Ukraine's leadership has claimed more than 400 sq km of territorial gains in the country's southeast, but independent war-tracking groups have painted a far more modest picture of the advance.
The discrepancy between official claims and open-source estimates has come to light as Kyiv seeks to project battlefield strength to Western allies distracted by the Iran war, "Hvylya" reports, citing an analysis by the Financial Times.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said after a trip to the eastern front that his troops had "restored control over somewhere around 400-435 sq km." Major General Oleksandr Komarenko of the general staff told Ukrainian media they had "liberated almost the entire territory of the Dnipropetrovsk region" previously under Russian control.
DeepState founder Roman Pohorily directly challenged the 400-sq km figure. "I don't know where they get it from, to be honest," he told Ukrainian media. Black Bird, a Finnish war-monitoring group, estimated that Russian forces had been pushed out of 213 sq km on the southern front line - roughly half the official claim.
The gap widens further when the full front line is taken into account. While Ukraine pushed Russian forces back in the south, Russian troops advanced in other areas, including at the southern edge of the Zaporizhzhia front. Black Bird's net estimate of Ukrainian gains in February stands at just 37 sq km.
Despite the disputed numbers, Black Bird confirmed that in February, for the first time since November 2023, Russian troops lost more Ukrainian territory than they captured.
Read also: Kofman: Russian Generals Overstated Battlefield Successes to Putin.