Back-of-the-envelope quantification of Ukraine’s territory invaded by Russia

This is the map curated by Wikipedia editors of the Russian invasion of Ukraine

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine (Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2022_Russian_invasion_of_Ukraine.svg)

These are the number of pixels for each color used in the map

Color	Count
#e3d975ff	1160837
#e0e0e0ff	1139649
#c6ecffff	332861
#2d2d2dff	251282
#ebc0b3ff	79170
#646464ff	31814
#ffffffff	8369
#84bcd5ff	3756
#ffff44ff	3302
#3d3d3d45	2887

The territory under Ukrainian control is #e3d975ff while territory under Russian control is #ebc0b3ff.

Wikipedia’s editors have produced 308 maps describing the evolution of the situation on the ground with the first map published on 24 February 2022 and the last on 22 March 2022. That is an updated map approximately every 2 hours.

The total area of Ukraine is \(603,628km{2}\), which in terms of pixels is given by \(ukrainian\_control\_pixels + russian\_control\_pixels\). You might have noticed that there are a number of arrows and other symbols covering the map, this reduces the accuracy of the territory quantification (if you know how to programmatically remove them from the raw SVG let me know!).

So, based on this very back-of-the-envelop calculation, a pixel is approximately 0.49 \(km{2}\).

And this is how the situation on the ground has evolved.