Ukraine’s battlefield gains reshape southern front but diplomacy stalls

Saturday 21 February 2026 - 11:20

By: Dakir Madiha

Ukraine’s battlefield gains reshape southern front but diplomacy stalls

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky says his country’s forces have retaken around 300 square kilometres of territory in the south in some of their most significant advances in months, even as efforts to secure a negotiated end to the war remain blocked. In an interview at the presidential headquarters in Kyiv, Zelensky argued that Ukraine had reversed a dangerous trend on the battlefield and rejected suggestions that Moscow now holds the upper hand, while acknowledging that any eventual victory will come at a high cost in lives and resources.

He said the latest gains are concentrated in the Zaporizhzhia region, roughly 80 kilometres east of the city of Zaporizhzhia, where Russian troops had pushed forward through late 2025. Ukrainian units have clawed back ground over a dozen settlements along the Oleksandrivka and Huliaipole axes, crossing the Haichur and nearby rivers at several points and in some sectors pushing Russian lines back by nearly ten kilometres. Military observers cited by the Institute for the Study of War describe the operations as a series of intensive tactical counterattacks that have rolled back weeks of Russian advances, rather than the start of a large-scale, theatre-wide offensive.

The pace of Ukraine’s advance has coincided with a disruption of Starlink satellite communications used unlawfully by Russian forces, after SpaceX cut off a tranche of terminals on 1 February. Ukrainian fighters say the loss of those links has severely degraded Russian command-and-control, complicating coordination of assaults and drone operations and sharply reducing the tempo of Russian attacks. Officials in Kyiv say their own units have had to adapt to the same disruption but insist the impact has been far more damaging for Moscow’s forces, which had come to rely heavily on the network. Russian commanders publicly deny that the outage has affected their operations, but frontline accounts and the sudden halt in Russian momentum in several sectors point to a significant setback.

The battlefield developments are unfolding against a diplomatic backdrop that remains tense and inconclusive. Two days of talks in Geneva brokered by the United States ended after only a brief second session, with neither Russia nor Ukraine signalling any substantive shift in position. According to Zelensky, both Washington and Moscow have floated scenarios under which the war could stop quickly if Kyiv agreed to relinquish the entire Donbas region, which Russia now controls in part and claims as its own. He rejected that idea outright, saying Ukraine would not exchange occupied territory for a ceasefire and accusing its partners of exerting disproportionate pressure on Kyiv rather than on Moscow.

Despite the impasse, Zelensky maintains that an eventual settlement on terms acceptable to Ukraine remains possible, provided the military balance does not tilt decisively in Russia’s favour. He has urged European governments not only to step up weapons deliveries but also to consider placing their own troops along any future ceasefire line to guarantee its enforcement and deter renewed Russian attacks. As the conflict enters its third year, the combination of renewed Ukrainian momentum in Zaporizhzhia, Russian communications setbacks and stalled negotiations leaves the war poised between a fragile battlefield recovery for Kyiv and a political process still searching for a way forward.