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25-05-2026
KYIV/ MOSCOW: Russia’s attempts at escalation via Belarus, where it has delivered more nuclear weapons and held highly publicized joint war games, come as its ground war falters in Ukraine.
Ukrainian commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii told Militarnyi magazine that Ukraine has seized the tactical initiative, as Ukrainian offensive assaults on Russian positions now outnumber Russian assaults on Ukrainian positions.
Ukraine’s forces have been able to do this because Russian forces are running out of soldiers to conduct offensive operations, he said.
“Since the beginning of 2026, the total losses of the enemy have already exceeded 141,500 people, of which more than 83,000 are irreversible,” Syrskii wrote on his Telegram messaging channel.
Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service believes Russia is unable to replenish these losses of more than 1,000 people a day, and this year is recruiting at a rate of 800-930 a day, suffering a net decrease of battlefield strength.
In response, it said, 40 Russian regions had increased sign-up bonuses by between 30 and 100 percent.
In a bid to boost Russia’s army, Putin has simplified citizenship procedures for Russian speakers in the Transnistrian region of Moldova.
“Russia is looking for new soldiers in this way,” said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who said he had received information that Russia was trying to mobilize an additional 100,000 soldiers.
“We believe that currently, such potential for covert mobilization in Russia is lacking,” he said.
On Friday, Russia blamed Ukraine for deadly attacks in the part of Luhansk it controls. At the time of writing, four people had reportedly been killed.
Ukraine’s war on Russian oil and hardware
Russia’s economy is also fraying, said Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service, having run up a $78.4bn deficit in the first four months of the year after budgeting for a $50.5bn deficit for the entire year.
“Oil dealt the main blow. Revenues from hydrocarbons fell by 38.3 percent,” it said.
Ukraine has scaled up its long-range campaign against Russian refineries and oil export terminals this year, depriving Moscow of windfall profits from high oil prices.
Ukraine has hit oil pumping stations, storages and pipelines, forcing Russia to curtail production by 460,000 barrels per day (bpd) in April 2026, compared with April 2025, said the International Energy Agency (IEA).
That meant that even though Russian exports rose by 250,000bpd, the production cuts limited Russia’s ability to take full advantage of the Gulf war.
Ukraine has also scaled up attacks on refineries across Russia this year.
The Reuters news agency estimated that “Ukrainian drone attacks knocked out about 700,000 bpd of refining capacity between January and May across 16 refineries, some hit more than once, compared with eight refineries in the same period of 2025.”
The affected refineries account for a quarter of Russia’s refining capacity, Reuters said.
That could cause supply bottlenecks in Russia, but it also caused Russia to declare an export ban on petroleum products from April to July. The IEA said Russia’s oil product exports quickly fell by 340,000bpd in the first month of the ban.
Ukraine attacked a series of military-industrial targets in a 100km (62-mile) radius around Moscow on May 17, in what appeared to be a response to Russia’s huge attacks on Kyiv on May 13 and 14, which killed 52 people. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
