200 sq km is 77 sq miles.

I corrected it already.

what is the credibility of these videos (I have seen similar ones that are AI fakes)?

Preston Stewart's channel (and Anna from Ukraine, for that matter) well over a year. There is no way they are AI and their reporting is spot on.

but Russian troops losing Starlink and having to cobble together communication alternatives to Telegram, which the Russian state is banning, likely helped.

It also brings up what people mean when they talk about Ukrainian territory being "occupied". Some people fixate on area gains, but not all areas are equal in importance. A small, ruined village is less of a gain than a strategic position.

Russia's hold on territory is often tenuous, and in the last year or so the front has grown more and more to resemble clusters of grey zones.

It's all very well sending suicide squads to plant flags on prominent buildings to impress the hierarchy, but following up, securing and defending an area, let alone having it function in any way if it has a civilian population, takes resources the Russians just don't have. They'd rather raze everything in sight, which makes whatever they've "gained" a pyrrhic victory.