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Putin Claims Victory Over Donbas While Ukraine Gains Ground
Russian leader Vladimir Putin claims Russian forces are “advancing almost everywhere” and demands that Ukraine stop mobilizing and receiving weapons. But on the battlefield, Russia is bleeding troops and armor, its economy is cracking, and Ukraine is making gains in Donbas.
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![Alexander Query]( "Alexander Query")
Russia and Putin’s close circle, including Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, have regularly called to take into account “the realities on the ground” an unconditional requirement for negotiations. Putin claimed that Moscow would agree to a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine only if Kyiv guarantees it “will not mobilize, train, or receive weapons” during the truce.
In the Kremlin’s rhetoric, translate: Kyiv should cede all its Russian-occupied territories and even the ones Russia doesn’t control, including most of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
On the ground, however, the “realities” don’t reflect Putin’s triumphant rhetoric, and Ukraine’s localized yet recent gains show that Ukraine still has some “cards” in its game.
On the other hand, Putin might soon face a tricky domestic economic situation, according to Agathe Demarais, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, quoted by Politico.
“With Western sanctions constraining Moscow’s ability to tap into international debt markets, the Kremlin has limited room for maneuver to finance its small — but nonetheless real — fiscal deficit,” she wrote.
A limited room that directly impacts his war machine and his ability to advance in Donbas, as Ukraine’s recent gains show.
On the back foot in Donbas
Ukraine has reportedly made localized gains in Toretsk, a mining town in the Donetsk region, some 15 kilometers from the strategic city of Kostiantynivka. Drone footage from Ukraine’s 42nd Mechanized Brigade, published in December 2024, shows the city almost entirely razed to the ground by the intense fighting in the area.
Yet, urban warfare is still raging there, according to frontline reports.
Ukrainian elite troops from the Liut (“Rage” in Ukrainian) brigade reportedly broke through the southern part of the city, encircling Russia’s 8th Combined Arms Army, mainly composed of conscripts from the Kremlin’s puppet regime in Donetsk. ‘
The corps was reportedly wiped out, according to Russian military bloggers quoted by Euromaidan Press.
Meanwhile, Russian soldiers fighting on the ground complain of their exhaustion and the rough fighting conditions in eastern Ukraine, according to notes published by military researcher ChrisO_Wiki.
Those reports and the morale on the ground certainly play a role in Ukraine’s localized advances around Pokrovsk, a key city in Donbas deemed doomed to fall into Russian forces’ hands six months ago.
Pokrovsk is the last big city standing in front of the Dnipropetrovsk region and one of Russia’s primary targets to capture the entirety of Donbas. However, the year-long Russian effort to seize Pokrovsk has so far failed, a recent US-based think tank Institute for the Study of War’s (ISW) report read.
“Russian forces appear to have abandoned the effort to take the city directly, preferring instead to conduct a wide envelopment,” the report read. “The Kremlin may have abandoned even that effort for now, however, in the fact of increasing Ukrainian resistance in the area and extremely high Russian losses.”
Russia’s bleeding troops and tanks
The Kremlin is seemingly struggling to replace destroyed equipment, another report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies read. The report estimates Russia lost 1,400 main battle tanks, more than 3,700 infantry fighting vehicles, and armored personnel carriers in 2024.
Meanwhile, Russian losses amounted to a whopping record of 429,660 people, compared to almost 253,000 in 2023. The total losses since the start of Russia’s full-scale war have exceeded 790,000, according to a report published by the UK’s Ministry of Defense in January.
Beyond the mounting death toll, Russia’s economic strain is also reaching a breaking point. Military analysts warn that sustaining this level of attrition will require increasingly desperate measures—from mass conscription to deeper budget cuts in non-military sectors.
In February 2025, Russia’s budget deficit surged by 60% compared to January. The country is already grappling with record food inflation, a sharp decline in foreign currency reserves, and other troubling economic indicators.
On the battlefield, Russia still hasn’t managed to control the Mezhova-Pokrovsk and Pokrovsk-Kostyantynivka routes, two key roadways used to try to encircle Ukrainian troops in a pincer tactic by cutting logistics, the favored Russian strategy in Donbas since the start of the full-scale invasion.
BI-2, a French IFV unit commander from the French-trained 155th Brigade deployed in the area, told UNITED24 Media a few months ago that the Russians were still struggling to cut Ukraine’s logistics. And since February, Ukrainian forces have been gradually regaining control over settlements near Pokrovsk, according to units on the ground.
Ukraine liberated the village of Pischane on February 16, located five kilometers south of Pokrovsk, Viktor Trehubov, the spokesperson of the “Khortytsia” operational group, stated.
Ukraine’s 25th Airborne Brigade also liberated the village of Kotlyne on February 26, Serhii Okishev, the brigade’s spokesman, said in a video.
Most recently, on March 13, the 425th Skala Assault Regiment reportedly liberated part, if not most, of Shevchenko, a village located south of Pokrovsk.
This is the 6th settlement liberated by Ukraine in the last weeks, according to OSINT experts—a far cry from Putin’s claim of “Russia’s advance” everywhere on the front and a strong signal to the West as Washington finally resumed its military aid and intel sharing with Kyiv.
Kursk region
Putin’s victory lap mainly rests on Russia’s advances in the Kursk region, where Moscow has recently pushed forward in the direction of Sudzha, a stronghold captured by Ukraine during the Kursk offensive that started in August 2024. Russia has deployed airborne assault units and special operations forces in an effort to break through Ukrainian lines but has suffered significant losses.
Russians claimed that their forces have recently made territorial gains, with some Ukrainian units allegedly withdrawing from several positions. However, Ukraine’s General Staff stated on March 14 that any “reports of the alleged 'encirclement' of Ukrainian units by the enemy in the Kursk region are false,” adding that the situation has “remained largely unchanged over the past day.”
In a rare display on the frontline, Putin himself showed up in the Kursk region, clad in a military uniform. A show for Russian media that hardly hides the fact that Russia also needs to regroup its troops and potentially relaunch an assault along the frontline, according to the ISW.
“Putin's envisioned ceasefire agreement would grant Russia greatly disproportionate advantages and set conditions for the Kremlin to renew hostilities on terms extremely favorable to Russia,” the report read.
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