Ukraine liberates 300 square kilometers in southern counteroffensive, Zelensky tells AFP

Ukrainian forces have liberated 300 square kilometers (116 square miles) of territory from Russian occupation in a new southern counteroffensive, President Volodymyr Zelensky told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in an interview on Feb. 20.

The president’s report comes as Kyiv faces mounting pressure from the United States to withdraw troops from Ukrainian-controlled territory as part of a deal with Russia to end the war.

“You can’t say that we’re losing the war. Honestly, we’re definitely not losing it, definitely,” Zelensky told AFP during an exclusive interview in Kyiv. “The question is whether we will win.”

Zelensky said Ukraine was advancing along the southern front line, but did not specify the specific sector or time frame of the counteroffensive.

“I won’t go into too many details, but today I can congratulate our army first and foremost —all the defense forces — because as of today, 300 (square) kilometers have been liberated,” he claimed.

While the war for a winning narrative remains important on the international stage, the reality on the ground is far from a black-and-white counteroffensive success.

Over February, dozens videos emerged on social media of Ukrainian forces conducting offensive operations in the part of the front line where Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk oblasts meet.

The area, lacking major geographical features, has been the most fluid part of the front line since autumn last year, when Russian forces began advancing at a greater pace against weaker Ukrainian brigades.

Operating in a wide contested “grey zone” with infiltrations on both sides, the Ukrainian advances trackable in open sources remain no more than extended clearing operations, rather than capturing and taking of Russian-held lines of defense.

Apart from clearing operations in response to Russian breakthroughs, Ukraine’s military has been fighting in a posture of strategic defense over the past year.

Russia launched a renewed ground offensive against Ukraine in 2025, concentrating the bulk of its forces in eastern Donetsk Oblast. As part of the campaign, Russia also intensified operations in Ukraine’s southern Zaporizhzhia Oblast and broke into the southern part of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

Zelensky reported in September 2025 that Ukrainian counteroffensive operations successfully liberated 160 square kilometers (60 square miles) of territory in Donetsk Oblast and another 170 square kilometers (65 square miles) elsewhere on the front lines — though he did not provide further details about these additional 170 kilometers.

Over the course of 2025, Russian forces occupied a total 4,336 square kilometers (1,674 square miles) of Ukrainian territory, according to the open-source mapping project DeepState.

Zelensky’s interview followed two days of U.S.-brokered peace talks in Geneva, where Russia and Ukraine failed to achieve a breakthrough on the territorial issue at the heart of the negotiations: the status of Ukraine’s Donbas.

Russia continues to demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw entirely from the region as a precondition for any peace deal. Ukraine has rejected that demand, insisting that freezing the current front line offers the most realistic basis for a ceasefire.

“We haven’t found constructive solutions on territorial issues,” Zelensky said on Feb. 20.