SITREP 2/26/25: Putin Plays Peacemaker as War Rages On
Putin has earned some raised eyebrows amongst the Russian commentariat for his sudden offer to ‘work with the US’ in exploiting Russian rare earth and mineral resources in both Russia and the Donbass. He was accused of selling Russia out in exchange for sweeping the war under the rug.
But there is strong evidence that Putin is, as always, being the consummate statesman and congenial host, extending a hand of friendship to position Russia as friendly and cooperative. It can be argued that another ulterior motive behind his offer was to cleverly debunk the recent pro-Ukrainian propaganda drive—stated by Zelensky himself, among others—that Russia is itself after nothing more than to “conquer Ukraine’s plentiful natural resources.” By offering to co-develop those resources, Putin deftly out-maneuvers this narrative, proving the war’s aims have nothing to do with some singular pilfering drive.
But the most important point is to understand that Putin represents merely the top-end surface octave of the Russian state’s true messaging apparatus. His job is to always appear amenable, gracious, cooperative, and non-vindictive. But the real underlying pulse of the messaging can be gleaned from foreign ministry and diplomatic statements lower down the totem pole rungs. That’s because Putin’s position represents a kind of holistic, universal topsoil layer of the apparatus whose job is to smooth things over, retain diplomatic connectivity and equilibrium, always presenting a certain ‘openness’ and inviting mien. The lower gears deliver the more ‘nuts and bolts’ hard truths of policy, which are meant to color the official positions.
In this case, we must listen to these direct-to-the-ground messengers to establish the true details of any given narrative or position. We have several statements that point to the total refutation of the alarmist narrative which accuses Putin or Russia of some kind of capitulation. For instance, Russia’s deputy foreign minister Ryabkov explained that Russia actually has no clue what the US’ offer even is, and as such the two countries are no closer to any ‘peace deal’ as of yet:
Russia has not gained clarity regarding the US peace plan for settling the Ukraine conflict since last week’s meeting between delegations of the two countries in Saudi Arabia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said. However, he stressed that Moscow has noted Washington’s willingness to swiftly resolve the crisis.
Lavrov immediately followed this up during his visit to Turkey, by saying that a ceasefire will only be allowed to happen after the US and Russia agree on all the most fundamental terms, which have been variously articulated as understanding “the root causes of the conflict”:
Another way of saying that is Russia wants the US to acknowledge all of the years of iniquities dealt to Russia at the hands of NATO and the West, including expansion, ignoring Russia’s security concerns and strategic interests, et cetera. Until this becomes codified in some kind of newly undersigned framework, Russia does not intend to entertain any ceasefires, which, as Ryabkov said above, will only erupt back into full-on hostilities after a given amount of time like all the previous Minsk charades.
ISW appears to concur with their latest report, stating that Russia has now ‘rejected’ the possibility of ceasefires on any terms other than full capitulation:
That all being said, the argument that Putin’s statements are harmful do have some merit. Imagine yourself as a Russian soldier on the front, your comrades dying left and right around you, only for your leader to timidly offer the adversary mineral rights under the very land now being fertilized with your blood. Putin’s well-known pro-Western leanings do at times clash with the exigencies of the national spirit in awkward ways, leaving front line soldiers to sometimes wonder what they’re even fighting for. It would be different if Putin gave a promising bit of encouragement to at least temper the overly-developed sense of amenability, which can border on the obsequious.
A striking example of this was Putin agreeing to Trump’s 50% military cut suggestion, while China simultaneously rebuffed it, leaving China looking strong and independent by comparison:
On the other hand, too many people view the world in black and white, and believe the slightest weakness condemns a leader to total incompetence or treachery. No, Putin has weaknesses like everyone else, but also big strengths—it’s just at times one over-shines the other in glaring ways. The Russian armed forces have now likely lost somewhere approaching 100,000 dead if not more, the least they deserve in their colossal sacrifice is to know they didn’t die in vain; a stronger message from the commander-in-chief ensuring that objectives will be met would go a long way here.
The other most important thing to mention vis-a-vis ceasefire talks that no one else is talking about is the following. Russia and the US appear to be at a kind of epistemic loggerheads when it comes to the order with which the conflict must come to an end. You see, Trump, Marco Rubio, and others from their camp hold the position that the conflict must be brought to a ceasefire first, and only then would the higher order normalizations and negotiations between the US and Russia take place. In short, the Trump administration is putting the cart before the horse in its impatience to put some big win on the scoreboard, particularly given that many other Trump campaign promises have already flopped, or similarly log-jammed.
