American military analyst and senior fellow at The Carnegie Endowment, Michael Kofman, believes that 2025 has turned out better for Ukraine than expected. Perhaps we will have a month or two of stabilization. It was the same last year. It is usually much more difficult to conduct offensive operations from December to February, he explained.
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“If we characterize the current stage of the war as a whole, then for the most part it is a war of attrition with positional combat actions. The spread of high-precision weapons and ubiquitous surveillance on the battlefield have made it much more difficult for both sides to conduct maneuvers of any scale. The ability of the sides to make an operational breakthrough has long disappeared. It seems that neither side has been able to advance for a long time, but I would not say that the war is at a stalemate,” says Kofman.
According to the analyst, Ukraine's defense is largely based on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles in combination with mines and artillery.
“Russian troops are trying to push through the front line. They are mainly attacking with scattered infantry, trying to infiltrate, or with mechanized assaults supported by light motorized troops. If you look at the fighting in 2025, you might think that nothing will change radically in 2026. But I wouldn't count on it. Not everything can be measured in kilometers captured or lost. It is much more important to assess the situation within the opposing forces, since the change in control over territories is a lagging indicator,” the expert insists.
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Michael Coffman noted that presence does not mean control. Therefore, it is much more difficult to understand who controls what, and the front line has become a much more blurred area.
It was previously reported that Putin is threatening to continue the seizure of Ukraine and accelerate the pace of the offensive.
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