March 2, 2026
Key Developments on March 2:
- Ukraine captured more territory than it lost to Russia over February 2026, Syrskyi says
- US deploys LUCAS kamikaze drones against Iran ‘for first time in combat’
- 70% of Ukrainians skeptical US-Ukraine-Russia talks will bring lasting peace, poll shows
- Russian drone hits passenger train in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, 1 killed, 10 injured
Ukrainian forces captured more territory in February 2026 than Russian forces were able to occupy in the same period, Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on March 2.
The claim came amid a slowdown in Russian advances on most parts of the front line over winter — following a pattern seen on the battlefield a year prior — while along the southern front line in Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts, Ukrainian units have been on the offensive.
“We survived this difficult ‘battle of the winter,'” Syrskyi wrote, pointing out that the relative territorial gains had been the highest for Ukraine since the beginning of the Kursk Oblast incursion into Russian territory in summer 2024.
On Feb 21, President Zelensky claimed that Ukrainian forces had liberated 300 square kilometers of territory in a “counteroffensive” operation.
While Kyiv has been attacking on a noticeable scale, accurately measuring control, loss, and gain of territory objectively is becoming more difficult.
Over February, dozens of videos emerged on social media of Ukrainian forces conducting offensive operations in the part of the front line where Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts meet.
The area, lacking major geographical features, has been the most fluid part of the front line since autumn last year, when Russian forces began advancing at a greater pace against weaker Ukrainian brigades.
Operating in a wide contested “grey zone” with infiltrations on both sides, the Ukrainian advances trackable in open sources remain no more than extended clearing operations, rather than capturing and taking of Russian-held lines of defense.
Meanwhile, while Russian gains in Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts — the site of Moscow’s quickest advances over 2025 — have ground to a halt, concerning gains have come around the area of occupied Siversk in Donetsk Oblast, according to open-source mapping project Deep State.
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