BILD: Putin's Summer Offensive Has Run Out Of Steam
- 1.07.2025, 12:28
Russian units lost their organization.
The Russian summer offensive in eastern Ukraine has reached a stalemate - the military group threatening Sumy has stopped, while attempts to advance in other directions are failing. According to experts, Russian units have lost organization and are operating without effective command. Military maneuvers on both sides are no longer possible, turning the war into a positional confrontation.
Less than two weeks ago, Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin said from the stage of a forum in St. Petersburg that he did not rule out the capture of the city of Sumy by the Russian army. A few days later, the AFU's commander-in-chief Alexander Syrsky announced that apparently that would not happen - because "the wave of the enemy's summer offensive" had died down. Putin's troops have been halted, writes BILD.
The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) confirms this: a Russian military group of about 50,000 soldiers and officers is about 19 kilometers from Sumy, but the pace of its offensive has slowed.
The Russian troops are also failing to advance near Konstantinovka - they have been trying to approach this strategically important town, located between Kramatorsk and Pokrovsk, for weeks, but in vain.
One of the reasons for the Russian army's failures is the lack of commanders and interaction between individual units. The deaths of too many officers have had an impact.
Security expert and political scientist Christian Melling explains:
- These are not even battalions anymore, but very small units that are not trained to interact - in essence, unruly mobs that, true, do not fight with pitchforks as in the Middle Ages, but do not represent classical military formations."
Melling says there is no longer any talk of an offensive in the usual sense:
"Neither Ukrainian nor Russian forces are capable of conducting large, coordinated military maneuvers anymore."
That is why coordinated operations by ground forces and the air force are no longer being conducted, and without them the front is unlikely to move significantly. Perhaps this is why Putin has stepped up shelling of Ukrainian cities in recent weeks.
"This is, in fact, a manifestation of helplessness. When you can't make progress on the front, you rely on putting pressure on the political leadership by demoralizing the population."
So far, however, this plan is not working, says Melling, and for a very simple reason - Ukrainians don't believe that concessions to the Kremlin will lead to anything better.