How did the Russian-Ukrainian front change in 2025?

The Human Dimension of Success

If you compare maps with marked Russian conquests from December 2023, 2024 and present – at first glance we will not see any changes. It is only in large magnification and after careful survey of individual sections of the front we will see symbolic corrections. After the entry of the Russian-Ukrainian struggles into the post-war phase – which occurred in the fall of 2023 – the Russians occupied only 1.5% of Ukraine's surface. During this time, their army had depleted by a million (!) soldiers – that is the human dimension of this success.

Which should be stressed in the face of increasingly popular narratives, including in Poland, according to which the Russians are not stopping to the west. In the case of any pro-Russian messages, this force is likened to the stubbornness and determination of the Red Army from 1943 to 1945 – which is an highly absurd analogy. The Soviets in planet War II moved the front by 2,000 km in 2 years, the soldiers of Vladimir Putin managed to repel the Ukrainians to a depth of 50 km. On the spot, in a fewer miles wide assault lanes. russian Marshal Georgij Zukov most likely turning in his grave to the sound of comparisons of his feats with the achievements of Walerija Gierasimov, commander of the Putin army.

“But this is not a land war!” we hear from time to time. specified opinions are intended to justify the deficiency of Russian prey and to shed light on Moscow's real intentions. This is to search to break the backbone of the Ukrainian army, by imposing its war on destruction, people and resources, which are more in Russia than in Ukraine. At the right time, erstwhile Ukrainians yet no longer have anyone to fight, Moscow forces Kiev to make appropriate concessions, including territorial ones. In this sense, terrible Russian losses are a kind of investment, “to this day” it seems overpaid, but the mark effect justifies it.

Ukrainian soldiers monitor incoming Russian drones in the Kharkiv Oblast, close the front line in east Ukraine, 8 October 2025.

It cannot be ruled out that Putin is calculating this way, and with the eyes of his imagination he sees nothing as part of the Federation, devoted by the Kiev after a devastating defeat. The point is that the size of this disaster would should be tremendous for Ukraine to grant specified concessions to Russia. And specified a result, the full throwing of Ukraine on its knees, the Russians without atomic weapons will not fight. Not in the next fewer months, during which they gotta end the war themselves, due to the fact that it is beginning to drastically exceed their capabilities.

In ending this field theme, in peace talks the area under control is always significant. It is an asset of a defeated or weaker opponent, and at worst a commodity that can be bought, reducing the scale of defeat. Both sides know that, and even for that reason, there is simply a war on the ground.

Grey region and front in the back

Let us look at the area where it is rolled. Contrary to common ideas, the Russian-Ukrainian front has never been a line of continuous, parallel trenches and fortifications, sometimes embedded in urbanized areas. "Gose" from this kind of infrastructure was on respective sections of a military contact of a full dimension of 200–300 km, where the most severe fighting took place. The remainder of the over 1,200 km front were guarded by tiny troops scattered around separate stations.

Between them, grids were built, point shooting positions, minefields were spread out, but the service in specified places was not much different from guarding the appropriate border with Russia and Belarus. The clashes occurred occasionally, most of the actions were harassing, without intention of breaking down, characterized by low strength erstwhile it comes to the usage of combat measures. Today, small has changed on these front lines.

What is different in “hot-spots”, where there are no more clearly defined positions, maintaining continuity and not intersecting with enemy lines. The front has become a “death zone” over a twelve kilometres wide, where groups of respective twelve soldiers are frequently scattered accidentally, any divisions are closer, others further distant from their own, sometimes separated from the back by hostile groups. The ends of this region find the ranges of tactical drones controlling any movement of the opponent. Under specified conditions, full or partial isolation, soldiers last even for weeks; any never manage to save themselves from being cut off.

In hotspots, up to 90% of losses (both sides) are indirect or direct effects drone activity. The dominance of unmanned workers drastically changes the rules of logistics, medical evacuation, makes it hard to engage – after all, everything can be seen “right away”. The drones on the Ukrainian front began to usage massively in 2023, but it was 2025 that yet confirmed their dominance. The Russians bring in more unmanned people, produce more, have easier access to Chinese components.

But besides Ukrainians produce and get millions of pieces a year, which makes both sides chess each other, to a degree that excludes any crucial breakthrough on the front. And most likely that's why the Russian leadership decided to "take" Ukrainian energy, hoping that the impulse to end the war would come from a tortured society. As a consequence of Russian raids Almost all Ukrainian power plants have been destroyedExcept nuclear. The country, on the verge of winter, faces drastic power, heat, water shortages. Ukraine responds symmetrically – attacking Russian refineries and power plants – like its stalker, making the facilities a full front of war. We won't know what will come of it until next year.