Ukraine Conflict Monitor
Update
Ukraine war situation update | 14 – 20 February 2026
Ukraine conducts limited tactical maneuvers to counter costly Russian infiltrations.
Key stats
1,600 political violence events
4% decrease compared to the previous three weeks
84 incidents of violence targeting civilians
26% decrease compared to the previous three weeks
At least 24 fatalities from civilian targeting
58% decrease compared to the previous three weeks
Key events
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17 Feb.
Donetsk — Russian drone strikes kill three energy workers in Mykolayivka
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19 Feb.
Kharkiv — A Russian drone strike kills three civilians at a warehouse in Malynivka
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20 Feb.
Kharkiv — A Russian Lancet drone strike kills two police staff during an evacuation mission near Seredniy Burluk
Key trends
- Russian forces occupied a settlement along the border with Ukraine in the Sumy region and seized a village near Lyman and another near Pokrovsk in the Donetsk region.
- Ukrainian forces reportedly regained control of three settlements north of Huliaipole in the Zaporizhia region and six others southeast of Pokrovske in the Dnipropetrovsk region.
- Russian forces launched at least 21 long-range missile and drone attacks, including in the western region of Ivano-Frankivsk and the region of Kyiv.
- Russian strikes killed at least 17 civilians in the Kharkiv, Kherson, Donetsk, Sumy, Dnipropetrovsk, and Zaporizhia regions. Ukrainian drones and shelling reportedly killed five civilians in the Russian-controlled parts of the Luhansk and Zaporizhia regions, as well as in Crimea.
Spotlight: Ukrainian forces clear Russian infiltrations from several settlements in the Zaporizhia-Dnipropetrovsk junction
On 23 February, Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief, Oleksandr Syrskyi, reported that Ukrainian forces had regained control of over 400 square kilometers and eight settlements in the so-called Oleksandrivka direction1 at the junction of the Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions since the end of January. This was part of a focused pushback on Russian forces in an area where Russian advances had previously met little resistance. ACLED registers reports of Ukrainian forces regaining control of four villages and pushing infiltrating Russian troops out of at least five settlements in the reporting week, after claiming control over Dobropillya north of contested Huliaipole a week earlier. Despite these gains, the Ukrainian military leadership acknowledged that Ukrainian troops remain under pressure from combined Russian strikes and infiltrations by small assault groups through sparsely manned Ukrainian positions.
These small Ukrainian tactical wins contrast with the rest of the frontline, where troops are taking a defensive posture aimed at slowing Russian advances. Already decelerated by winter conditions and troop replenishment issues in January, sluggish Russian progress also comes amid worsening communications capacity after the American company SpaceX moved to cut access to Russian-used Starlink satellite terminals.2 This has been further exacerbated by the Russian government’s decision to fully block the Telegram messenger application to gain control of a key information medium.3 Both Starlink and Telegram have served as crucial communication tools for the Russian armed forces.
While Ukrainian operations in the direction of Oleksandrivka are unlikely to remove pressure on the less defense-ready Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions or to distract Russian troops from other hotspots, these moves, along with an earlier successful Ukrainian counter-attack in Kupiansk in December last year, demonstrate that Ukraine is able to conduct limited tactical maneuvers to counter Russian costly infiltrations.
For more on Russia’s expanded pressure in the Zaporizhia region, please read our latest report Ukraine war: How six new trends are shaping the conflict.
Explore the ACLED Conflict Exposure Calculator to assess the number of people affected by armed violence, disaggregated by locations, time period, and actors involved.
