The Russian army is gradually advancing along the front line, but the pace of this advance is so slow that it would take more than two years for Russian forces to fully take control of the entire Donetsk region.

Axar.az reports that this was stated by Ruslan Mikula, co-founder of the DeepState monitoring project, during a special session of the Kyiv Security Forum.

According to his calculations, Russia controlled 32.3% of the Donetsk region territory before 2022. In the first year of the full-scale war, benefiting from the element of surprise, Russian forces advanced rapidly and captured an additional 24.4% of the region. Since 2023, after the war took on a positional character, Russia has occupied a further 21.8% of the Donetsk region territory to date.

“Currently, 21.5% of the region remains under the control of Ukraine’s armed forces. If we take the pace of 2025 as a benchmark (as this year is indicative in terms of dynamics), the opposing side would need at least 742 days—roughly two years—to fully occupy the Donetsk region,” Mikula stressed.