To all intents and purposes, Russia’s 2024 summer offensive in Ukraine has already begun as its forces continue to make small gains across areas of the frontline, following a larger incursion in the northeast towards Kharkiv in May this year.

However, it is understood that gains for Russia are relatively small, described as being segments of between 20km² to 60km² in separate pockets. Russian losses in June continue to keep pace with the record number of personnel killed and injured in May, which averaged 1,200 per day.

With the Russian offensive likely to persist for some time, its forces continue to sustain persistent combat casualties. To date, Russian forces are also sustaining around 1,200 casualties per day through June, it is understood.

Ukrainian casualties are a closely guarded secret, with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s concession in February 2024 that Ukrainian forces had sustained 30,000 killed in action unable to be verified.

At the start of May 2024, the senior military advisor of the UK Delegation to the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE) Nicholas Aucott said that Russian casualties in Ukraine had exceeded 465,000 troops.

Since then, as Russia continues to make incremental gains west of Avdiivka and opened up a new northern offensive in the Kharkiv Oblast, an average daily casualty rate has pushed the number of Russian soldiers killed or wounded in action beyond 500,000 since February 2022.

No surprise on Russia’s summer offensive

While Russia’s summer offensive has not come as a surprise to officials, the fact that it saw the concentrated use of infantry, rather than including more armour in combined operations, was unexpected.

Nevertheless, 2024 continues to see Ukraine pressed onto the defensive, having conceded key battlegrounds in Avdiivka, while Chasiv Yar remains a key target for Russian forces. In late-2023, the Ukrainian town of Bakhmut was seized by Russia after months of sustained operations.

The six-month-long delay by the US in approving a key military funding and equipment package, eventually passed in April, is judged to be significantly responsible for the difficulties experienced by Ukraine in 2024. As a consequence, Ukrainian forces have been starved of ammunition, forcing them into tactical withdrawals.

It is thought that Ukraine’s decision to increase the scope of a new mobilisation law could help solve a growing recruitment crisis for forces, having also removed consular services for male fighting age Ukrainian nationals living overseas in a bid to force them to return home.

Some European countries have already said that they would assist Ukraine with the repatriation of Ukrainian fighting age males living in their territory.

On 26 June the US-based Institute for the Study of War published a Russia-Ukraine war update, stating that Russian forces had advanced northeast of Kupyansk amid “continued Russian offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line”.

North Korea engineers to Ukraine reports are 'misinformation'

Meanwhile, earlier reports that North Korea could send military engineer personnel into occupied areas of Ukraine to assist Russian forces have been dismissed as misinformation, according to Western officials, with neither Russia nor North Korea formally announcing such a move.

The US Department of Defense (DoD) said on 26 June that it was aware of reports that North Korea could send personnel into Ukraine, stating that it would “keep an eye” on any developments, according to a DoD spokesperson.

With additional reporting By John Hill and Andrew Salerno Garthwaite.