According to them, the Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin remains determined to occupy the entire Donbas and believes that negotiations can only resume once his armed forces achieve this goal.
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The Ministry of Defense assured the Russian president that it would gain full control over the rest of the Donetsk region by the end of the year, one of the agency’s interlocutors said.
However, a source close to the Russian Ministry of Defense called the specified deadline overly optimistic and stated that, in the opinion of many military personnel, it is more realistic to complete this operation only in 2027.
A person close to the Kremlin noted that Putin abandoned the previous idea of territorial exchange, deciding that unofficial agreements, allegedly reached with United States President Donald Trump at the August 2025 summit in Anchorage, are no longer valid.
The Russian side previously claimed that Ukraine must give up unoccupied Donbas territories in exchange for the return of parts of the occupied Sumy and Kharkiv regions. In turn, Washington has repeatedly denied that any such agreements were ever made.
As Bloomberg notes, an additional factor in resorting to such tactics was Trump’s decision to support a bill that would impose tariffs of up to 100% on the five largest Russian oil and gas buyers. Sources added that the hardening of the Kremlin’s position was also influenced by Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries, which caused a fuel crisis in the country.
Negotiations to end the war, conducted with the mediation of the United States, effectively stalled in late February, when the Trump administration focused on the war against Iran.
In June, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky offered a personal meeting to Putin in an open letter, but the latter rejected the initiative, stating that the Russian army must continue to “work.”
Ukraine advocates for a cessation of hostilities along the existing front line and rejects any demands to hand over the remaining territory of the Donetsk region to Putin, which Russian forces have failed to fully occupy since the war began in 2014.
In recent weeks, Russia has intensified drone and missile strikes on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, claiming it is its response to Ukrainian drone strikes on the country’s energy infrastructure.
Fierce battles also continue in the Kostiantynivka district of the Donetsk region – a strategically important logistics hub, the capture of which would likely open the way for the Russian army to the main Ukrainian defense lines in Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.
According to calculations by the US Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russia currently controls approximately 80% of the Donetsk region. However, given the current pace of advance, it is unclear whether it could ever fully occupy it at all, analysts estimated.
