{ "id": "deepstate-occupied-oblasts", "title": "How much territory does Russia control in the regions it considers its own", "description": "Russian-controlled share of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions, tracked monthly since September 2022.", "unit": "percent of oblast land area (%)", "date_range": "September 2022 — 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-occupied-oblasts/", "dataset_url": "https://visua.no/data/deepstate-occupied-oblasts.csv", "meta_url": "https://visua.no/data/deepstate-occupied-oblasts.meta.json", "datawrapper_id": "r3Xpa", "chart_png_url": "https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/r3Xpa/full.png", "supabase_view": "chart_deepstate_occupied_oblasts_monthly", "cadence": "Monthly (month-end snapshot)", "last_updated": "2026-08-31", "key_points": [ "In September 2022, Russia self-declared the annexation of four Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson – within their administrative borders. Yet it never controlled them fully. The chart shows what share of each region's land area was occupied by Russia, according to Deepstate Map. ", "Parts of the Kherson and Luhansk regions were liberated by Ukrainian forces during counter-offensives in Autumn 2022. Since then, the changes have been minimal. Capturing the whole of the Donetsk region continues to be the minimum goal of each year of the full-scale war. Since 2024, Russia has made gradual progress that has been slowing over time. In 2025, it also focused its offensive actions on the Zaporizhzhia region and made some advances. The front line was mostly stabilized there in 2026.", "As of August 2026, Russia also holds smaller footholds in regions it hasn't declared annexed: 5.0% of Kharkiv, 1.5% of Sumy, 0.5% of Mykolaiv, and 0.1% of Dnipropetrovsk. Crimea was fully occupied at the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014." ], "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 the General Staff, and the project also offers 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. The latest case of this seems to be in some months of 2026, when the Ukrainian General Staff and independent analysts at the Finnish Black Bird Group claimed that Ukraine recaptured more territory than Russia. Deepstate data doesn't show a single month when Ukraine had a net gain in territory. Deepstate has also contradicted the official position of the General Staff in previous years 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. Moreover, a clear frontline became non-existent due to drone warfare. Now it's hundreds of square kilometers of a gray zone. Approaches to defining this area differ.", "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": "Once a month, we check how much of each region was under Russian control, based on where the front line stood at the time." }, { "n": "02", "title": "Add older ground", "desc": "Some land — mainly in Donetsk and Luhansk — was already under Russian control before the 2022 invasion. That's added in too, so the picture shows everything currently held, not just recent changes." }, { "n": "03", "title": "Split by region", "desc": "We work out how much of that controlled land falls inside each region's own borders." }, { "n": "04", "title": "Turn it into a percentage", "desc": "Each region's controlled area is divided by its total size, giving the percentage shown on the chart." }, { "n": "05", "title": "Publish", "desc": "The numbers are rounded and the chart is updated with the latest figures every month." } ], "data_dictionary": [ { "name": "month", "type": "text", "unit": "YYYY-MM", "desc": "Calendar month, keyed to the month-end snapshot." }, { "name": "Luhansk", "type": "number", "unit": "%", "desc": "Share of Luhansk oblast's official land area under Russian control at month-end." }, { "name": "Donetsk", "type": "number", "unit": "%", "desc": "Share of Donetsk oblast's official land area under Russian control at month-end." }, { "name": "Zaporizhzhia", "type": "number", "unit": "%", "desc": "Share of Zaporizhzhia oblast's official land area under Russian control at month-end." }, { "name": "Kherson", "type": "number", "unit": "%", "desc": "Share of Kherson oblast's official land area under Russian control at month-end." } ], "citation": { "originator": "DeepState Map", "originator_url": "https://deepstatemap.live", "processor": "Pavlo Krasnomovets, visua.no", "processor_url": "https://visua.no", "data_as_of": "2026-08-31", "in_text": "DeepState Map (2026), processed by visua.no", "full": "DeepState Map (2026). \"How much territory does Russia control in the regions it considers its own\" [chart]. Processed by Pavlo Krasnomovets, visua.no. Data as of 31 August 2026. https://visua.no/en/charts/deepstate-occupied-oblasts/", "bibtex": "@misc{deepstatemap2026deepstateoccupiedoblasts,\n author = {DeepState Map},\n title = {How much territory does Russia control in the regions it considers its own},\n year = {2026},\n note = {Processed by Pavlo Krasnomovets, visua.no},\n howpublished = {\\url{https://visua.no/en/charts/deepstate-occupied-oblasts/}},\n urldate = {2026-08-31}\n}" }, "contact": "pavlo@visua.no", "issues_url": "mailto:pavlo@visua.no?subject=visua.no" }