Total land area isn't as important as strategic location. Capturing Avdiivka removes Ukraine's future chance of capturing Donetsk. That's why Ukraine threw a whole bunch of brigades to defend it, all of whom were decimated and routed. Once a village, town or city is fallen it provides access to a series of roads that brings you to the next city, town and village, like nodes in a network. This is why five villages have fallen since then, with Orlivka and Tonenke the latest.
Avdiivka is also the most defended of the cities, and in fact once it was taken, the majority of the defensive lines Ukraine built since 2014 is now behind Russian lines. Look at Marinka. Once that was fallen, Heorivka, Novomikhailovka and Krasnogorovka are now under attack and two of these places are in critical situation, with strongholds around the area captured.
Key strategic factories? These have been already destroyed, including vehicle repair and maintenance facilities, factories that are building drones including the marine ones used to attack the Black Seas Fleet. Russians also struck their command centers. Russians also strike at the hotels used for foreign mercenaries and NATO advisers, and buildings used as brigade headquarters, ammo depots, barracks and hangers for vehicles . The question is, why hasn't the Ukrainians doing the same thing? Why are you bombing civilian areas of cities instead of vehicle repair facilities? The Russians are able to restore vehicles damaged by mines, artillery and drones attacks through these facilities, while removing the ability for Ukraine to do theirs. This past week, facilities in Nikolaev got rocket struck, and these facilities include the ones used to repair Bradleys.
If Ukrainian morale is so great, why has millions left the country? Why do recruiters have to kidnap people?
Western morale is bad that countries have either stopped aid (Poland, Slovakia) or reducing it (Germany, UK), while pending packages are subjected to intense debate (USA). Why is Macron going nuts? Countries have started to reduce aid after it was evident the Ukrainian counteroffensive has failed.
Taking land isn't the main objective. The objective is to draw out the Ukrainian reserves, spot and throw artillery, bombs and rockets at their concentrations and destroy them at leisure. As such, many of the Russian offensives look to me like trolling attempts to lure out Ukrainian counteroffensives then hit their reserves in the back while remote mining their supply routes.
