Maps Show Where Russia Gained, Lost Territory Since Start of Ukraine War

A recent map assessing the parts of Ukraine under the control of Russian President Vladimir Putin's military shows Russia still holds significant portions of the country.

However, Ukraine has also regained much of the territory Russia claimed during the early stages of the war Putin launched in February 2022.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) think tank has thoroughly documented multiple stages of the conflict since its start and frequently updates a map of Ukraine that documents which territory is controlled by Russia.

The ISW's most recent map, published Wednesday, shows that Russia has lost much of the land it once claimed in the northern positions of Ukraine when compared to an ISW map from a month into the war.

Prior to Putin's invasion, Russia occupied approximately 16,000 square miles of Ukrainian territory, consisting of Crimea and parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. But in the early weeks of the war, Putin's forces made quick gains in the northeast and southern parts of Ukraine.

Putin's soldiers seized portions of the area around the city of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine, as well as the Kharkiv region. To the south, Russia claimed control of the port city of Mariupol by April after first occupying Kherson Oblast.

During these early days of the war, Russians even attempted to take over the country's capital, Kyiv but were ultimately thwarted in one of the first major signs of Ukraine's resistance.

After focusing its attention in the south and east, Russia soon began encountering more unexpected military strength from Ukraine, and President Volodymyr Zelensky's forces increasingly took victories on the battlefields as aid from the West poured in to bolster his military.

Ukraine launched a counteroffensive last summer that eventually saw it retake over 500 settlements and over 4,600 square miles of territory between September 6 and October 2. This included the Kharkiv region, and later Ukraine was able to regain control of the city of Kherson in November.

Before the end of 2022, Ukraine had reclaimed approximately 54 percent of the land that Russia had captured during the war, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data provided by the ISW.

Even with the success that Ukraine's military has had in the liberated portions of its country once claimed by Russia, Putin's forces still control parts of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.

Newsweek reached out to the Ukrainian and Russian Ministries of Foreign Affairs via email for comment.

In early June, Ukraine launched its largest counteroffensive to date, though Zelensky has acknowledged that the operation has been progressing "slower than desired."

Still, the ISW said last week that Kyiv's counteroffensive was still more successful than the failed Russian winter offensive and "most like the slower but ultimately successful Kherson counteroffensive in its pace and initial progress."

The ISW wrote on Wednesday that Ukraine's ongoing counteroffensive "reportedly made gains" during some military operations in areas around the city of Bahkhmut, western Zaporizhia Oblast and the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area.