Through the meat grinder: 20 dead per square kilometer and the other Russian military takeaways of 2025

Until March 2025, Putin had consistently avoided wearing military attire, even at events directly related to the war. In connection with his recent tour, however, Putin has appeared on camera in camouflage four times over the past three months alone. There is little doubt the Kremlin is using this image as a tool to influence negotiations with U.S. representatives on a peace settlement in Ukraine. At a camouflage-clad meeting on Dec. 27, 2025, Putin said:

“Judging by the pace we are seeing along the line of contact, our interest in a withdrawal of Ukrainian military formations from the territories they currently occupy is effectively reduced to zero… And if the Kyiv authorities do not want to resolve the matter peacefully, we will achieve all our objectives of the special military operation by armed means.”

Putin himself may believe that the course of the war has turned in Russia’s favor over the past year — after all, that is what his generals report. At a meeting on Dec. 29, 2025, Putin was briefed on the following claimed achievements:

• the capture over the year of 6,640 square kilometers of territory and 334 settlements, with the fastest advance in December 2025 — 700 square kilometers and 32 settlements;
  
• a Russian offensive along the entire front, while Ukrainian forces are allegedly confined to defensive actions aimed at slowing, but not stopping, Russian advances;
  
• the creation of extended “security zones” in the Sumy and Kharkiv regions, reaching to within 20 kilometers of the city of Sumy;
  
• the gradual “elimination” (to be completed by early 2026) of a Ukrainian grouping encircled near Kupiansk;
  
• control over nearly half of the urban area of Kostiantynivka, with the prospect of launching an operation to encircle the last major Ukrainian defensive line in Donbas — the Sloviansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration;
  
• advances in the Zaporizhzhia Region, with forward units moving to within 15 kilometers of the regional capital.

Given this picture of the situation “on the ground,” it is not surprising that the Russian leader signals his readiness to continue fighting until Ukraine’s leadership accepts the Kremlin’s terms for ending the war. Western media have reported the same. But the reality at the front differs markedly from what Putin is being told.

Actual territorial gains in Ukraine: 4,300 square kilometers

According to estimates by the Ukrainian mapping project DeepState, Russian forces occupied an additional 4,300 square kilometers of Ukraine’s internationally recognized borders in 2025, as well as driving Ukrainian forces out of nearly 500 square kilometers in Russia’s western Kursk Region. That is about 1,000 square kilometers more than in 2024, but wholly incomparable to the territorial gains of 2022, when nearly 62,000 square kilometers were seized. On a map showing all Ukraine, Russia’s advances are visibly marginal.