Name: Reports: Ukraine retakes 200 square kilometers of Russian-occupied territory | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-02-17T17:03:04.000Z
Duration: 5 min 42 s
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Ukraine's military says it has recaptured about 200 square kilometers of its own territory in less than a week.

Now, that's according to a study by the Institute for the Study of War.

Past perfect

It claims the recaptured land is concentrated mainly along the border east of the city of Zaporizhzhia, in an area where Russian troops had made significant progress since the summer of 2025.

Now, if this is true, it would be the fastest battlefield gain in two and a half years.

One of the main reasons such advances are possible would be the recent shutdown of Russian forces access to Starlink.

Let's talk about this with military analyst Marina Mehran, who's at the Defense Studies Department of King's College London.

Marina, can you confirm first of all that Ukrainian troops have managed to recapture this large amount of territory from the Russians?

Well, I cannot confirm anything simply because the information is coming only from one source.

Therefore it's impossible to triangulate at this point.

And I was looking at Ukrainian Os in deep state, and

Also, Ukrainian pundits have not said anything about that, about recapturing 200 square kilometers territory in Zaporizhzhia.

And of course, the General Staff of Ukraine hasn't made any official statements.

at the moment we have to wait and see if more information is available.

I would think that Ukrainian forces can capitalize on this, is the fact that the Russian command and control and communications are disrupted because Starlink access has been limited, as well as Telegram access.

And how will that have affected the fighting, the fact that they cannot access Starlink?

The problem here is, what we have to understand is that in order to be able to effectively use drones, communicate between different divisions, you need secure communications and ideally unjammable communications.

And therefore the Russians have been using Starlink procured, also from the Ukrainian side, but

also from other places, in order to fill that capabilities gap that the Russians have been having since the beginning of the war.

And of course, that was one way for the Russians to use a drone such as Molnya 2, for instance, on the battlefield and gather data.

The other issue is telegram that has been used for military communications.

And so we see if you cannot communicate effectively between units, then you have a huge disadvantage on the battlefield, despite the fact that your technology might be advanced or produced at a faster pace.

And that's where Ukraine is leading, namely in C3.

Also as far as battlefield management software is concerned.

And so the Russians are now looking to offset this issue because they are at a huge disadvantage now.

This can, of course, reflect on the battlefield and we see the situation is different, difficult in Zaporizhzhia, but

we will have to wait to see if any major effect is going to develop because right now it is critical for the Russians to somehow fill that capabilities gap.

They won't have their own Starlink, that's clear, but

they will be trying to replace it, for instance, through a platform called Barrage1, which is a high altitude aerostat platform.

But those ideas and how long it will take to integrate that remains to be seen and remains how flexible the Russian military bureaucracy is.

So from what you're saying, the Russians have a real disadvantage because of this and Ukraine has an advantage.

Could Ukraine use that advantage, do you think, to launch a larger offensive to push this even further?

Well, the problem here is it's an advantage in one area.

It is a critical area, we have to understand.

But Ukraine also has some disadvantages in terms of manpower and in terms of capabilities.

And therefore Ukraine has to think, or Ukrainian military, the General Staff, on how to explore the advantage that the Ukrainian troops have right now and capitalize on the gains, on the potential gains of the counterattacks that are taking place that are at the tactical level, because you don't want to overstretch your capabilities either.

Launching a larger counteroffensive, I think at this stage wouldn't be favorable to Ukraine from a military standpoint.

But thanks so much as ever, Marina Morand from King's College London.