Russia is building up a big attack force aimed at defeating Ukraine, but most observers doubt whether Moscow can amass the men and machines needed to break Ukrainian defenses.
Russia is not interested in a peace deal because the Kremlin is planning a major summer offensive that will take by force Ukrainian territory it might otherwise have to give up at the negotiating table, according to Ukrainian and independent military analysts.
The most likely scenario is increasingly intense assaults by Moscow’s troops in multiple sectors along the front, but most observers question whether the Russian army will be able defeat Ukraine’s armed forces as Moscow seems to think it can.
The official Kremlin view is that a ceasefire preventing an offensive of tens of thousands of fresh Russian troops launched into battle would be to Ukraine’s benefit because Ukraine is losing the manpower battle.
In comments reported by Russia’s state-run Pravda newspaper on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said army recruiting is going well with 50-60,000 men both Russians and foreigners volunteering for military service every month – effectively twice the pace of Ukraine.
An unofficial but widely held Russian take on the peace talks versus renewed offensives argument was offered up by popular Russian mil-blogger Vladimir Romanov on Sunday. He argued that any ceasefire and peace process would threaten Russian national security. “The way for Russia to end the war, since Kyiv is unwilling to see reason and give up, is to defeat the Ukrainian army in battle and teach the obstinate Ukrainian nation a lesson,” he said.
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“We have shown that we are ready for peaceful steps, but the enemy stubbornly ignores them and is unable to comply…Ukraine does not accept our offers, and therefore the war continues,” Romanov wrote. “There is foreign policy, and there is the ‘situation on the ground’. On the political level we [Russia] are ‘open to dialogue’, but on the ground we continue the offensive. And no one will stop the military operations for a long time… We have ahead of us a summer offensive campaign.”
Officially Kyiv has avoided predicting major military operations in the coming months and taken the public position that Ukraine wants peace now and would only fight further if forced to. Ukrainian army statements have recorded intensifying Russian assaults particularly in the eastern Donbas region, and in the northern sector where invading Ukrainian forces hold small enclaves of Russia’s Kursk and Belgorod regions, since early March.
Troops interviewed by Kyiv Post in the eastern Pokrovsk sector on Tuesday said that Russian forces were attacking like they have been for months, even during the ceasefire that the Kremlin declared to be in effect from May 8-10 that supposedly halted all Russian military activity,.
Lieutenant Andriy Kovalenko, a member of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, wrote in a rare public comment on his personal Telegram feed on May 11: “Putin has chosen war and is refusing to end it for the sake of a summer offensive.”
Ukraine’s authoritative Focus news magazine said in an article on Monday: “Russia will not agree to a long-term ceasefire, since [Russia believes] it is not advantageous… It also intends to seize part of the Donetsk region.”
Most Ukrainian observers agreed the main Russian objective will most likely be to gain further ground in the eastern Donbas sector and, ultimately, the capture of all of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Dmytro Zhmaylo, executive director of the Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation, said in televised comments on Monday that the Kremlin’s greater goal is to achieve a “military victory” in Ukraine because nothing else could head off dangerous internal unrest led by its war veterans.
“The summer of 2025 will be the beginning of problems [inside Russia] which will get worse and worse by the end of the year. That is why Russia wants to conduct its summer offensive campaign. The well is dry. They want to use their numerical superiority to seize new positions or achieve some kind of breakthrough,” Zhaylo said. “They need to achieve something to put us [Ukraine] in a negative light.”
“They will definitely throw new waves, because it is in their best interest to destroy their [military] contingent in Ukraine as much as possible. Because their [Russian veterans’] return to Russia will entail the problems that it already had after Afghanistan, the first and second Chechen campaigns – banditry, crime, illegal arms trafficking, “covering” other marginal spheres… The Kremlin believes that it will achieve this plan,” he said.
Pavlo Lakichyuk, security programs head for the Kyiv-based Center for Global Studies, told an Espresso television interview on Tuesday evening: “ Russia’s aim in 2025 is to complete the defeat of the enemy, achieve the goals of the ‘SVO’ [Kremlin term for the Russo-Ukraine War] and end the war with a victory.”
Azerbaijan-based military observer Agil Rustamzade said Russian planners will most likely launch attacks at multiple locations not only in the Donbas but also Ukraine’s northern Sumy region.
“Mobilization processes are intensifying in Russia. Most likely, it will be problematic for the Russian Federation to accumulate large forces and resources in the Zaporizhzhia direction. The terrain there is strong defensively and it will be difficult for an attacker to hide a large number of troops there.”
“In the Kherson region, there may be an attempt to cross the Dnipro River, but that also would be very problematic. It will most likely be possible [for Russia] to accumulate a large number of resources and troops in the Sumy region, where they will be able to collect forces and resources in certain places on their territory,” Rustamzade said Monday analysis.
Kyryl Sazonov, a Ukrainian officer and longtime military commentator, in an assessment of the upcoming Russian offensive said on Tuesday: “A ‘major’ offensive is no longer within the power of the battered ‘second-to-none’ army of the world. Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and other regions are not even feasible objectives.”
“Moscow understands this and will try to capture Donetsk region at any cost. Reserves are being transferred here from other sectors, because in the [Russian] rear areas finding more men by ‘digging in trash bins’ isn’t particularly possible…”
“The Kremlin has plans for a summer campaign. But their chances of succeeding are increasingly worsening because of reality. The clock is ticking, and time is working mostly against them.”
“Until it [Russia] carries out its spring-summer offensive… nothing will happen. Yes, there are sanctions, but North Korea and Iran are alive and kicking. That’s how Russia thinks it can prevail. It’s wrong, but that’s what it thinks,” Ukrainian politician Petro Andriushchenko, the mayor-in-exile of the Russia-occupied city Mariupol, wrote in a Monday personal Telegram channel comment.
