ISW Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, December 9, 2025

Key Takeaways from the ISW:

• The Kremlin is significantly intensifying its cognitive warfare effort to present the Russian military and economy as able to inevitably win a war of attrition against Ukraine.
• The Kremlin’s cognitive warfare effort aims to achieve several of Putin’s original war aims through a negotiated settlement, as Russian forces are currently unable to achieve them on the battlefield.
• Russian forces have gained 0.77 percent of Ukrainian territory since the start of 2025 while suffering disproportionately high personnel costs.
• Russia’s resources are not endless as Putin is trying to assert, and Putin currently appears to be facing difficult decision points regarding the strategic sustainment of Russian force generation.
• Putin is very likely preparing to attempt to offset Russia’s near-exhaustion of voluntary recruitment in 2026 by mobilizing elements of Russia’s strategic reserve to sustain combat operations in Ukraine. The Kremlin remains unlikely to undertake a single large-scale mobilization at this time, however, and is most likely to persistently recruit reservists on a rolling basis.
• A Kremlin official suggested that Russia may try to renege on any future peace agreement it signs with Ukraine due to the Ukrainian government’s alleged “illegitimacy” – as ISW has long warned.
• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky commented on the latest 20-point US-proposed peace plan.
• Ukraine continued discussions with its European allies on December 8 about the ongoing peace negotiations.
• Russian forces recently advanced near Lyman and Pokrovsk and in western Zaporizhia Oblast. Ukrainian forces recently advanced near Oleksandrivka.

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