russian forces increased the pace of their territorial gains throughout May and June 2025, the UK Defense Intelligence reports.
The russian Ground Forces highly likely seized approximately 550-600 sq km of Ukrainian territory in June 2025, an average of approximately 18-20 sq km per day. This was a slight increase from russian advances in May 2025, which was itself a notable increase on the approximately 200 sq km of Ukrainian territory temporarily occupied in April 2025.
Read more: UK Defense Intelligence: russian Daily Losses Decline Slightly, But Overall Toll Mounts
Russian gains in May and June 2025 are largely in rural, less built-up areas. Russia has focused on identifying weak areas across the defensive line. Small assaults enable russia to probe and spot opportunistic areas to breakthrough and make further gains across the front line.
While russia is gaining territory, russia has faced continuing difficulties attempting to take fortified cities such as Pokrovsk and Kupiansk. Directly assaulting these areas would require significantly greater mass. Russian forces attempt instead to circumvent and cut off logistic routes and ground lines of communication around key cities of interest.
As Defense Express previously reported, russia has likely sustained approximately 236,000 casualties (killed and wounded) in the war so far in 2025, and 1,022,460 casualties since launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to UK Defense Intelligence.
The average daily russian casualties during June 2025 was approximately 1,080, and totalled 32,000 over the course of the month, according to the General Staff of Ukraine. Russian casualty rates have moderately decreased month on month since March 2025, with June's average daily rate the lowest reported since April 2024.
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