As Ukrainian civilians suffer from air attacks, Russian ground forces struggle to advance.
As the war drags on in Ukraine, its civilians suffer the most.
Thirty-eight people were killed in the village of Myla on August 29, when a Russian drone attack struck an ammunition depot. Another 12 were killed in attacks across the country on September 1.
Civilian deaths have sharply increased this summer as Russia is using jet-powered drones, which fly at about half the speed of a passenger jet and are more difficult to intercept than propeller-powered drones.
Jet-powered drones numbered about 2,800 in August, said Ukraine Air Force spokesman Yurii Ihnat, compared with about 1,500 in July, several times the number launched in June. Ukraine has an interception rate of more than 90 percent against propeller-powered drones, but only 60 percent against the jet-powered variant, Ihnat said.
Meanwhile, Russian forces suffered 42,020 casualties last month, Ukraine claimed, as Moscow’s territorial gains dropped to a fraction of last year’s rate of advance.
General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine figures showed Russia’s monthly casualties were only slightly below July’s 42,860, and well above June’s 39,290.
Al Jazeera cannot independently verify casualty estimates by either side, but if accurate, these summer figures – 25.8 percent higher than the casualties Ukraine inflicted in the spring – suggest the high Russian casualty rate is not a passing event.
Russian recruitment rates are thought to be well below these figures, estimated by Ukraine at about 32,500 a month this year.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has publicly shared intelligence suggesting Russian leader Vladimir Putin will conscript 300,000 or more troops this October.
Zelenskyy has said up to 80 percent of Russian casualties were inflicted in Kostiantynivka, the southernmost of Ukraine’s “fortress belt” of cities in the eastern Donetsk region, whose capture Putin has repeatedly prioritised.
Russian forces are thought to control only a portion of the city, but have infiltrated more than 70 percent of it with scattered individual troops sent to drop supplies and await reinforcements. Ukrainian drone operators have been targeting them steadily as Russia replenishes them, keeping Kostiantynivka a grey area for months.
This week it was revealed that Ukrainian commander-in-chief Mykhailo Drapatyi reinforced the Donetsk front around Sloviansk and Dobropillia, north and south of Kostiantynivka, respectively, but kept the Kostiantynivka front largely unchanged, suggesting Ukraine may be adopting the tactic of fighting a prolonged rearguard in this urban landscape to inflict attritional losses, as it did in the battles of Bakhmut, Pokrovsk and Chasiv Yar.
The fight for Kostiantynivka has sapped troop strength elsewhere on the front line, where Ukraine has liberated 130sq km (50 square miles) of its land in August, limiting Russia’s overall advance.
Russia seized just over 90 square kilometres (35 square miles) in August, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank that assesses territorial gains using open-source geolocated sources, estimated.
