Plans revealed this week by Ukrainian intelligence services indicate Russia intends to extend the war well into 2026 and take over vast territories that run well beyond its public demands for a formal ceasefire.
Ukrainian Presidential Office Deputy Head Colonel Pavlo Palisa told reporters on Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to take over Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts by September 1 and build a buffer zone at the northern Ukrainian-Russian border by the close of 2025.
“They [Russia] have plans even for 2026. The plan for next year is to occupy the whole part of Ukraine which is situated on the left bank of the Dnipro River,” he said.
Palisa added that Putin eventually plans to take over all of Ukraine on the eastern side of the Dnieper River and capture the regions of Odesa and Mykolaiv by the end of 2026, thereby eliminating Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea.
“Unfortunately, they are not speaking about peace. They are preparing for war,” he said. Institute for the Study of War (ISW) published a map on Friday detailing Putin’s plans for expansion of nearly 85,000 square miles of Ukraine with a goal of holding 129,000 square miles by the end of 2026, or almost half the country.
In late May, President Donald Trump gave Putin a two-week ultimatum to present his intentions for peace or face stricter economic punishment. The U.S. and other Western nations have now proposed secondary sanctions against Russia and those who buy Russian oil to further squeeze Moscow into meaningful peace negotiations.
Andriy Yermak, a top aide to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, urged U.S. lawmakers to pursue the secondary sanctions to force Putin back to the negotiating table. “It’s necessary to create the right atmosphere that Russia will go to negotiation – but go not to make a show, but concrete and real negotiation,” Yermak said. The ISW indicated that so long as Ukraine continues to receive Western aid in the form of military defenses, Putin is unlikely to succeed in his plans for expansion.
Despite repeated calls from the White House for a ceasefire, the conflict appears to be headed in the opposite direction. Earlier on Saturday, Russian drones and missiles hit Ukraine’s eastern city of Kharkiv, killing at least three and injuring nearly two dozen more. The increased attacks by Russia follow last weekend’s Operation Spider Web by Ukraine which destroyed dozens of Russia’s long-range bombers. Two days later, an underwater bomb was detonated taking out Russia’s Kerch Strait Bridge, a critical piece of infrastructure that connects occupied Crimea to Russia’s Krasnodar Krai region.
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