In 2025, Russia’s army failed to achieve meaningful territorial advances despite suffering severe and often debilitating casualties, validating Ukraine’s strategy of exhausting Russian forces through attrition, according to AFU Commander General Oleksandr Syrsky.
He said Moscow aimed to conquer eastern and southern Ukrainian regions and seize Odesa but decisively failed to meet any of these objectives over the past year.
Russian forces, estimated at 600,000–700,000 troops, captured only about 5,000–5,500 square kilometres—less than 1% of Ukraine’s territory—through costly infantry-heavy assaults.
Ukraine calculates that Russia paid for these gains with at least 418,000 soldiers killed or seriously wounded, a figure broadly supported by independent analysts and the UK Ministry of Defence.
Syrsky stressed that Ukraine’s expanding use of domestically produced drones has become a central factor in inflicting Russian losses and disrupting major offensives.
He said the effectiveness of Ukrainian defences repeatedly forced Russia to delay or cancel operations after running short of assault troops.
While Russia retained the initiative overall, Ukrainian forces conducted localized counterattacks, notably near Pokrovsk, reclaiming territory and destroying infiltrating Russian units. Syrsky concluded that Ukrainian forces not only survived 2025 but reduced their own casualties compared to 2024 while systematically degrading Russia’s ability to sustain the war.
(Photo by General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine)
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