>>508779330Most of what they occupy in Ukraine was taken in 2014. The lion's share of their gains in the 2022 invasion was rolled back during the Ukrainian offensive that same year. Since then they've been crawling along at a snail's pace. The offensive around Bakhmut and then later around Avdiivka were the only two notable and lasting territorial gains Russia has made.
Most of the time you hear "Russia advance in x sector" it's a small scale skirmish in which the defenders initially give ground and then counterattack later, and there are maybe platoon-sized elements on either side fighting over a square kilometer. Usually Russia doesn't hold onto land for very long unless it's part of a major concerted seasonal offensive, and aside from the two notable Russian victories which did in fact advance the line significantly, most of those seasonal offensives make incremental gains towards a major objective and then peter out short of it, with their gains gradually rolled back the following season as the offensive force concentration is rotated back into reserve or relocated elsewhere.
Part of the problem with reporting news on this war is that literally nothing ever happens. And the rare times something is happening, it's impossible to really be sure something is happening through fog of war and unreliable sources until it already happened. Articles need to word themselves particularly to give the illusion that a lot is happening to keep up interest but the truth is that the constant back and forth fighting rarely results in meaningful changes of territory and there just isn't a whole lot to say about it that would be interesting to a layman reader. Both sides seek to grind down the other in long-term attritional warfare and it won't be clear which side, if any, has the advantage there until the post-mortem.