Debunked: Claims of Russian battlefield gains misuse report that finds greater Ukrainian advances

CLAIMS THAT RUSSIA had taken large swaths of ground in Ukraine are based on a mapping group’s analysis that actually came to the opposite conclusion.

That analysis, by a non-state Ukrainian group called DeepState, only described Russian advances through the month of June, but noted that, if Ukrainian advances were also counted, Russia had lost more ground than it gained.

“BREAKING: Russia Records Largest Territorial Advance in Ukraine in Months,” a number of posts on Facebook begin.

“Russian forces made their largest territorial gains in Ukraine in several months during June, according to battlefield assessments by the independent monitoring group DeepState,” the posts say.

“The analysis estimates that Russian troops captured approximately 84 square miles (about 218 square kilometres) of additional territory over the month.”

All the posts were accompanied by a collage of photos showing troops waving the Russian national flag, Vladimir Putin looking determined, and a wide-eyed Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

One, posted by a page that describes itself as “news”, had garnered thousands of likes and comments since being posted on 8 July. It also commented under the post asking people to pay money to subscribe for “verified updates”.

Another post, which has a truncated version of the text in French and features the same photos, has been liked more than 11,500 times and shared more than 800 times since being posted on that same date.

These Facebook posts were posted on pages that regularly gives badly written news updates. However, it is not clear that they are propaganda outlets, as their reporting on the Russian invasion of Ukraine is mixed.  

The group these posts cited for their information, DeepState, runs online conflict maps using publicly available information, often described as open source intelligence, or OSINT.

DeepState was set up by Ukrainians and tends to focus and show a bias in favour of Ukrainian sources of information. Nevertheless, the maps they have produced have often been corroborated and generally reflect the state of the war.

While it would be a near-impossible take to verify whether these maps were correct, a much simpler task would be to see whether their report said what the Facebook posts claim it did. 

So, what did their analysis say? Did they find that Russia was making their “largest territorial gains” in months?

No. Their analysis actually suggests that Russia, for a second month in a row, has lost ground.

“In June the increase in occupied territories was 84 sq km,” their analysis, available on the messaging app Telegram, reads.

It should be noted that the same figure “84” appears as in the posts. But in the original analysis it referred to square kilometres, not square miles as the Facebook posts say. A square mile is more than 2.5 times the size of a square kilometre.

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However, this is not the worst misrepresentation by the Facebook pages of Deepstate’s analysis.

DeepState’s post continues: “if we take into account how much [Ukraine] liberated last month, then for the second time in a row the enemy will have a negative number,” they wrote.

In other words, the original analysis showed that while Russia had made advances in 84 square kilometres, they had lost an even larger amount of land.

However, they did not give a figure for Ukrainian advances as these had yet to be corroborated.

Ukrainian language media reported the same analysis but with the headline: “Is a turning point in the war coming? In June, the Armed Forces of Ukraine again liberated more territories than they lost – DeepState”.

The Facebook posts did not mention anything about Ukrainian gains, instead suggesting that Russia made a net gain of 84 square miles.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine launched in 2022 has now lasted longer than the First World War. While there had initially been some dramatic shifts in territorial control, the battle lines have largely hardened and the last years have seen only minor shifts in the front lines, though more often in Russia’s favour.

Consecutive months of Ukrainian advances are just one signal that Ukraine may have turned the tide, gaining territory and inflicting heavy casualties on Russian forces, as well as striking infrastructure deep into Russia’s territory, while the Kremlin increasingly faces economic and potentially political crises.

DeepState is not the only analysis showing Ukrainian gains on the battlefield.

An analysis by The Economist using satellite imagery has shown significant gains by Ukraine in May, while a more modest balance still fell in Ukraine’s favour in June and the start of July.

An analysis by the Critical Threats Project, which is run by an American think tank, found that Russia gained about 30 square kilometres in June.

Could 30 square kilometres be considered the “largest territorial advance” in months? Arguably, but only because the same analysis shows they lost almost 400 square kilometres in April and May.

Russia’s conflict with Ukraine has been a major topic of misinformation stretching back more than a decade, though intensifying with Russia’s full-scale invasion.

It is often impossible for independent media organisations to verify claims about the front lines of the war, given the dangers of being in the vicinity and the secrecy enforced by both armies.

Nevertheless, claims that an analysis by DeepState showed significant gains for Russia miscite that report. They mistook square kilometres for square miles, and omitted DeepState’s claim that, when Ukrainian advances were counted, Russia’s gains were “negative”.

Ukraine was the example that topped Ireland’s priorities for the ongoing Irish presidency. Misinformation about the war’s trajectory could potentially warp views of Ukraine’s prospects, leading some to support bad decisions based on false information.

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