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Moscow is said to have stockpiled around 600 Iskander-M ballistic missiles and 300 Iskander-K cruise missiles, a stockpile that would last about two years if Russia maintained the current pace of missile attacks against Ukraine...
Washington and Moscow, according to Bloomberg, aim to reach a deal on Ukraine that would defuse the current situation on the ground, paving the way for a ceasefire and technical discussions on a long-term peace agreement. This preliminary agreement would leave Russia with territories captured during the invasion, thus freezing the front line.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Putin would be willing to halt hostilities in exchange for the Donetsk region, a claim the Russian president had already made along with Crimea, which his forces illegally annexed in 2014.
But that would require Zelensky to order a withdrawal from the Kiev-controlled parts of Lugansk and Donetsk, giving Russia a victory that its military has failed to achieve on the battlefield. In return, Moscow, as part of the deal, would halt its offensive in the Kherson and Zaporizhia regions along the current front lines.
However, there are still many unclear points.
First, is Moscow ready to give up the territories it has occupied, including the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant? Second, in the past, Washington has offered to recognize Crimea as Russian and give Moscow control of some other parts of the Ukrainian regions, while control over Zaporizhia and Kherson would return to Ukraine. President Trump has spoken of “swaps,” territorial exchanges.
But is this really the scenario that Putin will discuss with Trump in Alaska? Another issue is the type of ceasefire that would be reached: final or temporary, partial or complete?
Starting from the bottom, according to a recent report by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), based on Western intelligence reports, “Putin may have used his meeting with Witkoff (the preparatory mission for the confrontation with Trump) to propose a moratorium on long-range strikes, a move that would allow Russia to stockpile drones and long-range missiles and resume large-scale destructive attacks against Ukraine after the ceasefire ends. This solution would also hinder Ukraine’s ability to continue its campaign of long-range strikes aimed at exhausting the Russian defense industrial base and war economy.”
ISW warns that Russia has significantly increased its production of drones and missiles by 2025, an increase that has allowed it to rapidly expand the size of the attack packages it launches against Ukraine. According to estimates by Ukrainian military intelligence (GUR), Russia can produce about 170 Shahed-type drones per day, a production capacity that could reach 190 drones per day by the end of 2025.
Moreover, Moscow is said to have stockpiled about 600 Iskander-M ballistic missiles and 300 Iskander-K cruise missiles, a stockpile that would last about two years if Russia maintained its current pace of missile attacks against Ukraine. So, in the face of such a high pace of military production, it is difficult to imagine a permanent ceasefire that would actually save lives. It is easier to envisage a temporary halt and then a resumption of bombing of civilian targets on the eve of winter.
Kremlin sources have recently hinted to Reuters that Putin remains adamant that Russia should occupy all four regions of Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, before a permanent ceasefire. ISW estimates that Russia has not yet occupied about 6,500 square kilometers of Donetsk Oblast, which makes up about 25% of the region. The Russian advance towards encircling Pokrovsk has accelerated in recent weeks, but Russian forces have spent the past 18 months fighting to capture an area of just 30 square kilometers. Russian forces have been fighting to capture Chasiv Yar since April 2024 and have taken 26 months to advance 11 kilometers from western Bakhmut to western Chasiv Yar. Russian forces in the Chasiv Yar and Toretsk directions are increasingly threatening the southern edge of the Ukrainian fortified belt in Donetsk Oblast, at Kostyantynivka. Kostyantynivka is located about 30 kilometers from Slovyansk, the northern edge of the fortified belt, and the cities in this belt (Kostyantynivka, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk, and Slovyansk) had a combined pre-war population of about 373,000. Russian forces have not demonstrated the ability to capture cities of this size since mid-2022.
And not only that. Future Russian operations to capture the entire Zaporizhia and Kherson regions would require significant river crossing operations, which Russian forces have struggled to accomplish since 2022. The result is that the Russian army still needs to capture about 7,200 square kilometers of Zaporizhia Oblast (about 26% of the region) and about 7,000 square kilometers in Kherson Oblast (about 26% of the region). The capture of Kherson Oblast would also require operations to cross the Dnipro River, establish a position on the western (right) bank of the river, and capture the city of Kherson (with a pre-war population of 275,000).
However, Russian objectives are not limited to the occupation of the four regions of Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson. Statements by Kremlin officials, including Putin, have repeatedly indicated that Russia has broader territorial objectives in Ukraine, beyond these four regions. Putin recently declared that “all of Ukraine” belongs to Russia, Russian officials have declared the occupation of the city of Sumy as an objective, and Kremlin officials regularly label the cities of Odessa and Kharkiv as “Russian cities.” Moreover, the Russian military command has committed elements of its “elite” forces to fight in the northern Sumy Oblast and has intensified efforts to occupy Kupyansk in recent months. Is it possible, then, that Putin will be satisfied with Donbass and abandon other claims?
Finally, Putin’s war aims are not limited to territory. Kremlin statements continue to show that the Russian president is determined to replace Ukraine’s democratically elected government with a pro-Russian puppet government, reduce Ukraine’s armed forces so that Ukraine will be unable to defend itself against future aggression, end NATO’s open door policy, and amend Ukraine’s constitution to force it into neutrality. Moreover, Putin seems equally determined to destroy the Ukrainian state, identity, and culture, and to subjugate the Ukrainian people. Russian efforts to conquer all of Ukraine through battlefield victories would take decades if they continued at the current pace of advance, but Putin’s theory of victory is based on the assumption that the West will abandon Ukraine long before he does. According to Western intelligence, the Russian president continues to believe that time is on Russia's side and that Russia can survive longer than Ukraine and the West.
Therefore, ISW’s summary is that the Kremlin remains engaged in a delicate balance between feigning interest in negotiations with Trump and preparing Russian society to accept only the complete victory desired by Putin in Ukraine, no matter how long it takes. Of course, the statements of Russian political leaders are mainly for internal consumption, but they are part of the Kremlin’s efforts to prepare Russian society for the failure of the negotiations and the continuation of the war. The conclusion is that the Kremlin is creating the conditions to accuse Ukraine of not caring about its population in the event of disagreement with Russian demands in the upcoming negotiations, and is likely to use this narrative to shift the blame for the failure of the negotiations to Ukraine, not Russia, and to justify a prolonged war to the Russian people. /Adapted from Corriere Della Sera/
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