Despite Its Barrage of Missiles, Russia Still Loses Ground in Ukraine

KYIV, Ukraine — They exploded with boring thuds on the outskirts of cities and detonated within the heart of cities with deafening booms. Strikes in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, left automobiles burning and splatters of blood on the sidewalks.

Throughout this week, the Russian army fired its most intensive barrage of missiles at Ukraine because the begin of the conflict in February, killing three dozen civilians, knocking out electrical energy and overwhelming air defenses. One factor the missiles didn’t do was change the course of the bottom conflict.

Fought largely in trenches, with probably the most intense fight now in an space of rolling hills and pine forests within the east and on the open plains within the south, these battles are the place management of territory is set — and the place Russia’s army continued to lose floor, regardless of its missile strikes.

“They use their expensive rockets for nothing, just to frighten people,” Volodymyr Ariev, a member of Ukraine’s Parliament, mentioned of the Russian cruise missiles, rockets and self-destructing drones used within the strikes. “They think they can scare Ukrainians. But the goal they achieved is only making us angrier.”