Mapping the Ukraine war: where is the latest fighting? (2025)

Our tracking system is based on data from FIRMS, a publicly available system set up by NASA originally designed to detect forest fires. Like any view of the war, it is imperfect and incomplete. But unlike other methods, it offers a consistent and neutral guide to probable military activity anywhere in the country, so long as skies are clear. We have built a machine-learning algorithm that evaluates the location of each fire within Ukraine, and assesses whether or not it is related to the war. It consists of 100 separate models built to predict fire activity in non-war years. If at least 95 of these models agree that the number of fires identified at a given place and time is abnormally high by pre-war standards, the algorithm marks these “extra” fires as war-related. So far, the model has mapped over 130,000 war-related fires. Many are probably artillery fire, but others result from attacks such as missile and drone strikes.

Our country-wide map conceals a war that is fought village by village, street by street. The conflict has been defined not by big gains in territory, but often grinding battles: for Kyiv, Kherson, Bakhmut, Robotyne and Avdiivkva. In our interactive map below, as well as probable military activity, we highlight urban areas, logistical infrastructure, and, on the Russian side, known fortifications. It allows you to zoom in on areas of interest, be it a region, town or road junction.

Which side controls the territory where these strikes take place? To assess this, and the share of Ukraine occupied by Russia, we rely on daily open-source intelligence assessments of territorial control from the Institute for the Study of War, a think-tank. Our charts below show how war-fire activity—and control of the country—has evolved.

Our method to track the fighting has limitations. The location of the fires detected is imprecise, and could be off by as much as 1km, depending on the satellite. Some of the fires it marks as war-related are probably not. Given its strict thresholds, the number that are not flagged as war-related but should be is probably even larger. Moreover, many fires never get detected at all, either because they end before the satellites pass overhead or because the satellites’ view is blocked by clouds. (Much as fire is a constant of war, so is its fog.) Our picture is a guide to activity, and far from a full tally of the devastation.

Nonetheless, this system offers unique insights. It detects activity anywhere in the country, and—weather permitting—provides live counts of fire events day by day. As the war continues, our maps will continue to update.■