The think tank noted that Russian forces first infiltrated Kostiantynivka in October 2025 and have made no significant tactical gains in six months, even as Peskov restated Moscow’s withdrawal demand on four oblasts.
14/05/2026
Russia’s “exaggerated territorial ambitions and aggressive territorial demands run completely counter to battlefield reality,” the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessed on 13 May. It can no longer forecast when Russia might seize the rest of Donetsk Oblast — or whether it can at all.
Russia has used a year of US-mediated talks to demand ever more Ukrainian territory while its army stalls on the ground. Washington under Trump has rolled back pressure on Moscow rather than backing Ukraine with sanctions and aid.
Kremlin doubles down on four oblasts as precondition for talks
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on 13 May restated Moscow’s demand that Ukrainian forces withdraw from four oblasts before negotiations can resume. Russia illegally annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts in 2022, but does not fully control any of them.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the same day that, despite recent US-Russia dialogue, “nothing is happening” in negotiations. Peskov’s demanding the very Ukrainian land Russia has been unable to take by force.
Map: ISW
Russian commanders briefed the Kremlin on Donbas by autumn
Senior Russian commanders pitched to Putin a full Donbas seizure by fall 2026, Financial Times reported on 13 May. The outlet cited anonymous sources close to Putin and a Ukrainian intelligence assessment.
Anonymous sources also told FT that Putin intends to add fresh territorial conditions to any future ceasefire deal. Putin’s actual ambitions still stretch beyond Donbas, two back-channel negotiators told the same outlet. His wider goal is to push Russian control over everything east of the Dnipro and, if he can, into Kyiv and Ukraine’s southern coast.
ISW noted that Putin’s thinking has moved further and further from battlefield realities. The Kremlin likely issues orders to Russian commanders to make gains that the army cannot achieve.
The battlefield: 2.63 km² a day, six months stuck at Kostiantynivka
Russia’s 2026 advance in Donetsk Oblast totals 349.89 km², ISW reported. That works out to 2.63 km² per day.
Russian troops first infiltrated Kostiantynivka, the southernmost city of Ukraine’s fortress belt, in October 2025. Six months on, Russian forces have produced no meaningful battlefield progress there.
Map: ISW
Ukrainian counterattacks since early 2026 have forced Russia to split its manpower between defending the south and pushing on the fortress belt. Heavy Ukrainian fortifications, the terrain itself, and a Ukrainian mid-range strike campaign have slowed Russian offensive movements theater-wide, ISW said.
US President Donald Trump claimed on 13 May that he has no agreement with Putin on Russia gaining control over the entire Donbas. He made the statement in response to a journalist’s question.
Russia wants joint economic projects with US — but only if Washington stops linking them to peace in Ukraine
Russia is offering Trump a deal that makes peace unnecessary.
13/05/2026
Pisscough :
Kremlin wants business separated from war
Both Russian and American companies could potentially profit from a number of joint investment and economic projects, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated.
“To the extent that the American side is willing to delink the prospects for normalizing trade and economic relations from a Ukrainian settlement, or to the extent that a Ukrainian settlement occurs, then we hope the path to the implementation of a whole range of economic projects will be open,” he said.”
The fact that these filthy savages are even talking about this tells you all you need to know about their understanding of and close ties to the putrid piss stain in the WH.
It is an utter disgrace. A Nazi collaborator running the USA.
“Russia’s grand territorial ambitions are divorced from battlefield reality”
We can make a correlation with Nazi Germany and Adolf’s pipedreams towards the end of WWII, when he still thought that German divisions were as powerful and effective in late 1944 as they were in early 1942. Even as enemy tanks were rolling around in the rubble-strewn streets above his head, he was playing with ghost divisions.
Putler has been forced to put his troops on electric rollers, bicycles, stolen civilian automobiles, and even horses and donkeys, while he still plans on taking Donbass and two other regions, and his refineries and other oil industry assets are burning in massive blazes. An utter pipedream.
Brief extract from an article by Professor Bonk.
Don’t be fooled by the funny name. This guy knows his shit. The putinaZis have unlimited ambition, unlimited time, they are not broke and they will not run out of orcs.
Plus they have a very serious ally : the United States of Krasnovia.
“Russia Is Assembling the Target”
“Moscow is massing for Donbas. But before an offensive moves, it has to be fueled, shielded, commanded, and staged. Ukraine is making the assembly the target.
The offensive does not begin when the first Russian assault group crawls toward a Ukrainian trench. It begins earlier, in places that look less dramatic and matter more: at a loading pier, beside a railway traction substation, inside a refinery unit, at a drone-control point with antennas and tired operators, on a road where a truck can still pretend it is only traffic.
Russia is preparing a real Donbas offensive. Contempt is not analysis, and hope is not a plan. Moscow is not bluffing from a television studio. It is pushing men, drones, artillery, command systems, air defenses, political pressure, and logistics toward the same object it has failed to finish taking for years: Donbas, and especially the belt of cities that keeps the Russian map from becoming Russian control.
But an offensive has to be assembled before it can be launched. Before Russian manpower becomes momentum, fuel has to move. Ammunition has to move. Rail has to function. Command posts have to light up. Air-defense systems have to choose what deserves protection. Each of those things creates a place. Each place creates a signature. Each signature can become a target.
The Kremlin still talks as if territory is the main unit of the war. Dmitry Peskov has tied a ceasefire and peace talks to Ukrainian withdrawal from Russian-claimed regions, even though Moscow has not fully taken them. Putin’s circle still talks about Donetsk and Luhansk as if the legal fiction of annexation can compel Ukrainian fortifications to evacuate themselves.”
https://professorbonk.substack.com/p/russia-is-assembling-the-target?utm_source=substack&publication_id=6090665&post_id=197642257&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&utm_campaign=email-share&triggerShare=true&isFreemail=true&r=17e8q4&triedRedirect=true
Sure, the cockroaches love to go on offensives. Let them. This ups their casualty rates.
Given the chronic manpower shortage and insufficient firepower, the defenders as always have to rely almost entirely on their world class ingenuity.
The most powerful ally has gone to the devil and most of the other allies are feckless, leaving a small hard core of nations that do a lot, but still nowhere near enough.