SITREP 3/28/25: Putin Vows to 'Finish Off' Ukraine?
Putin made some very interesting statements in his meeting with the sailors of the Arkhangelsk nuclear submarine in Murmansk, ones bound to reignite hope in the doomsayer quarters who’ve long believed Putin is looking for any opportunity to ‘concede to the West’.
The first was that Russia will no longer make mistakes of being ‘led by the nose’ by Western partners, and that any conflict settlements will have to come by virtue of meeting Russian conditions.
Well, in reality he did say he “hopes” no mistakes will be made—but you know what they say about hope.
The more decisive statement came by way of Putin’s reassurance that Russia has the strategic initiative on every front, and by all reasonable probabilities will “finish off” Ukraine:
Putin on the defeat of the Ukrainian Armed Forces:
We are gradually, not as quickly as some would like, but nevertheless persistently and confidently moving towards achieving all the goals declared at the beginning of this operation. Along the entire line of combat contact, our troops have the strategic initiative.
I said just recently: "We will finish them off." There is reason to believe that we will finish them off.
Along this tack, we have new statements from Zelensky and senior figures of the AFU which confirm that Russia is in fact planning major new offensives to potentially seize key cities and strongholds, as we’ve just discussed in recent articles.
Ukrainian intelligence reports have indicated that Russia is bracing for new offensives in Sumy, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.
Source: President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a statement during a meeting of European leaders in Paris on support for Ukraine
Quote: "According to our intelligence, Russia is getting ready for new offensives against the Sumy, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia oblasts. They're dragging out the talks and trying to get the US stuck in endless, pointless discussions about fake 'conditions' just to buy time and then try to grab more land."
By the way, it’s worth noting the strange contradiction in the above statement, which reflects the wider narrative coming from the West. Zelensky here claims that Russia is trying to “buy time”—i.e. draw out the ‘negotiations’ in order to continue the war. But this is odd: wasn’t it Russia, according to Zelensky and the West, that is on its knees and badly needs a ceasefire to replenish? Why would Russia now be intent on doing anything it can to stop negotiations and in fact continue the conflict?
It exposes the sham of the current negotiations track, proving that it is actually the West and Ukraine that are desperate to flytrap Russia in a ‘ceasefire’ while spinning the narrative that Russia is the one that badly needs it. In reality, it’s now becoming clearer than ever that the ‘ceasefire’ is a trap to immediately inject French and British troops into Ukraine, to freeze the conflict indefinitely in unfavorable terms to Russia.
Zelensky Announces Meeting on Potential Deployment of Foreign Troops to Ukraine White Powder Sommelier Zelensky has announced a closed-door meeting with representatives of countries that are "100% ready" to deploy a military contingent to Ukraine.
"Not all of them will attend—we are inviting a select group. France, Britain, and Ukraine will definitely be there. It’s, let’s say, a triangle," Zelensky explained. The meeting is set to take place within the week.
As you can see from the above report, the circle is ever-shrinking from a ‘coalition of the willing’—which failed to materialize this week—to merely Starmer and Macron’s grand delusions of combat troops that will “respond”, according to Macron, if fired upon by Russian forces:
The natural question arises: what possible incentive would Russia have to seek a ceasefire which would potentially see belligerent British and French troops occupying historical Russian lands and waiting to “respond” to any perceived Russian ‘attacks’? It would be crazy for Russia to seek a ceasefire that even remotely allows for such a possibility. Recall that Macron said Putin has “no choice” in the matter, and that these European troops would be deployed no matter what Russia thinks. As such, Russia’s optimal solution is more than obvious: avoid ceasefire at all costs and continue the war. In such a case, barmy Starmer and micro-Macron may still eventually decide to inject troops to save Ukraine on the eve of final collapse, but at least in this case it will be obvious who’s the aggressor, making subsequent Russian responses much more palatable.
But getting back to Zelensky’s warnings of a coming season of offensives, an AFU Major named Valery Prozapas corroborated these views:
The Russian Federation plans to "occupy" Zaporizhia, Kherson, Nikolaev and Odessa, - Major of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valeriy Prozapas
The goal is to connect the Crimean corridor with Transnistria. The Russians are preparing bridgeheads for an offensive, the Major of the Armed Forces of Ukraine noted
We discussed here long ago that a potential Russian plan for crossing the Dnieper could include first capturing Zaporozhye city, which would allow maintaining a secure bridgehead whether the AFU blows the main Zaporozhye bridges or not. That’s because Zaporozhye has the large Khortytsia isle which spans across the river, that would likely allow much easier pontooning and building of temporary bridge structures than elsewhere on the river.
From the above article:
It is indicated that Zaporozhye is needed as an outpost, capturing which it will be possible to move south, conveniently crossing the Dnieper. However, this does not mean that the enemy will be able to realize their intentions. According to the analyst, you need to be prepared for the worst and not expect a miracle. And then the invaders will not be able to achieve the desired result.
