The show of force that Russia launched over Ukraine in the early hours of Tuesday, with hundreds of drones and missiles, cannot hide Moscow’s growing signs of weakness in the four-year-old war.
The Russian advance into Ukraine has slowed almost to a halt. Russia has intensified forced mobilization in the occupied territories of eastern Ukraine as its internal recruitment efforts are not achieving expected results. Domestic discontent is rising, and Europe is offering new support to Ukraine. The peace negotiations mediated by the United States have practically come to an end.
Also read:
Continues after advertising
All of this represents a loss of momentum for Russia, according to analysts. If this trend continues, the country could find itself at a diplomatic disadvantage when ceasefire negotiations resume.
“While drone strikes and bombings remain constant, Russia’s combat performance is weakening,” Jack Watling, a senior fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London think tank, wrote this week in an analysis published by Foreign Affairs magazine.
Some analysts believe that the more intense attacks carried out recently by Russia are an attempt to regain an advantage in possible peace negotiations and to attract the attention of the Trump administration, which began to focus more on the war involving Iran than on the conflict in Ukraine.
Still, Watling said Ukraine’s gains on the battlefield changed the course of the war. “In Kiev, there is growing optimism that Ukraine can stand up to Russia until a ceasefire is reached,” he wrote.
This situation represents a stark change from last summer, when Russian President Vladimir Putin was so confident of victory that he traveled to Alaska for a meeting with President Donald Trump about ways to end the war.
Today, it is Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky who is pushing for a quick end to hostilities, while at the same time bolstering his arsenal with more European weapons — including a military package worth approximately $149 million from Finland and 16 Gripen fighter jets from Sweden, both announced last week.
Continues after advertising
Analysts at DeepState UA, an open-source intelligence platform, reported this week that Russian forces apparently lost more territory in May than they gained. It was the first month with a negative territorial balance since the Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023.
This was despite a 37.5% increase in the number of attacks launched by Russian forces.
Recent estimates by Western officials also indicate that Russia is suffering devastating losses on the battlefield. Last week, the head of the British intelligence service, Anne Keast-Butler, stated that almost 500,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the start of the war in February 2022.
Continues after advertising
“While we remain steadfast in our support for Ukraine, Putin is retreating on the battlefield,” Keast-Butler declared in a speech in London.
In May, United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated that Russia is losing between 15,000 and 20,000 troops per month. “Not injured — dead,” Rubio told Fox News. “It’s a terrible war.”
That’s why Moscow is trying to recruit more soldiers in eastern Ukraine.
Continues after advertising
Students from the occupied regions of Luhansk and Donetsk have had their temporary exemptions from military service suspended, and Russian occupation authorities have resorted to mandatory registration, enforcement operations and threats of legal punishment to force Ukrainians to join the Russian military, according to Maksym Beznosiuk of the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based research group.
“The Kremlin’s mobilization strategy in the occupied territories seeks to fill the personnel gap caused by the catastrophic losses of the Russian Armed Forces and reshape the demographic balance by removing part of the Ukrainian residents,” wrote Beznosiuk, an expert on Russian military affairs and EU-Ukraine relations, in an analysis published this week.
On Tuesday morning, Zelensky called the latest offensive “a large-scale attack and a completely transparent statement by Russia: if Ukraine is not protected against ballistic missiles and other types of missiles, these attacks will continue.”
Continues after advertising
In an interview with Fox News, Rubio acknowledged that U.S. efforts to negotiate a peace deal in Ukraine “have lost some momentum in recent months, for a number of reasons.”
“We hope to soon reach a point where both parties resume dialogue,” Rubio said. “We are prepared to play the role of mediator and help bring this process to a conclusion.”
He also said Russia may have recently felt “a little more optimistic” because profits generated by high oil prices, driven by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, provided the Kremlin with economic relief to continue sustaining the war effort.
Still, Rubio asserted that “Ukrainians are increasingly confident in their position on the battlefield.”
c.2026 The New York Times Company
