Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 7, 2025
Excerpts:
Putin may have used his meeting with Witkoff to propose a long-range strikes moratorium, which would allow Russia to stockpile long-range drones and missiles and renew devastating large-scale strikes against Ukraine after the moratorium expires. A strikes moratorium will also handicap Ukraine's ability to continue its long-range strike campaign aimed at attriting the Russian defense industrial base and wartime economy. Bloomberg reported on August 5, citing people familiar with the situation, that Russia considered accepting a moratorium on long-range strikes in order to mitigate the threat of secondary US sanctions.
... Lukashenko ... claimed on August 1 that he recently told US representatives that Russia is interested in another long-range strikes moratorium.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed ... that Putin gave Witkoff a ceasefire proposal, but did not specify the contents of the proposal.
Rubio stated that a ceasefire is an important part of the negotiation process, because it is difficult to negotiate a permanent peace deal while under fire - reiterating Trump's preferred timeline of establishing a ceasefire in Ukraine before starting formal peace negotiations to end the war.
Russia has significantly scaled up its drone and missile production in 2025, allowing Russia to rapidly increase the size of its strike packages that it launches against Ukraine. Ukraine's Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) assessed on June 9 that Russia can produce roughly 170 Shahed-type drones per day and that Russia plans to increase production capacity to 190 drones per day by the end of 2025.
Ukrainian outlet Kyiv Independent reported on June 24 that it received GUR intelligence in early June 2025 that indicated that Russia had stockpiled roughly 600 Iskander-M ballistic missiles and 300 Iskander-K cruise missiles -
a stockpile that would last about two years, should Russia sustain its current pace of missile strikes against Ukraine.
Russia continues to heavily invest in its long-range drone and missile production capabilities, including by leaning on partners and allies like Belarus, Iran, the People's Republic of China (PRC), and North Korea for weapons provisions, joint production efforts, and sanctions evasion schemes.
Russia will only continue to invest in its drone and missile production capabilities and lean on its allies as it prepares for a prolonged war effort in Ukraine and potential future conflict against NATO. The size of Russia's strike packages against Ukraine will therefore likely only continue to increase, as will the damage to civilian infrastructure and civilian casualties.
Russia in 2025 has already conducted over 10 of the largest-ever drone and missile strikes in the war thus far, and reportedly seeks to increase the size of its strike packages to contain up to 2,000 drones.
A temporary strikes moratorium would also degrade Ukraine's long-range strike campaign targeting Russia's defense industrial facilities and energy infrastructure - a campaign that is aimed at targeting Russia's defense production and energy revenues, as opposed to the solely civilian infrastructure that the Russian campaign often strikes.
Any agreement less than a full and long-term cessation in long-range strikes against civilian infrastructure will pose a great threat to Ukraine's civilian population and infrastructure upon the expiration of the agreement and resumption of long-range Russian strikes.
[ In short, any strikes moratorium would heavily favor Russia. ]
Putin likely claimed to Witkoff that Russia's territorial ambitions are limited to the seizure of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts. Putin is likely attempting to frame Russia's seizure of the four oblasts as inevitable in order to push Ukraine and the West to capitulate to Kremlin demands ... Putin remains committed to his demand that Russia occupy all 4 oblasts before he would be willing to establish a ceasefire - a reiteration of Putin's June 2024 demand that he and other Kremlin officials have since publicly repeated.
A Kremlin source also told Reuters that the Russian General Staff recently told Putin that the frontline in Ukraine will likely “crumble” in 2 to 3 months. ISW assessed that the Kremlin is likely leaking this information to try to project confidence in Russia's military capabilities and, in turn, to undermine Ukrainian and Western morale.
Russia's occupation of the 4 oblasts is neither inevitable nor imminent, as Russian forces will face serious operational obstacles in what are likely to be multi-year endeavors ... ISW assesses that Russia has yet to seize roughly 6,500 square kilometers of Donetsk Oblast, or about 25 percent of the region. Russian advances aimed at enveloping Pokrovsk have accelerated in recent weeks, but Russian forces have spent the last 18 months trying to seize an area of about 30 square kilometers. Russian forces have not demonstrated the capacity to seize cities of this size since mid-2022, and ISW continues to assess that the seizure of the fortress belt will be a difficult, multiyear effort.
Future Russian operations to seize the entirety of Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts will require significant river crossing operations that Russian forces have historically struggled to complete since 2022 ... Russian forces have not conducted a successful cross-river operation at scale across the Dnipro River since Russian forces withdrew to east (left) bank Kherson Oblast in November 2022, and this river crossing occurred as Russian forces attempted to rapidly retreat from oncoming Ukrainian forces. Russia would likely struggle to pursue simultaneous efforts in Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts, particularly considering the impacts of three years of war on Russian combat capabilities ... Kremlin officials, including Putin, have repeatedly indicated that Russia has more expansive territorial aims in Ukraine beyond the four oblasts.
Putin recently claimed that “all of Ukraine” is Russia's, Russian officials have called for Russia to seize Sumy City, and Kremlin officials routinely label Odessa and Kharkiv cities as “Russian” cities.
Putin's war aims are also not limited to territory. Kremlin statements continue to indicate that Putin remains committed to replacing the democratically elected Ukrainian government with a pro-Russian puppet government, reducing Ukraine's military such that Ukraine cannot defend itself from future aggression, abolishing NATO's long-held Open Door Policy, and changing the Ukrainian constitution to commit Ukraine to neutrality ... Putin remains committed to destroying the Ukrainian state, identity, and culture and subjugating the Ukrainian people.
Russian efforts to conquer all of Ukraine through battlefield gains would take decades should the current rate of advance continue, but Putin's theory of victory is contingent on the hypothesis that the West will abandon Ukraine long before he must.
Putin continues to believe that time is on Russia's side and that Russia can outlast Ukraine and the West. Economic measures coupled with Western military aid that enables Ukraine to inflict battlefield setbacks on Russian forces remain critical to changing Putin's calculus and bringing him to the negotiating table willing to make compromises to end the war.
The Belarusian Ministry of Defense (MoD) submitted a draft law to the Belarusian House of Representatives on August 7 that proposes amending the criteria for adopting martial law in Belarus to include attacks on the Union State and CSTO member states.https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-august-7-2025
