How long it would take Russia to capture all of Donbas — Deputy Head of Presidential Office
Russian forces have captured less than 1% of Ukraine’s territory in 2025, losing more than 450,000 troops in the process.
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Russia’s war against Ukraine / © TSN
At the current pace of advance, the Russian army would need around a year and a half to seize the 6,000 square kilometres still under Ukrainian control in the Donetsk region.
These estimates were provided by Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Pavlo Palisa in an interview with Radio Svoboda.
At the same time, he said Russia would need to deploy forces equivalent to its entire current occupying troop grouping in Ukraine.
«It will be extremely difficult for them. It will not happen as quickly as they expect, ” Palisa said.
Russia occupied «less than one percent of Ukraine’s territory in 2025 but lost over 450,000 troops,» he recalled.
However, Pavlo Palisa stresses that Moscow has not abandoned plans to seize further areas, including the regional centres of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa. He says that Russian forces also aim to create a buffer zone in Kharkiv and Sumy regions and push deeper into Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions.
«For now, I see no chance for Russia to carry out these plans in the next six months, ” the deputy head of the Presidential Office said.