In just one month, Ukraine has scored  victory after victory against Russia.  

Massive territorial gains are being made as  Ukrainians take back what’s theirs and crush  

Russian forces like the bugs they are. None  of this is happening by accident. Ukraine has  

developed into a fearsome fighting force that  combines innovation with brilliant tactics,  

resulting in liberations in key sectors of the  front lines that are stopping Russia in its  

tracks. The Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian  Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, provided the  

details in a Facebook post on April 15. Noting  that Russia has launched a more intense series of  

assaults as part of its spring offensive, Syrskyi  detailed how Ukraine is responding and what that  

response has meant for Russia. “We must seize the  strategic initiative, thus we are conducting an  

active defense,” Syrskyi declared before breaking  the bad news to Putin: “Thanks to this, in March,  

our troops regained control over nearly 50 square  kilometers of territory that had been occupied by  

the enemy.” Those gains are the result of a  series of counteroffensive actions that have  

caught Russia off guard, as Ukraine focuses on  retaking territory over which Russia only held  

a tenuous grasp with its infiltration strategy.  Putin’s plans have backfired. He thought he could  

take advantage of Russia’s manpower advantage  by sending in soldier after soldier to turn  

unoccupied sectors into gray zones. Putin  was wrong. Ukraine has come roaring back,  

and it's making gains even as Russia attempts to  ramp up the pressure during its spring offensive.  

Things wouldn’t be so bad for Russia if Ukraine  were making these gains on the back of months  

of Russian advances. But that isn’t the case. The  latest 50 square kilometers, or 19.3 square miles,  

of territory liberation comes off the back  of a month where Ukraine retook even more  

land than that. After launching a series of  counteroffensives in the south, Ukraine had  

regained about 300 square kilometers, or about 115  square miles, by February 20. By the end of March,  

Syrskyi was reporting that Ukraine had retaken  about 480 square kilometers, or around 185 square  

miles, from Russia in a counteroffensive that  seemed sweeping at first. It isn’t. What Ukraine  

is doing is extremely strategic and focused on  a handful of key sectors, as you’ll discover  

if you keep watching the video. Key here is that  Ukraine has seen back-to-back months of extensive  

gains against Putin’s forces. And in March,  the territory recaptures were accompanied by  

a mind-bogglingly bad casualty rate for Russia.  Al Jazeera reports that Russia suffered a new  

monthly high for confirmed casualties caused  by Ukraine’s Armed Forces in March. Ukraine  

says enhanced drone production made this possible.  It’s more complicated than that, but the headline  

figure is simple – 35,351 Russians were killed or  wounded in Ukraine in the same month that Ukraine  

retook 50 square kilometers of its territory. That  casualty rate represents a 29% increase over the  

rate from February, which shows us that something  is changing in Ukraine. It’s not just holding the  

line anymore. Ukraine is pushing forward using an  active defense that is killing more Russians than  

ever before. Adding to Putin’s woes is that  Russia’s recruitment rate isn’t keeping up  

with its 2026 rate of attrition. Russia plans to  recruit 409,000 soldiers by the end of the year.  

It’s getting nowhere near that number. Right now,  Russia has a daily average recruitment rate of  

1,120, which Al Jazeera says will ultimately  lead to it having a 65,000-soldier shortfall  

against its target by the end of 2026. That means  fewer soldiers being cycled onto the front. And  

when Russia has fewer soldiers to defend the  territory that it occupies, opportunities for  

yet more counterattacks open up for Ukraine. What  we’ve seen in March is already impressive. But  

it may just be the start of something much  bigger as Russia’s manpower problems take  

hold deeper into 2026. So, Russia is dealing  with recruitment issues, record casualties,  

and Ukraine retaking large chunks of territory.  Could it possibly get any worse for Putin? The  

short answer is yes. All of this is happening  as Russia launches the “grand” spring offensive  

that is supposed to result in the collapse of  the Donbas and Russia stealing vast quantities  

of territory from Ukraine. Attacks have ramped  up across the entire front as a result of this  

spring offensive launch. Russia is sending waves  of soldiers in the directions of Kostiantynivka,  

Lyman, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia, and toward  the fortress belt of cities in Donetsk, as it  

follows the only strategy that Putin has ever had  – throw cannon fodder at defenses until Ukraine  

breaks. Heavy fighting has also been reported in  the Oleksandrivka and Pokrovsk directions, the  

latter of which is a city that Russia has claimed  to have taken since as far back as December.  

