U.S. government analysts concluded this summer that Russia was unlikely to make significant gains in Ukraine in the coming months, as its poorly trained forces struggled to break through Ukrainian defenses. But that assessment proved wrong.

Russia’s army is gaining speed in its advance in eastern Ukraine, seizing more land last week than at any point this year, increasing pressure on Kyiv’s US and European allies to bolster its defenses.

"At the moment, they do not have an advantage in these towns. The contact line is stabilized," said Anastasia Bobovnikova, a spokesperson of the Operational Tactical Group Luhansk.

Russian forces struck a residential building in Ukraine's second-largest city of Kharkiv on Thursday, killing three, including two teenage boys, and injuring scores of others, and launched scores of other attacks as they continued their grinding onslaught in the country's east.

The Russian military carried out at least 36 double-tap strikes against Ukraine from the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022 to August 2024, killing over 100 people, according to a recent report by Truth Hounds,