Ukrainian-based OSINT community DeepState has processed a tremendous amount of data, displayed now as colorful lines on the war map of Ukraine: having analyzed satellite imagery of russian-occupied territories, the researchers highlighted the fortifications built by the russian army.
All of them are already reflected on their openly available interactive map, and today the community has also broken their findings down into statistics. These figures give valuable insight into the scale of russian preparations.
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The totality of fortifications stretches for 6,000 km if lined up, or 3,700 miles. They extend — from south to east — across the Kherson (886 km), Zaporizhzhia (1,869 km), Donetsk (1,865 km), Luhansk (1,140 km) regions, and Crimea (265 km) deeper into the rear. All of these are new, without taking into account the years-old fortifications built since 2014 during the war in Donbas.
Considering the current line of active contact between the russian and Ukrainian forces is roughly 1,500 km, it's practically 4 km of fortifications per kilometer of the frontline.
Furthermore, the way the fortifications are composed varies from region to region. In Zaporizhzhia, en route to Melitopol and Berdiansk, there are 410 km of "dragon's teeth" and 514 km of anti-tank ditches for a total of 896 km of trenches. In contrast, the Donetsk region features 1,285 km of trenches, accompanied by only 269 km of "dragon's teeth" and 282 km of ditches.
The reason for this discrepancy may lie in the character of terrain: southern regions have more "tank-vulnerable" places that need to be secured with ditches and anti-tank concrete pyramids.
DeepState adds that the russians try to hide some of their fortifications by making them fully underground. On the other hand, some of the trenches look created in a hurry, without proper drainage which led to being flooded with water. The data are being updated.
Earlier, Defense Express reported that Reuters estimated the length of russian fortifications at 1,000 km, a dedicated article was published in June 2023. Either different method of calculations, or russian forces have significantly expanded their defense line system since then.
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