But Russia insists on the opposite order of events: first the US must recognize all the causes of the conflict and fulfill Russia’s demands for long-term security guarantees, and only then will Russia entertain bringing the conflict to an end. How to reconcile these antipodal positions? Easy: Russia must simply continue plowing ahead until the US ‘comes around’ to realizing that it’s not the one in the driver’s seat.
Ukraine’s Ticking Clock
Now all talk seems to have turned to ‘how long can Ukraine last without American aid’. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba told Politico that in six months Ukraine would begin getting in trouble should Trump cut weapons deliveries entirely to Ukraine:
Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told POLITICO: "The most powerful leverage Trump has on Ukraine is to threaten non-delivery of weapons. We have, in my view, six months before we would really start to feel the lack of weapons on the front line."
There is a reason to worry about U.S. intentions.
Reportedly, the ‘Trump-proofed’ weapons package that Biden ordered in his last days allows Ukraine to keep things going until “mid-year”:
Without US support, Ukraine will only be able to continue fighting until summer, — Politico
➖ “The amount of weapons the Biden administration has delivered or ordered in recent months should provide the Ukrainians with the ability to continue fighting at the current pace until at least mid-year,” the publication quotes Celeste Wallander, former US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs.
Recall that both HIMARS and ATACMS have not been seen or heard from on the front in a while now. It could be a hiatus, low stocks, or even a result of Trump cutting some satellite intel capabilities.
WSJ argues that Ukraine would lose some of its most critical systems, ones Europe cannot replace.
Expert Ukrainian analyst Mykola Bielieskov is quoted in the above article as saying:
“We can endure maybe half a year or a year, in order to give Europe another year to start producing whatever munitions they can,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a senior analyst at Come Back Alive, a Ukrainian charity that has supplied drones to the military. “We might suffer some losses, maybe lose some territory. But we have no choice but to fight, despite the difficulties.”
But I would not get too caught up on these hopes—recall that at one time, in early 2023 when Jack Teixeira leaked all those CIA plans, some of which referred to Ukraine running out of various systems by mid to late 2023. Now we’re in 2025 and Ukraine is still chugging along because the West finds things to plug the gaps at the eleventh hour, which can likely happen again. But there’s always some diminishing returns, as the equipment scrounged up gets older and barer.
ABC was told by a high-ranking ‘source in the Ukrainian government’ that Trump wants to get rid of Zelensky and put in someone more amenable to cutting deals, but that this could lead to a catastrophic fragmentation of all Ukraine and its military structure:
Even if the U.S. and Russia succeeded in unseating Zelenskyy in favor of a more pliant successor, "if you end up with leadership in Kyiv that is willing to cut some sort of deal that is absolutely unacceptable to a large segment of Ukrainian society, we could see fragmentation, even of the Ukrainian military," they said.
"If the Trump administration pushes this government, or any Ukrainian government, too far, I think that this scenario becomes a real one, and this is certainly not in Ukraine's interest or Europe's interest, but I don't see how it's in the interest of the United States either."
That’s precisely what Trump could be hoping for, as it would allow him to blame a ‘corrupt’ and ‘unstable’ Ukraine on the war’s loss, then let Russia quickly mop things up so his administration can proceed to finally settle everything with Russia in high level negotiations.
In many ways, virtually everything playing out now is in accordance to predictions we made here long ago, wherein we wrote that eventually a clash will precipitate between Zelensky and the US leadership over his stepping down, at which point Zelensky may go ‘rogue’ and threaten to release various compromising truths about US involvement in the war, amongst other things. At that point, the US could be faced with no choice other than to eliminate him in one way or another.
Battlefield Updates
In the last report we highlighted how Russian forces have begun to increase the intensity of operations once again. And today there is even more confirmation of this as several major captures have been noted.
Russian forces reportedly captured the area under the Antonovsky bridge in Kherson, just after I had mentioned rumors about a possible Dnieper crossing:
24.02.25 Alyoshki
Active military operations in the Dnieper delta.
Attack of the Russian Armed Forces by a motorized rifle unit in the area of the Antonovsky bridge crossing. Advancement of the assault group to the Antonovsky bridge across the Dnieper. Landing of troops near the Antonovsky dachas.
The advance of the Russian Armed Forces from the Konka River along the highway to the Dnieper is more than 2 km.
