Last week Ukraine announced offensive operations across the south. This week it said it had recaptured significant territory on multiple fronts in the key northeastern battleground of Kharkiv, where dozens of villages and towns have been under Russian occupation for six months.
The government has imposed sweeping restrictions on reporting in the area, so it was difficult to independently verify its claims or to gauge the toll of the fighting on either side. Ukrainian and Western officials cautioned that the situation was fluid and that gains were far from secure.
But accounts from witnesses, the local Ukrainian authorities, Russian proxy officials, geo-located video on social media and satellite footage all offer a window into the Ukrainian operations now being fought on multiple fronts.
The Ukrainians have pushed past the town of Balakliya, less than 30 miles from the city of Izium, a critical logistical base of operations for Russian forces across eastern Ukraine. They appeared to be advancing east toward Kupiansk, another key railway hub, in a bid to encircle Russian forces in Izium.
The rapid advance appears to have caught the local Russian authorities by surprise.
The offensive is “eroding confidence in Russian command to a degree not seen since a failed Russian river crossing in mid-May,” the Institute for the Study of War said.
Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Ukraine had made tangible gains in recent days, but he sought to temper expectations.
Citing the attacks around Kharkiv, the director of the C.I.A., William Burns, said that Russia had underestimated Ukraine’s capacity for combat and that it was “hard to see Putin’s record in the war as anything but a failure.”