Russian fatalities in Ukraine are more than four times greater than all U.S. fatalities in all U.S. wars combined since World War II.

To assess Russia's progress on the battlefield, we look at two indicators, their rate of advance and the amount of territory they've taken in Ukraine.

Russian forces are advancing remarkably slowly on the battlefield, at rates of between fifty and ninety meters per day in some of their most prominent offensives.

That's slower than almost any major military campaign in any war in the last century.

In some areas, Ukrainian forces began clawing back ground in counterattacks after more than two years, mostly on the defensive.

In fact, Russia's territorial control in Ukraine shrank in the spring of 2026, with Russian forces losing more ground than they captured in both April and May, a net loss of roughly four hundred square kilometers.

And what's also interesting is the Ukrainians, with U.S. assistance, mostly from U.S. companies, have now used AI-enabled drones to maneuver and strike targets autonomously on the battlefield, which really shows you that the war that's emerging in Ukraine is at the cutting edge of the changing character of warfare.

Russia has failed to translate its tremendous sacrifice into meaningful territorial gains on the battlefield.

Hi, I'm Dan Byman, Director of the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at CSIS.

And I'm Riley McCabe, an Associate Fellow for the Warfare, Irregular Threats, and Terrorism Program at CSIS.

And we're here to talk about our recent brief, The Terrorist's Threat to the 2026 World Cup.

This summer, the World Cup comes to North America.

It will be the largest sporting event ever held, and that scale is exactly what makes it a target.

The sad reality is that major sporting events have long attracted a range of foreign terrorist groups and domestic extremists looking to exploit global attention, from the Munich Olympics in 1972 to the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, the Boston Marathon in 2013, and the Stade de France in 2015.

And a wild card are Mexican cartels, which the United States has newly designated as foreign terrorist organizations, and they have easy reach not only to the games in Mexico, but also to a number of southern host cities.

The most likely threat to the World Cup, however, is the domestic lone actor, an individual or small cell using easily accessible weapons like firearms or vehicles against a soft target.