{
"id": "deepstate-gross-flows",
"title": "How many km² does Russia capture and Ukraine liberate each month",
"description": "The chart visualizes gross values of advances for both sides, showing what stands behind the usual net figure of territorial change.",
"unit": "square kilometres (km²)",
"date_range": "Jan 2023 — present",
"topic": "territory",
"license": "CC-BY-4.0",
"license_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
"page_url": "https://visua.no/en/charts/deepstate-gross-flows/",
"dataset_url": "https://visua.no/data/deepstate-gross-flows.csv",
"meta_url": "https://visua.no/data/deepstate-gross-flows.meta.json",
"datawrapper_id": "vXMnF",
"chart_png_url": "https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/vXMnF/full.png",
"supabase_view": "chart_deepstate_gross_flows_monthly",
"cadence": "Monthly (month-end snapshot)",
"last_updated": "2026-06-30",
"key_points": [
"The chart shows monthly gains for both sides — Russian gains (up) and Ukrainian liberations (down) separately, not just the net of the two. It is calculated based on the data, mapped by Deepstate Map. ",
"The data starts from January 2023, as 2022 mapping data was more inconsistent. It also focuses on the war of attrition stage of the Russian full-scale invasion. For a full picture of territorial change since 2022, check this chart.",
"After the Ukrainian counter-offensive in 2023, Russia's gains have run far ahead of Ukraine's liberations, peaking in November 2024 at 731 km². Since Autumn 2025, Ukraine has started to conduct localized counter-attacks, liberating a few tens of km² per month, while in net terms still losing territory.",
"Scope is territory inside Ukraine's internationally recognised borders. Crimea and the pre-2022 LPR/DPR footprint are excluded so the series isolates post-2022 movement; Ukraine's 2024 Kursk incursion (Ukrainian-held Russian territory) is a separate ledger and is excluded entirely."
],
"source": {
"key": "deepstate",
"name": "DeepState Map",
"short_name": "DeepState",
"url": "deepstatemap.live",
"description": "What it shows\nDeepState is a Ukrainian OSINT project publishing an interactive map of the Russo-Ukrainian war, updated daily. The map distinguishes occupied, liberated, and contested (grey-zone) territory.\n\nWhat it's based on\nThe territorial control depicted on the map is based on geolocated footage, open-source reports, community submissions, and direct communication with Ukrainian units.\n\nWho's behind it\nIt is created and maintained by NGO DeepstateUA, which has employees and a volunteer team of over 100 people. The founders of the project are Roman Pohorilyi and Ruslan Mykula. \n\nAlignment to the sides of the war\nThroughout the full-scale war, DeepState positions itself as a fact-based project. The map has partnerships with the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence and General Staff, and the project also has a closed map solution for the Ukrainian defence forces. DeepState has publicly stated that during Ukrainian offensive operations, it delays map updates for operational-security reasons. Yet it has contradicted the official position of the General Staff and spoken out publicly about Russian advances that the General Staff hadn't communicated prior.\n\nGeneral data risks and usefulness\nThe map data — like any source heavily based on OSINT — tends to be a lagging indicator.",
"coverage": "April 2022 — present",
"cadence": "Continuous · Snapshotted daily ~06:00 UTC",
"citation": "DeepState. (2026). DeepState Map. https://deepstatemap.live.",
"shared_points": []
},
"processing": [
{
"n": "01",
"title": "Snapshot",
"desc": "For each completed calendar month, take the month-end snapshot — DeepState's last map of that month — and fetch its full GeoJSON polygon, not just a headline number. The raw daily map isn't kept; only the cleaned monthly polygon is stored, as the record of the exact geometry this chart was built from."
},
{
"n": "02",
"title": "Clean",
"desc": "Normalise the raw snapshot into a tidy table: validate the geometry, deduplicate, and key each polygon to its month-end snapshot and capture time."
},
{
"n": "03",
"title": "Compare two months",
"desc": "Compare each month-end map against the previous month’s: area newly inside the occupied zone = taken by Russia, area no longer inside = liberated by Ukraine. Areas are geodesic km², which vary roughly 0.06% from DeepState’s own summary figures."
},
{
"n": "04",
"title": "Exclude baseline",
"desc": "Work from the post-24 Feb 2022 occupied zone only — Crimea and the pre-2022 LPR/DPR footprint are excluded so the series shows only what is moving. Ukraine’s 2024 Kursk incursion and other territory outside Ukraine’s borders are dropped."
},
{
"n": "05",
"title": "Round & publish",
"desc": "Round to a sensible precision, write a one-row-per-period view, and refresh the Datawrapper chart."
}
],
"data_dictionary": [
{
"name": "month",
"type": "text",
"unit": "YYYY-MM",
"desc": "Calendar month, keyed to the month-end snapshot. Series starts Jan 2023 (Jan 2023 still diffs against its Dec 2022 predecessor); the 2022 mobile-war months are excluded."
},
{
"name": "gained_km2",
"type": "number",
"unit": "km²",
"desc": "Territory Russia newly occupied this month — area inside this month-end’s occupied zone but not last month’s. Positive; plots up. Geodesic km² (WGS84)."
},
{
"name": "lost_km2",
"type": "number",
"unit": "km²",
"desc": "Territory Ukraine retook this month. Emitted negative so the chart diverges downward; the area liberated is |lost_km2|. gained_km2 + lost_km2 = the month’s net change."
}
],
"citation": {
"in_text": "P. Krasnomovets (2026)",
"full": "P. Krasnomovets (2026). \"How many km² does Russia capture and Ukraine liberate each month.\" Processed from DeepState Map. Retrieved from https://visua.no/en/charts/deepstate-gross-flows/",
"bibtex": "@misc{krasnomovets2026deepstategrossflows,\n author = {Krasnomovets, P.},\n title = {How many km² does Russia capture and Ukraine liberate each month},\n year = {2026},\n source = {DeepState Map},\n url = {https://visua.no/en/charts/deepstate-gross-flows/}\n}"
},
"contact": "pavlo@visua.no",
"issues_url": "https://github.com/krasnomovets/visua-pipeline/issues"
}