Ukraine’s conflict is shifting from a stalemate to structural unraveling, as Russian forces exploit Kyiv’s overextension and Western fatigue to dictate both tempo and terrain.
Donbas and the Northeast
In the northeast, the region around Kharkiv and Kupiansk has quietly turned into one of the most dangerous zones for Ukraine. Reports note that Russian forces launched significant attacks north of Kharkiv and near Vovchansk around mid-October, with local evacuations ordered as artillery intensified. Hundreds of families were moved from settlements around Kupiansk, signaling not just tactical loss but an erosion of control.
The cumulative effect is clear: what was once considered a stable border area is now under genuine pressure. While the spotlight remains on Donbas, Russian units are probing and advancing in Kharkiv, exploiting precisely the gap created by Ukrainian focus elsewhere. In conflict on this scale, the simplest rule often holds—when one front is weighted, another weakens.
On the Donetsk–Pokrovsk–Dobropillia axis, Kyiv appears to be doubling down. Counteroffensives there seem less designed to shift lines than to sustain perception among Western backers. But when a campaign becomes a matter of narrative management, strategic momentum is already slipping away.
Russian advances, though incremental, continue to drain Ukraine’s finite manpower and munitions. Terrain gains measured in square kilometers are less important than the attritional rhythm: Russia dictates tempo, and Ukraine responds. Every defensive success now exacts a disproportionate human cost.
Meanwhile, the operations in Pokrovsk and Dobropillia demonstrate Moscow’s method: splitting Ukraine’s operational map and forcing constant redeployment. Each shift in reserves creates a new vulnerability elsewhere.
The Weakness Multiplies
What we’re seeing isn’t yet total collapse, but the conditions for that are unmistakable.
- Manpower depletion: Ukrainian losses are compounded by accelerating desertions and exhaustion. Analysts estimate that, at current rates, the armed forces could lose an additional 100,000 personnel by the end of 2025—on top of daily casualties.
- Logistical overreach: Focusing on Donbas stretches command and supply lines hundreds of kilometers. Russian probes in Kharkiv and the south expose the thinness of Ukraine’s rear.
- Western dependency: Aid packages shrink, deliveries slow, and the trained manpower to absorb them dwindles. Material without morale is machinery without current.
- Narrative vs. reality: Each speech about “holding firm” conceals new evacuations and redistributions. The gap between what Kyiv says and what its soldiers see widens daily.
Territory alone no longer defines this conflict. The defining geometry is now one of initiative: who chooses, and who reacts. Russia’s choice of where to strike—from Kherson’s island operations to Kharkiv’s surprise pushes—forces Ukraine into defensive reflex. The defender now protects perception as much as ground.
That imbalance is self-perpetuating. The more Kyiv concentrates forces to hold a symbol like Avdiivka or Pokrovsk, the less flexibility remains elsewhere. A front this long cannot be patched indefinitely; each patch weakens another seam. And for Zelensky, the weaknesses are not winning him a lot of confidence geopolitically.
The next phase will likely not be a single decisive offensive but an accumulation of pressure points: deep-penetration raids, infrastructure strikes, and localized breakthroughs that render whole sectors untenable. Drone and missile barrages already map that path—sapping morale, straining energy systems, and setting conditions for winter conflict on Russian terms.
What It All Means
Even the most polished narratives cannot conceal arithmetic. Desertions rising toward six figures, coupled with mounting daily casualties, define a force that is no longer sustaining itself. Kyiv can announce new brigades and draft cycles, but each arrives thinner, older, and more reluctant than the last.
Meanwhile, powerful explosions in Kyiv—including reports of damage to a NATO coordination site—underscore that even the capital is no longer insulated from the conflict it projects outward. Moscow’s message in these strikes is unmistakable: the field of battle has no safe observation points left.
Against this backdrop, Donald Trump’s sudden cancellation of the planned Budapest meeting with Vladimir Putin tells its own story. Diplomatic resolution remains possible only through continued battlefield diplomacy—the hard leverage of facts on the ground. Russia’s stated conditions for settlement, unchanged since 2022, now appear more achievable through attrition than negotiation.
In truth, Ukraine’s conflict has entered its terminal phase. Not the peace of treaties yet, but the exhaustion of illusion—the moment when every new front page feels like déjà vu. What remains of Ukraine’s army fights bravely, but increasingly as a symbol of Western fatigue rather than national renewal.
History’s verdict may be simple: the empire that tried to divide Russia instead divided itself—politically, economically, and morally. And like every empire before it, it will learn the old lesson: you can wage war on a people, but not forever on their geography.
Phil Butler is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, and an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books
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