Thread by @Black_BirdGroup

In August the Russians occupied 430 sqkm of Ukrainian territory. This is down from the 502 sqkm in July.

However, looking at the numbers alone does not give a full picture of the Russian operations. Over the second half of August the situation became increasingly dynamic.

In the area of the Dnipropetrovsk border, the Ukrainians conducted a tactical counterattack, pushing Russia away from ~50sqkm of territory.

The area in orange was our assessment of Russian control on the 15th of August overlaid on current frontline.

In the Dobropillya direction the RU managed to breach the UA front to the depth of up to 16km and Ukraine was forced to divert forces from other sectors to prevent a breakthrough.

Assessed UA control on the 16th in purple, RU in orange. Current assessment in red/blue.

Without an operational level response from the UA, the Russians may have consolidated their gains on a much larger area.

Positions changing hands is not new, it happens constantly, but the scale of the the back and forth we saw in August was uncommon for this point in the war.

Thus downwards trend in gains from July is not necessarily indicative of Russian offensive operations winding down, but rather of successful Ukrainian tactical and operational responses to Russian advances throughout the second half of the month.

As the front becomes more porous it's possible that dynamics like these become more common, even as the Russian operations continue at a similar pace.

At the same time the Russian forces failed to make any significant operational gains over the summer months.

This lack of results over the summer likely lead to the reorganization and repositioning of forces over the last weeks of July, happening simultaneously with the Ukrainian counterattacks.

It's likely that Russian operations continue with largely similar tempo into the autumn.