KYIV, March 2 (Reuters) - Ukrainian troops have retaken nine settlements in the Zaporizhzhia region since the end of January and are pressing ahead with a counterattack along the southeastern frontline, the Ukrainian general staff said on Monday.
Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said that over the last month, for the first time since summer 2024, Ukrainian troops have regained control over more territory than Russian forces had been able to capture.
Reports of Ukrainian advances in the Zaporizhzhia region started after Russian forces experienced sweeping outages of their Starlink communications terminals on the battlefield, following a decision by SpaceX owner Elon Musk to shut them down in response to a plea from Kyiv in late January.
A Ukrainian battlefield mapping project DeepState said that the Russian troops occupied 126 square kilometres (49 square miles) of Ukrainian territory in February, a 20-month low.
"We have survived this difficult battle for winter," Syrskyi said on the Telegram app.
Over the winter Russian forces intensified their campaign of strikes on Ukraine's energy system, leaving millions in the cold and dark. They also increased pressure on Ukraine's exhausted and thinly stretched troops along the 1,200-km frontline.
But Ukraine held out, Syrskyi said.
The Ukrainian troops conducted effective operations in the Zaporizhzhia region near Oleksandrivka and Huliaipole, strengthened their control over the town of Kupiansk in the Kharkiv region of the northeast, and maintained their defences near the city of Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region in the east, he said.
SWEEPING STARLINK OUTAGES FOR RUSSIAN TROOPS
The command of Ukraine's airborne assault forces said that limits imposed on Russian access to Starlink had impacted the situational awareness of Moscow's troops and disrupted their frontline communications.
In the Zaporizhzhia region, work was underway to retake more ground, it said.
"During the operation, the enemy is being systematically and decisively pushed out of fortified positions," the command said on the Telegram app. The operation started on January 29, the military said.
DeepState said in its Monday report that the Ukrainian troops pushed back Russian forces near five villages in the Zaporizhzhia region. It said Russian troops occupied 371 square km in January-February this year compared with 517 square km in the same period a year ago.
Reuters was unable to verify the data.
The fighting rages on amid attempts to find a diplomatic solution to end the war, now in its fifth year.
A new round of U.S.-brokered peace talks between Ukraine and Russia was still expected this week despite weekend strikes on Iran by the U.S. and Israel, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Monday.
(Additional reporting by Yuliia Dysa; Editing by Daniel Flynn and Ros Russell)
