In-Depth

Myanmar’s military is regaining ground, costing the resistance key connections

Myanmar’s military is regaining control of key roads across the country, disrupting connections between resistance-held territories and making it harder for anti-junta forces to move fighters, weapons, and supplies, according to resistance officials and sources interviewed by Myanmar Now. The gains include sections of highways leading towards the borders with China, India, and Thailand, as well as routes connecting resistance strongholds in the north with battlefields farther south. They mark a reversal of some of the territorial advances made by ethnic armed organisations and allied resistance forces in 2023 and 2024. Military counteroffensives intensified in 2025 and have continued this year. Myanmar Now graphic Even partial military control can complicate movement between resistance territories, forcing longer journeys through difficult terrain and increasing the risk of arrest. A source close to the presidential office of the National Unity Government (NUG), the parallel administration opposing the junta, described how travel between the headquarters of major ethnic armed organisations had changed. Before the military’s recent gains in northern Chin State and along the Kale-Tamu highway, fighters could travel by motorcycle and car from Camp Victoria, the Chin National Front’s headquarters near India, to Laiza, the Kachin Independence Army’s headquarters near China, in three…