The Russian military command has convinced Putin that it will complete the capture of the entire territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine by the fall.
The Financial Times reports this, citing two sources who were in contact with Putin, two people familiar with the situation, and an assessment by Ukrainian intelligence.
According to the publicationʼs interlocutors, after the possible capture of Donbas, Putin plans to "raise the price of any ceasefire".
Deputy Head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine Vadym Skibitsky believes that success in Donbas will allow the Kremlin to put forward new territorial demands — to transfer the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions to Russia, a significant part of which remains under the control of Ukraine.
According to the publication, Putin is increasingly fixated on capturing the entire Donbas, although he previously privately admitted to freezing the war on the current front line.
One of the interlocutors said that he tried to convince the Russian president to end the war on the current positions, but he replied: "No, I cannot compromise on this issue."
However, according to FT sources, Putin’s real ambitions are to seize the entire left-bank part of Ukraine, including Kyiv and Odesa. One of the interlocutors said that the Russian president is being told about the alleged exhaustion of the Ukrainian army and the imminent collapse of the front.
Meanwhile, despite US President Donald Trumpʼs statement last week that the parties were "getting closer to a deal" after a brief ceasefire, neither Kyiv nor Moscow sees much value in continuing US-brokered talks even after the war in the Middle East ends.
One Ukrainian official told the FT that the US side had not made “any progress on the part of Russia” and that “everything that could be agreed upon has already been done”. Russia, meanwhile, said that further talks were pointless unless Ukraine withdrew its troops from the entire territory of Donbas.
- The New York Times reported that the Russian offensive in Ukraine has slowed significantly, and at the current pace of the Russian offensive, it will take more than 30 years to capture all of the Donetsk region. The drones have forced Russian forces to change their strategy: they are now trying to gradually penetrate the territory in small groups of soldiers, often on foot.
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