Basic logic dictates that more assaults should  add up to more territory being taken by Russia.  

But that hasn’t been the case. What we’re actually  seeing across the front is a massive slowdown in  

the rate of the Russian advance. Business Insider  highlights this, noting that Putin’s forces were  

moving forward at a rate of about 12.9 square  kilometers, or five square miles, per day in March  

2025. Fast-forward a year, and the rate of advance  is a comparatively paltry 2.58 square kilometers,  

or 1 square mile per day. In other words, Russia’s  rate of advance has been slowed by a factor of  

five in just one year. And to apply a healthy  dose of salt to the Russian wound, Ukraine has  

snatched away the momentum to achieve daily gains  of 4.66 square kilometers, or 1.8 square miles,  

per day – almost twice what Russia is gaining.  What this all means for Russia is very simple:  

The launch of the spring offensive has been  a complete failure. According to France24,  

an assessment by the Institute for the Study  of War, or ISW, smashes the final nail into the  

coffin of Russia’s March 2026 campaign. When  tallying Ukraine’s advances against Russia’s,  

March is the first month in two and a half years  where Russia’s gains amount to net zero. Ukraine  

is outpacing Russia. It’s putting Putin to shame  by launching a better and more effective offensive  

than Russia in the precise month that was supposed  to mark the start of Russia’s victory march. This  

isn’t just humiliating for Putin. It’s an outright  catastrophe that should be showing him just how  

poorly his “throw people at the problem until  it goes away” strategy works in the 21st-century  

battlefield that Ukraine has created. What we’re  seeing now is that things are starting to shift in  

Ukraine’s favor. And this is how it’s happening.  The obvious answer to how Ukraine is pulling all  

of this off against a Russian military that has  a massive numbers advantage is drones. We could  

just say “drones did it” and be done with it,  only there’s a lot more to it than that. Still,  

drones are crucial. Do you remember those March  casualty figures that we shared earlier? 35,351  

Russian soldiers killed or wounded. According  to Euromaidan Press, a staggering 96% of those  

casualties were caused by drones. Ukraine’s flying  and ground robots have been taking a massive toll  

on Russia’s spring offensive, which is allowing  Ukraine to hold its ground in the regions that  

Putin is targeting as it makes advances elsewhere.  Incidentally, Ukraine’s drone advantage is getting  

stronger. 2026 will see the U.K. send a bumper  package of more than 120,000 drones to Ukraine,  

which will add to the millions of drones that  Ukraine is building itself. The long-range  

drone aspect of the war isn’t going any better  for Russia. For a long time in an area where  

Russia held a clear advantage, long-range drones  have been used to wreak havoc on Ukraine’s cities  

and infrastructure. Again, volume was key, as it  has been on the ground for Putin. However, March  

represented another turnaround in that department.  ABC News reports that March was the first month  

of the entire war in which Ukraine launched  more long-range drones at Russia than Russia  

managed to launch at Ukraine. The disparity is  significant: 7,347 Ukrainian drones versus 6,462  

Russian drones. And to make matters even worse for  Putin, Ukraine’s new breed of interceptor drones,  

which take out Shaheds for pennies on the dollar,  helped Ukraine to score a near-90% interception  

rate against Russia’s drones in March. Russia  is launching fewer drones than Ukraine,  

and it’s seeing less success with those drones  than it has in months. And what this means is  

that March wasn’t just catastrophic on the  battlefield for Putin. Ukraine’s growing  

focus on deep strikes means that it’s whittling  away at the Russian war machine from the inside.  

Inside Russia alone, 76 targets were struck  by Ukraine’s drones, including 15 facilities  

related to Russia’s oil refining sector. All  of this is done to weaken Russia on the front,  

be that by destroying military assets in Russia,  such as production facilities, or by snatching  

away the fuel that Russia provides to its troops  and sells for a profit to other nations. So,  

drones have been huge for Ukraine in March. But  you probably knew that already. Whenever there is  

a discussion about how Ukraine has pulled  off something spectacular against Russia,  

drones are always one of the reasons why. But pay  attention to what we just said there – “one of the  

reasons.” Behind the drone barrage, there is a lot  more going on behind the scenes that has enabled  

Ukraine to make its massive gains against  Russia. But before we go deeper into that,  

there’s a lot more where this comes from. If  you’re getting value from The Military Show,  

make sure you’re subscribed to the channel.  There was something in Syrskyi’s words that  

should have caught your attention, beyond the  50-square-kilometer claim. Syrskyi used the words  

