Ukraine says Russia keeps up pressure on frontline amid talks

Olesia Safronova, Bloomberg News on Feb 6, 2026

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The situation on the frontline in Ukraine’s east “remains difficult” as Russian attacks persist despite talks to end the war, Kyiv’s top military general said.

“The enemy continues to launch offensive actions along the entire contact line,” Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi told reporters on Thursday.

He said that the increasing use of drones in combat has widened the area of battle along the 1,200-kilometer (746-mile) frontline by as much as 15-20 kilometers.

Syrskyi spoke as two days of U.S.-brokered trilateral talks in Abu Dhabi earlier this week ended with the warring parties agreeing to exchange prisoners, but no immediate sign of a halt to Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion, which will enter its fifth year at the end of this month.

Meanwhile, Russian forces have resumed airstrikes on power and heating infrastructure across Ukraine, plunging the capital Kyiv into darkness and leaving millions of civilians in large swathes of the country to face below-freezing temperatures.

Syrskyi said that while Russia had appeared to exceed its goals for military recruitment, the number of Russian troops on the battlefield has remained the same for six months. He estimated their number at as many as 712,000.

Meanwhile, European governments have assessed that the number of Russian soldiers killed in action has jumped in recent weeks, a dynamic that — if sustained — could make it hard for the Kremlin to replace troops without some form of mobilization, according to the estimates earlier reported by Bloomberg. They attributed the higher casualty rate to more successful Ukrainian drone operations.

Currently, drones account for approximately 60% of the total share of combat-related damage on the front, Syrskyi said on Thursday.

Syrskyi said that heavy fighting is currently taking place in the cities of Pokrovsk, Kostyantynivka and Lyman in Ukraine’s Donetsk Region.

Moscow has insisted on control of the entire eastern Donbas area, including parts that its forces have failed to take since fighting began there in 2014.

Combat also continues in parts of the Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions, Syrskyi said.