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AFTER MONTHS of speculation, Ukrainian forces appear to have begun their long-awaited counter-offensive. On June 4th Russian military sources reported that Ukrainian forces had launched assaults on five axes in Russian-occupied Donetsk province, in the east of the country. Ukrainian sources have been keeping conspicuously quiet. As news from the ground slowly filters out, The Economist has built a model that uses satellite data to give a glimpse of the conflict from the skies.
Our system relies on satellites that circle over Ukraine twice a day and use thermal imaging to detect high-temperature events in places unobscured by clouds. We use a machine-learning system to estimate whether these events are related to the war, by comparing patterns with what was observed before Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. It is far from perfect, but it offers a consistent and neutral guide to probable military activity in the country.
Examining the data from June 4th and 5th, the model identified war-related fires at several points along the frontline. Most of these fires were concentrated around the cities of Zaporizhia (Ukrainian-held) and Donetsk (Russian-held), where there were reports of significant escalation in the night between June 4th and 5th. Russian forces claim to have repelled most of the attacks.
Although our model can be used to track the counter-offensive, war-related fires may be the result of Russian attacks as well as Ukrainian ones. The model detected fires in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro, where airstrikes on June 3rd, thought to be caused by Russian missiles, killed a child and injured 22 people. In recent days the number of war-related fires has been higher in Ukrainian-held or contested territory than in firmly Russian-controlled areas.
The overall number of war-related fires has not increased in the past few days. This might be because of the limitations of the data: comparing the raw number of fires through time can be difficult as the satellite captures only a snapshot in time as it flies over. Many analysts believe that Ukraine is currently only probing Russian forces, looking for vulnerabilities—or creating them—before committing its strongest units and artillery firepower. If the Ukrainians truly have begun their counter-offensive, and the weather stays clear, our model may detect far more activity in the days to come.
Inspect all our code, data, and models on GitHub.
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Ukrainian advances on Donetsk and Zaporizhia can be seen from space - The Economist
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