“active defense,” and that term represents  far more than many realize. Syrskyi himself  

gave us some clues as to why when he said, “We  are countering Russian numbers with Ukrainian  

quality of combat operations, forcing the enemy  to play by our rules and constantly postponing  

the deadlines for completing tasks.” He adds that  Ukraine has been using strikes against Russia’s  

military and defense-industrial complexes, both in  Russia and in the occupied territories, to reduce  

Russia’s offensive capabilities. Ukraine’s Defense  Minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, also spoke about the  

need for Ukraine to take the initiative and go  on the attack earlier in 2026. Back in January,  

Fedorov said that Ukraine was going to focus  on boosting Russia’s killed-in-action rate,  

as he set a target of 50,000 irrecoverable  casualties for Russia per month. That,  

combined with systemic reform inside the Ukrainian  military, would lead to a situation where Ukraine  

could take the initiative against Russia.  That’s what we’re now seeing on the battlefield.  

But taking the initiative doesn’t translate to  Ukraine launching a sweeping counteroffensive  

across a frontline that now stretches for 1,200  kilometers, or about 745 miles. Ukraine is being  

much smarter than that. The reason why it has made  gains against Russia in both March and February is  

that Ukraine has taken a sector-based approach  to its counterattacking strategy. George Barros  

of the ISW tells Business Insider, “It's  not accidental. It's not circumstantial.  

There are reasons for it,” when describing how  Ukraine has been degrading Russia’s defenses  

in key sectors for months to set the stage for  the counteroffensives that we’re seeing today.  

What this tells us is that Ukraine has learned  from the mistakes of the past. It has launched  

a counteroffensive against Russia before, back in  2023. That counteroffensive ultimately failed for  

several reasons, one of which was that Ukraine  spread its forces too thin. Ukraine isn’t making  

that mistake now. Instead, it’s looking at  areas where Russia has spread itself too thin,  

and it’s countering there. The idea is simple.  Russia’s infiltration strategy, which it used for  

much of 2025, allowed it to “claim” territory even  when it had only managed to sneak a handful of  

troops onto that territory. These small gatherings  of defenses are what Ukraine is targeting now,  

and the results are plain to see. Where Russia  is weak, Ukraine attacks, and it launches those  

attacks while maintaining a stalwart defense in  the regions that Russia really wants to take.  

That defense inflicts massive casualties, which  further weakens Russia as Putin is forced to  

move troops around the battlefield before he’s  ready. Those unanticipated movements lead to  

more weakening and more opportunities for Ukraine  to make gains. Oleksandrivka, where Russia is now  

trying to launch attacks, was one of those  sectors. Dnipropetrovsk is another, Business  

Insider points out. And even before we started  hearing about Ukraine’s counteroffensives in 2026,  

it was giving us hints about the type of strategy  it would deploy. Heading to Kupiansk in the  

Kharkiv Oblast, Ukraine spent the end of December  shattering an attempted Russian occupation of that  

city, rubbishing claims made by Putin and his  cronies that Kupiansk had fallen in the process.  

That gave us some early insight into the strategy  that Ukraine is pursuing now. It’s allowing Russia  

to take territory in strategically unimportant  areas, while Ukraine focuses on retaking key  

pieces of territory that actually have an impact  on Russia’s long-term plans. In Kupiansk, Ukraine  

destroyed Russia’s attempt to project strength  ahead of peace negotiations. Now, in Oleksandrivka  

and Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine is preventing Russia  from building a buffer zone to protect its forces  

in Donetsk, as well as pushing back against an  attempted Russian advance in Zaporizhzhia. This  

is a maturation in Ukraine’s operational planning.  And it shows us that Ukraine is getting better  

at both anticipating what Russia wants to achieve  and countering in places that Russia can’t defend.  

Business Insider says that Ukraine’s Delta system,  which is a huge cloud-based battlefield management  

system that lets Ukraine review real-time data  recorded by drones and other units from the  

battlefield, is playing a huge role. Ukraine  constantly gets its hands on up-to-the-minute  

intelligence that feeds into the planning of its  operations. The maturation of Ukraine’s approach  

can also be seen in its military command. We’ve  already mentioned that Fedorov is working on  

overhauling Ukraine’s military structure. Ukraine  is shifting to a corps system, which improves  

coordination between units and aids operational  planning. All of these changes are already  

being reflected on the front, and they’re being  accompanied by a new Ukrainian focus on mid-range  

strikes. Ukraine is hitting more targets in places  like occupied Donetsk as it has introduced a new  

generation of drones that fly further than FPV  drones and don’t cost as much as the long-range  

drones it already has. We mentioned Ukraine’s  targeting of Russian air defenses earlier. That  

has a purpose, too. The Kyiv Independent says that  the period between June 2025 and March 2026 saw  

