07/25/2025
A few days ago, the American publication The Washington Post, citing the words of a Ukrainian official, reported on Donald Trump’s alleged call to Volodymyr Zelensky to launch a counteroffensive . The article caused a stormy reaction in the Ukrainian information space, and doubts arose about the reliability of the “official’s” words. But even if such a conversation did take place, here’s the question: is Ukraine capable of carrying out this same counteroffensive now?
More details about this can be found in the material of the joint project OBOZ.UA and the group “Information Resistance” .
First of all, I want to note that in addition to Trump’s alleged words that wars cannot be won without an offensive – only in defense – the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, General Oleksandr Syrsky, has been saying literally the same thing regularly in his interviews.
Yes, the Ukrainian army is currently in a state of strategic defense , which it entered in October 2023. And it will continue to remain in it until the appropriate conditions are created for the transition to a counteroffensive . This does not mean counterattacks of a situational or systemic nature or raids on enemy territory – similar to the Kursk operation, but a combined-arms counteroffensive operation that has no right to failure or mediocre results.
And now the main thing: what are these conditions and are they already created for a counterattack?
Exhaustion
With the transition to strategic defense, certain goals and objectives appeared in the SOU, namely, the depletion of the enemy. And it should be noted that since 2023 and throughout 2024, the task of exhausting the Russian occupation forces in their mechanized component – equipment – was “excellently” fulfilled.
Today, the ROV is experiencing a critical shortage in terms of the regular equipment of its units with military equipment. Tanks and armored combat vehicles are being used as sparingly as possible. They are used extremely rarely during assault operations, which is clearly visible from the statistics of losses. Losses are not just decreasing, but are becoming record low, not because Russian tanks have stronger armor and are harder to destroy – no. The ROV has become unacceptably few tanks. As are the ABMs.
Thus, for the period October 2023 – December 2024, we can safely speak of the complete mechanized depletion of the ROV . And 2025 was to be the year of the depletion of the human resources of the occupiers.
The army of the aggressor country began to fight mainly with this resource, using non-armored, civilian automobiles and motorcycles as vehicles. But unlike the depletion of the mechanized component, the depletion of human resources does not occur. Moreover, the monthly rate of losses of the ROV in the personnel category is decreasing .
There are a number of reasons for this, and one of the most unpleasant is that Ukrainian combat tactics have been extremely reluctant and irreversibly adapted to new conditions . One of the most striking examples of such low adaptability is the retention of point-based weapons instead of switching to area-based weapons.
In particular, now the ROV operate in small assault groups – both on foot and on light vehicles (LTZ). And to destroy a unit of manpower, even on LTZ, they continue to use FPV drones of a directed, point type instead of switching to a volumetric-detonating type warhead in the air, filled with a large amount of shrapnel, over the enemy group. And instead of one FPV drone – one attack aircraft, there would be one FPV drone – 3-5 or more wounded, bleeding enemy attack aircraft.
Similarly, not enough attention is paid to battalion artillery with cluster munitions and light MLRS , while the ROV is already actively receiving and using North Korean 107-mm Type 75 rockets.
From this we can conclude that with the exemplary performance of the task of exhausting the mechanized component of the DOM, the phase of depletion of the human resource for the first half of 2025 has failed . But this is not the only condition that is necessary for not only launching a counteroffensive, but at least planning such an operation.
Air dominance
Ukraine does not yet have absolute air dominance in the combat zone . This also requires a number of conditions, including:
– systematic destruction of Russian air defense systems;
– destruction of echelon formation in temporarily occupied territories:
– neutralization of threats from the ground and from the air to Ukrainian aviation.
Air defense tasks are regularly solved by destroying enemy assets both in the temporarily occupied mainland Ukraine and on the Crimean peninsula.
The Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine carries out regular raids on air defense positions in Crimea and neutralizes both anti-aircraft missile systems and enemy radar stations. The hunt for Russian air defense systems on the mainland of Ukraine is also underway around the clock, but it is too early to say that the threat has been completely neutralized .
Similarly, it is too early to talk about neutralizing the threat from the air – until Ukrainian aviation is covered from the ground by long-range air defense systems or it gains an advantage over Russian fighter aircraft.
This can be ensured both by Patriot air defense system cover and by providing Ukrainian fighters with long-range modifications of AIM-120C/D AMRAAM air-to-air missiles with the mandatory support of Saab 340 AWACS aircraft.
Given all of the above, we are halfway to neutralizing ground threats to our aviation and at a very uncertain point in terms of neutralizing air threats, which does not at all indicate that we are close to the goal of air dominance. And by launching a counteroffensive without it, we risk getting a choking front, rather than a deep breakthrough .
But there are other circumstances that indicate that it is at least inappropriate to talk about a counteroffensive now . Especially for a representative of the American side.
The Trump Factor
In 2024, when making a forecast for the events of 2025, I noted several important circumstances, namely the adaptation of the Ukrainian Defense Forces to a new format of conducting combat operations against a large wave of enemy human resources and how quickly Donald Trump will become loyal to our country . How soon the 47th US president takes a relatively pro-Ukrainian position will also depend on how 2025 will go for us.
And if, as you already understood, we did a poor job of adapting to the struggle with a large human resource, if not to say, we did not cope at all, then with the second circumstance, we were completely unsuccessful for half a year.
For six months, the US did not provide us with any new aid – except for the aid packages signed during Joseph Biden’s term.
And these lost months affected everything . On the same increase in enemy losses and his ability to attack. On our reserves and the formation of new units. Elementary – on increasing the systematic nature of counterattacks. On creating conditions for domination in the sky and so on.
Only now are our bilateral relations emerging from a state of suspended animation and returning to a relatively constructive course. But this is lost time and opportunity that will not be easy to make up for.
Therefore, if Donald Trump was talking about a counteroffensive, he should have understood that the impossibility of conducting such an operation in 2025 is partly his fault .
Conclusions
In this material, I have listed only some of the factors that make it impossible for the Ukrainian Defense Forces to conduct a counteroffensive in 2025. In addition to them, there are others that are more highly specialized and that it is undesirable to mention at all. But it becomes quite clear that only by the end of 2025 and at the beginning of 2026 will it be possible to assess the probability of conducting such an operation next year, but not in this case.
On the other hand, this does not mean at all that we cannot start planning for it in the second half of 2025. Although, again, the possibility will only arise if a number of factors are present, including stable support from the United States.
So if Donald Trump wants to see a counteroffensive by the Ukrainian army, he should help it very, very significantly in this matter. Who knows, maybe, as a result of this counteroffensive, a monument to the US president will even be erected – somewhere in the area of Mikhailovskaya Square.
Trump using all his military experience to say Ukraine need to go on a counteroffensive? The last time Ukraine did that, the US informed the world what was going to happen.
There should be a day 51 counteroffensive prepared. It doesn’t have to be the whole line but a couple hundred Neptunes and the like hitting the Moscow region would shake them up.
I’m not sure which is worse; the 6 month delay on some weapons deliveries or a POTUS that only delivered 10% of what he promised…….