1:25 46.657807 32.720831
I posted a video last time of Russian marines practicing river crossings, and now a new one has shown up:
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North of Velyka Novoselka, Russian forces have now gained new ground as well:
But the biggest advances came in Kursk, where Russian forces have captured Lebedevka, east of Sverdlovkovo:
Recall in the last report they had only just captured Sverdlokovo. This now puts major pressure on Ukraine’s main supply route of the Yunakovka-Sudzha road, with Russian forces soon to gain fire control over it, which would virtually cut off the Ukrainian contingent in Sudzha.
Video reportedly showing the fire control over this very route:
At the same time, Russian forces to the north captured even more territory by seizing Pogrebki and Orlovka:
That means in a span of two days the AFU’s Kursk operation has begun to dangerously collapse.
There were many other smaller advances and captures, such as in the west Zaporozhye line, near Pyatykatky. The other big advance came southwest of Pokrovsk:
Ural fighters of the 90th division of the "Center" group of forces completed the defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the cleansing of the last outskirts of the settlement of Zaporozhye, located behind the settlement of Sribnoe, near the border of the DPR and the Dnepropetrovsk region. During the offensive operation, Russian troops approached the border of the Dnepropetrovsk region in the direction of Novopavlovka.
Closeup with wider view:
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Last Items
Trump states that Ukraine essentially gets nothing in return for signing the mineral deal—their payment for it was the money the US had already disbursed over the past several years:
But note the interesting point at the end: Trump admits that the conflict may very well continue on “for a while, until we have a deal with Russia.” He’s essentially corroborating what I wrote in the opening, that things will play out until the US and Russia see eye to eye on the core issues; and Trump is between rock and hard place here, because on one hand the only way to bring Russia to the table faster would be to ‘put pressure’ on it by increasing arms to Ukraine. But on the other hand, Trump knows that increasing arms would be a hostile act that would embolden Russia to spurn US’ future friendship offers and fight on instead.
As such, Trump really has no choice but to “stay out of it” and let Russia simply subjugate Ukraine. The only ones who are now free to act are the Europeans, but they don’t have much resources to really change the calculus in any significant way on their own.
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Financial Times hits the hyperbolic button and declares the US as the enemy of mankind:
Today, not only are autocracies increasingly confident. The US is moving to their side. That is the lesson of the last two weeks. Freedom is not in as much danger as it was in 1942. Yet the dangers are very real.
The only good news from the humorously fear-mongering article is the prediction of Europe’s collapse:
In response, Europe will either rise to the occasion or disintegrate. Europeans will need to create far stronger co-operation embedded in a robust framework of liberal and democratic norms. If they do not, they will be picked to pieces by the world’s great powers. They must start by saving Ukraine from Putin’s malevolence.
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A Danish report has appeared featuring a reporter embedded with the Ukrainians on the brutal Kursk front:
The most shocking fact from the report, directly from the Ukrainian commander’s mouth, was that they lost 18 vehicles just that one night and in Sudzha alone. A Russian report from today says that 30-40 Ukrainian vehicles are destroyed per day there, and this 18 is a light number for just one small sector. This should give you an idea of how intense the Kursk region is, and how incalculable the Ukrainian losses there are. This is why it’s taking Russia so long to recapture it, because Zelensky is simply sending endless waves of meat and vehicles there because if Kursk is lost, his last trump card is destroyed and he may very well lose political relevancy as a result. I believe the Russian estimate is 120,000 or more Ukrainian losses there in the past six months, though this counts wounded also.
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Founder of Blackwater PMC gives his thoughts on the Russian army and the futility of the West’s armies in combating it:
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And lastly, a Chilean reporter asks Zelensky about killing Gonzalo Lira:
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Putin's statement that Russia can cut deals with the US over minerals is no more than taking the wind out of the sails of the argument that if the US has an economic interest in western Ukrainian land it will have to put in troops or at the very least continue to support Ukrainian independence militarily. Z said this himself!
Not so, says Putin. US economic interests will be better protected with Russia in charge than the current horrendously costly instability, making it impossible to exploit those interests, anyway.
It is another way of saying that the only way to end this war is for Ukraine to cease to exist as an independent territory.
Everyone knows this now.... including Ukraine.
>That all being said, the argument that Putin’s statements are harmful do have some merit. Imagine yourself as a Russian soldier on the front, your comrades dying left and right around you, only for your leader to timidly offer the adversary mineral rights under the very land now being fertilized with your blood.
Nice to see you finally acknowledging this reality. If only more people did...
>The Russian armed forces have now likely lost somewhere approaching 100,000 dead if not more, the least they deserve in their colossal sacrifice is to know they didn’t die in vain; a stronger message from the commander-in-chief ensuring that objectives will be met would go a long way here.
Yes, indeed.