded six occasions when a drone strayed into Polish airspace during the war. “It is unlikely that such a number of drones could have all entered into Polish airspace by accident or as a result of a technical or operator error,” said the ISW.

Ukraine’s deep strikes

Ukraine has been developing long-range strike capabilities as a means of leverage to bring Russia to the negotiating table.

On Friday, Ukrainian drones hit the Ryazan refinery, one of Russia’s four largest, putting its primary processing unit out of action. The same refinery was struck on August 2 and August 28.

Ukraine also claimed to have struck two S-300 air defence vehicles in the Kaluga region.

On Sunday, drones struck an oil pumping station in Russia’s Bryansk region, near Naitopovichi. “The facility is of strategic importance for transporting oil products from Belarusian refineries to the Russian Federation,” said Robert “Magyar” Brovdi, commander of Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces.

On the same day, Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces (SSO) said they had struck the Ilsky refinery on the Russian border territory of Krasnodar Krai and destroyed its primary oil-refining complex.

Brovdi said drones also struck and severely damaged Transneft’s Vtorovo oil pumping station in Penkino, in the Vladimir region.

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Two days later, Ukraine’s military intelligence said two oil and two gas pipelines had been damaged, also in the Penkino area.

Ukraine has been conducting many of these strikes with domestically built drones, which carry small payloads of less than 100kg (220lb).

Last month, it unveiled mass production of the Flamingo, a 3,000km- (1,900-mile-)range cruise missile carrying a warhead of more than a tonne, and may have begun testing it on the battlefield.

On September 4, the Flamingo’s manufacturer, Fire Point, also revealed two ballistic missiles under development – the FP-7 with a 200km (124-mile) range and 150kg warhead, and the FP-9 with a 855km (1,860-mile) range and 800kg payload.

Ukraine’s allies have already entered into joint production of drones.

On September 3, Denmark said Fire Point would build a rocket fuel plant for the Flamingo near the Danish Air Force base at Skrydstrup.

On Tuesday, UK Defence Secretary John Healy said he would fund the production of “thousands of long-range drones” in the UK for Ukraine, and German defence minister Boris Pistorius said he was allocating $350m to launch a new deep strike initiative by purchasing long-range drones from Ukrainian companies and giving them to Ukraine’s armed forces – a model of assistance pioneered by Denmark.

Twenty-six of Ukraine’s allies on September 4 committed military resources to a peacekeeping force that would operate behind Ukrainian front lines after a ceasefire.

Zelenskyy described it as a “security system”.

“We are preparing strength – on the ground, in the air, and at sea,” he said.

Separately, in an interview with French magazine Le Point, Zelenskyy said, “The question is whether the civilised world is ready to endure as long as Ukraine.”