[2025] was a year that in terms of the front line saw approximately the same changes as in 2024—and that means minimal. Russian territorial gains in Ukraine remained at less than 1 percent for the year, yet their casualties were enormous, so much so that maintaining present strength seems to be the best the Russians can do. This kind of strategy would, historically, be seen as a strategy of failure. It is doing little in the way of strategic damage to Ukraine, costing a great deal and gaining little territory. Yet the narrative, too much controlled by Washington, is that the Russian strategy is inexorably rolling to victory. That needs a reset.

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And that territory was of no strategic value. Most of it was empty fields that the Russians seized using their infiltration tactics—often troops running forward, or on motorcycles or horses, just to the next tree line or structure and hoping to reach it before being killed. Most of the time they are killed or wounded, but sometimes they reach cover—and huzzah the map line shifts incrementally.

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Moreover, there can be no breakthroughs or exploitations from these small advances because there can be no build-ups directly behind them. There are no large depots, troop concentrations and, of course, massed groups of vehicles waiting to move forward rapidly into the openings made by the attacking Russian soldiers. And there will not be any in the foreseeable future. More than likely things will get worse as the much discussed “kill zone” widens which means that troops will need to struggle for longer and longer just to reach the front line.

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What Trump will never say is that had the USA not switched sides in 2025, which it did and we need to face facts on that, the Russians would be in truly terrible shape. If the USA and Europe together had jumped in to help Ukraine last year, the trajectories would have gotten worse for Russia—casualties would be higher, territory gained smaller, and almost certainly Ukrainian casualties would be lower. And Russia would not have the friendship and support of the US president protecting it and giving it time to decide how it wants to prosecute the war.