Yevhenii Malik is a former Ukrainian marine who was held in Russian prisons from 2022 to 2024. He is now at the Kyiv School of Economics.
Russia had been claiming for weeks that it had taken the Ukrainian city of Kupyansk. It also recently declared that it had conquered the devastated town of Pokrovsk and was moving on to capture neighboring Myrnohrad.
Yet this past week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared in Kupyansk, announcing that Ukrainian troops had pushed out Russian forces in a successful counterattack. “Reality speaks for itself,” he said in a video he recorded from the frontline city. Meanwhile, in Pokrovsk, Ukrainian troops are still bravely holding the line.
As we lurch into the fourth year of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, it is impossible to ignore the disconnect between the Kremlin’s rhetoric about its victories and the reality on the ground. Moscow has constructed an alternative reality in which its forces advance steadily, strategic objectives are achieved and the war is proceeding according to plan. But these claims wither the moment they are compared with verifiable facts. This year has exposed this gap more sharply than ever.
To understand what Russia achieved on the battlefield in 2025, one must distinguish between tactical gains and strategic achievements. The Kremlin deliberately presents the former as if they were the latter. Yes, Russia has advanced on certain axes; yes, it has captured dozens of small villages, empty fields, tree lines and abandoned industrial sites. In terms of raw surface area, Moscow may even argue that its gains in 2025 exceeded those of 2024.
But most of these territories have no strategic value. They are insignificant rural spaces with no infrastructure, no logistics and no political or economic value. The Russian military has not seized a single large or medium-sized city this year. It has not captured a single key transportation hub. And it has not produced a single operational breakthrough capable of altering the course of the war. In other words, Russia has traded enormous manpower losses for meaningless territorial gains.
Beyond Pokrovsk and Kupyansk, Russia claims that Vovchansk was also “liberated,” even though it remains a contested zone with no stable Russian presence. On the Sumy axis, where Moscow has advertised breakthroughs, there have been no strategic successes. And even in the Zaporizhzhia region, where Russia has made some of its clearest gains this autumn, the advance has been gradual and has not translated into a broader operational and strategic breakthrough.
In today’s Russia, propaganda is not a tool of the state; it is simply how the state functions. Russian military briefings resemble political speeches more than operational reports. When real success is unattainable, Moscow substitutes symbolic gestures — filmed “liberations,” flag-raising ceremonies in destroyed neighborhoods and claims of control over areas still hotly contested. The purpose of these presentations is not to describe the war, but to control how society perceives it.
2025 was supposed to be the year Russia transformed its mobilization advantage into meaningful military results. In practice, the opposite occurred: Despite throwing countless lives into the meat-grinder, the most intense battles produced only superficial tactical shifts. Ukrainian defenses, handicapped by political turbulence and supply challenges in the West, held in every major urban center. Russia suffered greater losses for lesser return in 2025 than in 2024.
The narrative that Russia is winning the war of attrition while steadily advancing is widespread. In truth, Russia’s campaign continues to fail. It’s all just endless “meat” assaults, enormous losses, a lack of strategic progress — and an orchestrated campaign by the Kremlin to cover up its disastrous military decisions by claiming its victory is inevitable. Don’t fall for it.
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