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B#stards
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This is good.
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f@king russian asset
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Putin is yanking every string he can.
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In January this year, I wrote a two-part article that looked forward into 2025 and assessed what the main strategic endeavours for Ukraine would be over the course of the year. These articles, which you can read here and here, proposed seven key Ukrainian strategic undertakings that would have the most impact on its goal to defend against Russia’s ground, air, economic, diplomatic and information attacks and remain a sovereign nation.
Despite the early hopes that a new Trump administration in the White House would be able to broker a ceasefire or some kind of war termination agreement this year, this process has suffered a series of false starts and false hopes since February 2025.
A new round of talks is currently underway, although many in the Trump administration are heavily biased towards either a business deal with Russia, or have sympathies for Putin’s objectives in Ukraine and Europe. It is hardly a formula for a peace deal that secures enduring sovereignty and security for the people of Ukraine. More likely, if the current negotiations continue in their current form, they are likely to provide the foundation for only a short-term ceasefire in fighting, but also the continuation of Putin’s genocide against Ukrainians in occupied Ukraine, his sabotage and subversion in Europe, and another Russian war against Ukraine in the coming years.
Putin seized the strategic momentum in early 2024. With the short-term exception of the Kursk operation last year, Russian has retained that momentum through 2025. Putin has also retained his maximalist objectives for the war against Ukraine. Throughout 2025 and up to the current peace negotiations, Putin continues to imagine that the conditions of the war are favourable for Russia. As he noted in his press conference last week:
The positive dynamics persist in all directions. Moreover, our troops’ advance in each of these directions continues to pick up the pace, and quite noticeably.
For Ukraine, 2025 has been another extraordinarily tough year. It featured a significant increase in Russian aerial attacks and a decline in power generation for the coming winter, the Russian advance upon and envelopment of Pokrovsk, a cutoff of U.S. military intelligence for a short period in March, a cutoff of American-funded military aid, a re-shuffle of Zelenskyy’s government including a new Prime Minister and new defence minister, two major corruption scandals, the loss of Zelenskyy’s closest advisor and the increasing pressure from President Trump to achieve some kind of peace deal with Russia.
The aim of this article is to review the seven strategic endeavours that I proposed in January this year from two perspectives. First, have these actually been the key strategic endeavours that Ukraine has focussed upon as part of its national approach to defending itself in 2025? Second, how successful has Ukraine been with each of these endeavours? I conclude with an overall assessment.
Seven Strategic Endeavours
As I noted in the introduction, there are seven Ukrainian strategic undertakings that I proposed that should have individually had an impact on the war in 2025. But, as I wrote in my article in January, “only in the right combination will they provide one side or the other with a decisive advantage. Producing this ‘right combination’ will require a meshing of political direction and risk taking, military strategy and execution, national resource prioritisation, systemic learning and adaptation, and effective alliance management.”
This section of the article will re-examine what the strategic endeavours were, what role these played in Ukraine’s national war effort in 2025, and whether they alone or in combination made a contribution to generating advantage or denying Russian progress throughout this year. The seven Ukrainian strategic endeavours proposed in January were:
- The Ground War.
- The Strategic Strike and Air Defence War.
- The Mobilization War.
- The Economic War.
- The Robot and Algorithm War
- The War of Narratives.
- The Learning and Adaptation War.
Strategic Endeavour 1: The Ground War. The first strategic endeavour I proposed in January was the ground war. Over the past (nearly) four years, the fortunes of Ukraine and Russia have changed multiple times in the ground environment. If 2022 was probably a year in which Ukraine held the upper hand in ground combat. 2023 was probably evenly matched, although the Ukrainian counter offensive drained the Ukrainian ground forces of resources, which would impact on their following year’s campaigns.
From January 2024, Russia began to generate not only tactical but strategic momentum in the ground war. While Ukraine’s Kursk offensive proved that surprise and offensive maneuver were still possible on the modern battlefield, it also proved to be more of a tactical than strategic success for Ukraine. But even this success was short lived. Russia kept its operational focus on the eastern Ukraine front, which remained their main effort throughout the Ukrainian Kursk campaign. At the same time, it was able to generate sufficient ground forces to seal off further Ukrainian penetration into Russia, and with its strategic reserves and the deployment of over ten thousand North Korean troops, was able to largely push the Ukrainians from Kursk. Ukraine retains a thin sliver of ground there, but its tactical and strategic value is questionable.
