ISW: Putin Has Gone Too Far

• 6.07.2026, 13:03

The Russian army's actual gains in Ukraine turned out to be five times smaller than the Kremlin had claimed.

Putin and his military are doing everything they can to portray the Russian army’s achievements on the front lines as pivotal and capable of radically changing the course of the war in Moscow’s favor. Against the backdrop of a fuel crisis and massive Ukrainian strikes on oil refineries and military factories, Russian leaders appear to be trying to convince the public that in their “special military operation,” “everything is going according to plan.” These efforts are also aimed at impressing Donald Trump: the Kremlin still hopes to achieve through U.S.-mediated negotiations the goals it has been unable to achieve on the front lines through human wave attacks.

Putin stated that since the beginning of the year, Russia has captured more than 3,000 square kilometers and 133 settlements in Ukraine. According to the Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, 636 square kilometers and 29 settlements were captured in June. However, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) claims: According to its observations and testimonies, Russian troops have captured or infiltrated 621.7 square kilometers across the entire theater of operations since the beginning of the year; this is nearly five times less than Putin claimed. As for the settlements that Russian soldiers have captured or penetrated, the ISW counted 64—more than two times fewer than Putin claims.

The situation is similar with Gerasimov’s statements. According to ISW, the actual losses suffered by the Ukrainians (and even then, only if one counts the incursion of individual advancing forces into Ukrainian territory as a “loss”) amount to 30.42 square kilometers and 20 settlements. In other words, Gerasimov overstated the territorial figure by a factor of 21.

It is likely that Putin and the Russian command actively reported on July 3 and 4 about the capture of small settlements in order to “overload the information space and make it difficult to refute these claims,” notes the ISW. It adds that Putin made similar exaggerated claims about his troops’ successes “in a carefully staged interview” on June 28 with Kremlin journalist Pavel Zarubin. ISW assesses these constant exaggerations as part of a propaganda war “aimed at portraying Russia’s victory in Ukraine as inevitable and the Ukrainian defense as crumbling.”

According to the institute’s analysis, in June, Russian forces lost an average of 1,298 soldiers for every square kilometer of territory they occupied or penetrated. A simple calculation shows that at this rate, if Russia were to capture the remaining 5,065.17 square kilometers of territory in the Donetsk region, it would lose 6,574,590 military personnel.

Putin and his commanders also used the July 3 meeting to falsely claim the capture of Konstantinovka and the start of a breakthrough of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ defensive perimeter in the Donetsk region, according to the ISW. “The Kremlin likely assumed that Putin would call Trump to congratulate him on U.S. Independence Day, and deliberately arranged meetings on July 3 between Putin and several commanders, during which he claimed that Russian troops had captured Konstantinovka and made other exaggerated assertions—all in the run-up to the July 4 phone call.”

Putin and Trump did indeed speak by phone on July 4. According to Putin’s aide Yuri Ushakov, it was the Americans who “initiated the call,” and this allegedly “speaks volumes.” (Before speaking with Putin, Trump spoke by phone with Volodymyr Zelenskyy.) The U.S. president “confirmed his readiness to facilitate a swift end to hostilities, the search for peaceful solutions to overcome the crisis; his special representatives Steve Whitcoff and Jared Kushner will continue their mediation efforts and will be ready to travel to Moscow at a convenient time,” Ushakov said.

Whitcoff and Kushner, however, are busy with negotiations with Iran, which are officially scheduled to continue only until August 17. At the same time, Trump has told his aides that they may last longer.

Meanwhile, Washington continues to provide military aid to Kyiv. As senior Ukrainian officials told the Financial Times, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are receiving support from U.S. intelligence in plotting drone routes to bypass Russian air defense systems. U.S. intelligence is also determining the optimal flight altitudes for the drones and the best times to launch attacks on Russian territory.

Against this backdrop, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance stated that Russia has virtually exhausted its options for further offensives. Putin’s army is paying “a very high price for every square kilometer” of captured territory, he said in an interview with The Times:

Frankly speaking, the Russians are now in a position where the benefits they can derive from continuing offensive operations are negligible—and approaching zero.