President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has sought to convince President Trump that his troops are marching toward inevitable victory in Ukraine, arguing that Kyiv should hand over the entire eastern Donbas region to avoid impending defeat.<\/p>\n
But the situation on the battlefield tells a different story.<\/p>\n
After making gains late last year<\/a>, the Russian military has slowed to a crawl. In some parts of Ukraine, it has lost territory. At its average monthly rate of advance so far this year, it would take Russia more than three decades to seize full control of the Donbas, which the Kremlin has set as a condition for ending the war.<\/p>\n The slowdown may be temporary, and it is due at least in part to seasonal factors. Russian troops tend to pick up speed over the summer, aided by better weather and foliage that provides more cover from drones. In recent days, Ukrainian officials have warned that Moscow\u2019s troops are gearing up for new offensives<\/a> and have intensified operations<\/a> across the front.<\/p>\n More broadly, Russia has yet to solve the fundamental problem of how to make big advances on a battlefield saturated with drones. The days of sending masses of troops charging through front lines in armored vehicles are mostly over.<\/p>\n Instead, the contest between Kyiv and Moscow is largely one of developing better drones, and better defenses against them. On certain parts of the front, Ukraine has gained the upper hand in recent months with rapid advancements in technology, production and tactics. But Russia is working furiously to catch up, building out a bigger drone force after rolling out a successful elite drone unit known as Rubicon.<\/p>\n Drones have forced Russian troops to change their strategy. Now they try to infiltrate territory gradually with small teams of soldiers, often on foot. This has resulted in an ever-growing swath of territory known as the \u201cgray zone,\u201d where troops from both sides are present and control is not clear-cut.<\/p>\n \u201cThe best they can do is these infiltration tactics and the targeting of the support networks pretty far behind the line \u2014 targeting Ukrainian drone teams and logistics support,\u201d said Dara Massicot, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. \u201cBut it doesn\u2019t lead to rapid gains. They are kind of stuck.\u201d<\/p>\n As the war effort stalls, it is putting the Russian government under increasing economic and political strain.<\/p>\n Mr. Putin\u2019s approval ratings have fallen to their lowest levels since the start of the war<\/a>, as the economy buckles under vast military spending and as mobile internet blackouts, imposed in part to prevent Ukrainian drone attacks, anger ordinary Russians.<\/p>\n Late Saturday, Mr. Putin suggested in a news conference the possibility of ending the war. \u201cI believe the matter is coming to a close, yet it remains a serious thing,\u201d he said. But at the same time, he struck notes of defiance, particularly against European nations supporting Ukraine.<\/p>\n For now, the Kremlin is fighting on. But its challenges on the battlefield complicate the narrative of imminent victory Mr. Putin has been selling to the Trump administration as it has brokered peace talks with Ukraine. Russia is looking to put pressure on Kyiv to cede the parts of the Donbas that its military has failed to capture.<\/p>\n Even as Russia struggled on the battlefield this March, Mr. Trump, in an interview with Politico, expanded on his<\/a> earlier statement that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine had \u201cno cards\u201d by saying he now had \u201ceven less cards.\u201d<\/p>\n On Thursday, the Kremlin\u2019s chief foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said<\/a> that until Ukraine withdrew from the region, Russia saw no point in further peace talks. Ukraine has refused to hand over that territory, though negotiations have continued over turning it into some sort of international demilitarized zone<\/a>.<\/p>\n While Russia has not figured out how to take and hold large swaths of land through infiltration, it may believe that a gradual push is a better approach anyway, Ms. Massicot said. That avoids the risk of big operations that could go wrong and raise questions about the prospects for victory, she added.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s a combination of not having an operational solution and the Kremlin being satisfied with this level of political risk, and hoping that peace talks will negotiate away the difficult part, which is fighting for the rest of the Donbas,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Whatever Russia\u2019s strategy, it is clear that the pace of Russia\u2019s advance has slowed this year, according to the three main organizations tracking the battlefield, the Institute for the Study of War, Black Bird Group and DeepState.<\/p>\n Two of the groups say there have been months in which Russia suffered net territorial losses, though the ever-widening gray zone on the front has led to differing interpretations of what constitutes captured territory.<\/p>\n Russia\u2019s meager gains in the past three months, according to Black Bird\u2019s statistics, amounted to its worst battlefield performance within Ukraine since 2023.<\/p>\n What limited gains Russia has made have come with heavy casualties. An estimated 352,000 Russian soldiers had died<\/a> in the war by the end of last year, according to figures released this weekend by the Russian outlets Mediazona and Meduza<\/a>. That is more than six times the number of U.S. troops killed during the Vietnam War.<\/p>\n As Russia\u2019s losses mounted, it also missed recruiting targets in the first few months of the year, according to U.S. and European officials. That has raised questions about how long the Kremlin can sustain its war effort without resorting to another unpopular draft.<\/p>\n Russian soldiers have described the peril of being ordered to infiltrate territory where every move is tracked by Ukrainian drones.<\/p>\n One 24-year-old soldier, who fought in the Donbas before deserting the force last year, told The New York Times that his unit spent the better part of a month trying to establish a foothold in a single town outside the city of Pokrovsk, as assault troops tried to move in but were wiped out by Ukrainian drones.<\/p>\n Their commander then ordered the troops to start infiltrating the town in two-man teams, which slipped in day after day until they built up enough of a presence to secure the territory. The pairs kept their distance from one another to avoid bunching up in a single location and becoming a target, the soldier said, speaking anonymously for security reasons.<\/p>\n The reality of the gray zone means that injured Russian troops are often left stranded in contested territory, their units unable to retrieve them. The Russian soldier recounted trying to send water and candy bars by drone to a stranded comrade dying of dehydration.<\/p>\n For much of last year, Russia\u2019s small-team infiltration tactics worked, albeit slowly. According to Black Bird, the Russian military gained 1,768 square miles of territory in Ukraine over the course of 2025, an area a bit larger than Rhode Island.<\/p>\n