Has the ground war actually been a key strategic focus of Ukraine in 2025? I think the obvious answer is this: absolutely. It has remained a critical part of Ukraine’s national defensive campaign against Russia, and it is the aspect of Ukraine’s war effort which absorbs a larger proportion of mobilised people than any other. It is important for Ukraine to pour resources into the ground war and defend its territory and prevent Ukrainians falling under the abuses of Russian occupation. Importantly, Ukraine’s ground war efforts also seek to minimise Russian gains because Russia has used its capture of Ukrainian territory as an integral part of its global misinformation campaign, with the central message being that its continuous territorial advances were evidence of an inevitable Russian victory. This message has been crucial for Russia’s supporters, as well as its admirers in the White House who wish to impose an unjust peace on Ukraine.
In 2025, Russia has improved its ability to identify weaker Ukrainian formations, gaps between Ukrainian units or when brigades are undertaking reliefs in place, which it then exploits in conducting attacks. Russia has also evolved its tactics with the integration of small team (even individual) infiltration, the use of more glide bombs and improvements in its drone tactics with the widespread deployment of Rubicon units. These are brought together in the conduct of long-term campaigns with a designated main effort and supporting efforts that inform allocation of reinforcements and commitment of reserves.
Ukraine, which continues to suffer manpower shortages in many units along the frontline, appears to have better balanced its approach to holding ground and the strategic preservation of forces this year. While Ukrainian casualties in 2025 remain a government secret, the latest estimates of Russian casualties in 2025 indicate that Ukraine has been largely successful in the tactical ground effort to impose disproportionate costs on the Russians if compared with the amount of territory gained. The latest update from British Intelligence notes that Russia has sustained 382,000 killed and wounded in 2025.
Russian average daily losses to 1 December 2025. Source: @DefenceHQ
Ukraine this year has also evolved its ground forces command and control. It has removed the ad hoc higher-level headquarters and formed Corps, which generally contain 3-7 brigades as well as an increasing number of enabling brigades such as artillery, drones, engineers and logistics formations. For a full laydown of the new ground forces C2, see this article.
Overall, the ground war has been a crucial strategic endeavour for Ukraine in 2025. While it has had to cede ground to Russia (just under 2000 square miles since January 2025) and has taken significant casualties, it has prevented Putin from achieving his minimalist goal of securing the Donbas region.
However, that could change if the war continues throughout 2026. Ukrainian ground forces possess significant resilience, innovation and courage, but many of their formations are critical short of reinforcements in an environment where there is a high proportion of AWOL soldiers (although AWOL is often used to transfer between units) and a political unwillingness to conscript Ukrainians under the age of 25. After four years of war, both Ukraine and Russia have higher levels of brittleness in their organisations that could see a higher level of battlefield dynamism and even breakthroughs in 2026. This is by no means certain, but the conditions are right in 2026 for whichever side can identify and exploit the tactical and operational weaknesses of their adversary.
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I reckon he died with a guilty conscience and he full well knew the why of it. Not only did he do jack ■■■■ for Ukraine when he had the chance, he never called Putin out for his evil. In fact he was just a cowardly apologist for Putin…
May God rest his soul, yadda yadda.
et al.
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Russian losses per 04/12/25 reported by the Ukrainian General Staff
+1140 men
+3 tanks
+3 ACVs
+29 artillery
+1 MLRS
+245 UAVs
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TLDR;
Glorious “World’s second most powerful army” fighting country with a quarter of its population, 1/28 its land area and 1/10 its GDP ‘takes’ territory marked in yellow after more than two years of fighting and at least 800 000 casualties…
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An aside from the war. But related. And the funniest ■■■■ I have seen in a while.
The desperation and stupidity in russia reaching epidemic proportions:
The Valley Effect and Fraud in Russia (Eng subs) - Max Katz
Let us talk today about the “case of the Valley” and the so-called “Valina effect”. The singer is now canceled everywhere for the fact that she clearly used the connections and not only deprived the honest buyer of housing and money, but also completely spoiled the practice of such cases. Schemes of fraud have adopted the character of the epidemic, they fall everything (now occur everywhere) - and the reason for this is the problem of the Russian state.
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One of yours @Nexta ?
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Lol. My original and true moniker on this forum is @Taojas
but after inadvertently and ineptly logging/locking myself out while forgetting the password, I had to make a new account. So I just “borrowed” the tag Nexta from the media outlet/twitter account of the same name because 1. I thought the name was cool and 2. I liked the cut of their jib…
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