Ukraine carry out 492 strikes against Russian  air-defense systems. Those strikes set up the  

mid-range strikes that we’re seeing now. Ukraine  uses these strikes to target Russia’s ammunition  

depots and its Shahed drone storage units in the  occupied territories. It’s taking out command  

centers and troop gatherings, forcing Russia into  a position where it’s having to deploy frontline  

units that don’t have what they need. This has  been made possible because the air defenses  

that once protected Russian infrastructure in  the near rear have been taken out of the game,  

which creates safe aerial corridors that Ukraine  can then exploit to smash Russian logistics and  

supply lines. Ukraine’s strategy is complex and  requires a great deal of coordination. However,  

we can sum it up as follows: Ukraine is weakening  Russia from the inside to create opportunities  

for the types of counterattacks that were seen in  February and March. Now, are these counterattacks  

war-ending? No. But they’re not supposed to be.  Again, it’s all about the “active defense” that  

Syrskyi mentions. Ukraine is taking territory  in strategic positions that enable it to defend  

other sectors better than it would otherwise be  able to do. Take Donetsk as an example. Now that  

Ukraine has liberated the southern territories  that Russia intended to use as a buffer zone,  

it can start funneling more soldiers north and  into the Donetsk region. If Russia wants to  

counter that, it has to send soldiers who were  previously destined for Donetsk to the south.  

Either way, Russia’s attempts to advance in  Donetsk are weakened because Ukraine took the  

initiative in a completely different sector of  the battlefield. And there are other factors at  

play. Just when Russia might start to think  that it has a handle on Ukraine’s tactics,  

Ukraine finds new surprises for Putin. According  to The Kyiv Post, Ukraine is now taking advantage  

of underground routes through which it is moving  troops and military equipment. The outlet doesn’t  

provide much more information than that, though  we do know that Ukraine has invested in building  

networks of tunnels in the kill zones that it has  created. Those tunnels were, and likely still are,  

being used to ambush Russian infiltrators. Perhaps  now, the underground network Ukraine has created  

is large enough to enable it to use the tunnels  as logistical arteries. Russia would never have  

seen that coming. And that’s the point. Speed and  innovation have always been key advantages that  

Ukraine has held over Russia. As we speak, Ukraine  is working to embed research and development into  

the military units that are actively fighting  against Russia, the Center for Strategic and  

International Studies claims. It adds that Ukraine  has also created a better training pipeline for  

its air defense operators, which all adds up to  Ukraine using its technological advantage to hurt  

Russia. Syrskyi himself says that Ukraine’s  military never stands still. Every month,  

Ukraine’s military conducts assessments of the  combat operations that it launches, which it uses  

to refine its tactics and figure out how it can  improve coordination across all levels of military  

command. In short, Ukraine is always looking for  ways to get better. Putin would have been happy  

with waging a war using decades-old tactics. Even  now, Russia is having a hard time adapting. Yes,  

it uses drones against Ukraine. But beyond that,  Russia is following the same attritional playbook  

in 2026 as it was in 2022, and the strategy  is starting to fall apart. So, when we say  

that Ukraine retaking 50 square kilometers of  territory from Russia is an unbelievable victory,  

we aren’t just referring to the territory itself.  That’s important, of course. But far more vital  

for Ukraine is that these gains are being made as  a result of the country’s ability to constantly  

adapt and mature. Putin’s invasion, as brutal as  it has been, has led to Ukraine becoming one of  

the world’s strongest military powers. The bite  back is now underway. Ukraine has the momentum,  

as it claws back territory and destroys Russian  soldiers in record numbers. The spring of 2026 was  

supposed to kickstart the final push for a Russian  victory. Instead, it’s starting to look like the  

beginning of Ukraine ending Russia’s invasion for  good. It’s not just us and Ukraine saying that,  

either. As Russia’s losses mount, Putin is  becoming increasingly detached from reality  

even as the Kremlin warns that the situation  on the frontlines is critical. In the end,  

Putin’s delusion may combine with Ukraine’s  evolution to spell the end of Putin’s Ukraine  

dream, and you can find out why if you watch  our video. And if you enjoyed this video,  

be sure to hit subscribe so you never miss our  analysis of the latest developments in Ukraine.