Granted, there’s other such islets further south towards Kherson, but they’re all undeveloped and marshy, whereas Khortytsia is developed, with good infrastructural roads, etc.
Russia has recently restarted offensives in this direction, making some of the largest gains of the past weeks of any front. Using Suriyak’s map, we can see the following:
Virtually everything above that yellow line was just captured in the past week and change. We have footage from the assault on the area indicated by the green circle above:
An interesting episode during yesterday's battle in the Orekhov tactical direction at Sherbaki.
Attacking Russian unit ran into and surprised a Ukrainian APC that didn't open fire and apparently pretended to be out of action.
Note the Russian tactic above, being used with more regularity—the APC pumps out a smokescreen for the advancing troops. I posted this video in the last paywalled article, so I’ll post it publicly here—Russian troops have now been utilizing drones to set smokescreens as well:
Russian forces have pushed along virtually every other front. In the Pokrovsk direction they have expanded control in the south and west directions. Most notable has been on the Velyka Novosilka direction, where they have continued pushing northward along the Mokry Yaly river. You may recall Novy Komar was just captured a couple months ago, with Skudne several weeks ago:
On the Kreminna front, near the Donetsk-Lugansk administrative borders, Russian forces continue pushing westward in the direction of Izyum:
And on the Kupyansk front, the ‘bridgehead’ over the Oskil continues expanding—in fact it has turned into at least four separate ‘bridgehead’ areas at this point:
Lastly, in Kursk Russian forces have captured the border crossing at Sudzha, the same one where the AFU once captured a large batch of conscripts in the first stage of the Kursk invasion:
You can see there’s only a small tract of land south of the crossing that remains in Ukraine’s hands, though in the second area, Ukraine still holds a tiny portion of Guevo, though some sources have claimed Russia had finished capturing it:
But in fact Russian now holds more Sumy territory than Ukraine holds in Kursk, owing to increasing expansion of Russia’s captures outside of the border there:
Note the circled areas:
For the past few days Ukraine has been subject to massive Russian strikes, mostly via drones, with some ballistic missiles mixed in. Tonight, Poltava and Dnipro have been hit, with a hotel housing mercenaries again the target, amongst other things.
It looks increasingly like the energy infrastructure deal may be off, particularly after Ukraine again struck the Sudzha gas metering terminal. Given Putin’s strong words of ‘finishing off’ Ukraine, and the US’ own concession that negotiations are not even near the point of “high level talks”, it’s safe to say the conflict will continue on.
In fact, some are predicting a new phase of the conflict, given that the US-Ukraine rupture appears to be entering a final point of disconnection now that Zelensky has again reneged on his minerals offer, rejecting that US aid should be treated as “debt” for Ukraine to “pay back”.
Putin has now declared that what the US does with Greenland is their business, with many viewing this as a ‘winking’ quid-pro-quo nudge implying Russia will turn a blind eye to the acquisition if US allows Russia to do what it must in Ukraine for its own security reasons.
It’s likely not a ‘thought-out’ plan of this sort, but rather Putin’s long-held adherence to basic principles, which include not interfering in the affairs of other sovereign nations.
Some last items of interest:
In the recent premium article we discussed how drones are climbing closer and closer toward overtaking artillery. An interesting new report gives us some of the first official corroborating figures. A Russian medical journal found that a whopping 75% of all wounds to Russian troops now come by way of drones, with only 20% of wounds attributed to artillery:
More than 75% of all injuries to Russian soldiers received during trench warfare were caused by attacks by Ukrainian UAVs.
These statistics were cited by Russian military doctors, whose article was published in the March issue of the Military Medical Journal of the Russian Defense Ministry.
Another 20% of the soldiers surveyed were injured as a result of artillery shelling, only 4% from small arms.
According to the military doctors' report, the main Ukrainian means of destruction during trench warfare are small attack UAVs.
Drones have also affected the time it takes to evacuate the wounded for surgical care. It has increased threefold to 14.5 hours.
It is noteworthy that the Ukrainian military also says that most of the Ukrainian Armed Forces losses are now being suffered from Russian UAV strikes.
Although because the Russians have more artillery ammunition and more varied systems (such as FABs) it is likely that the % will not be as high.
Granted, we know Ukraine has little artillery left and relies almost entirely on drones now, so the figures were expected. However, even recently cited ballpark statistics still were not that high—they claimed something like 65% of Ukrainian hits were from drones; this puts it in an entirely new light.
Given that Russia has a far greater preponderance of artillery, Fabs, and other systems we can surmise that the drone figures are lower the other way around. But as I said in the paywalled piece, we’re at the point where even Russian fire damage by way of drones can begin plausibly approaching the 30-50% mark, if not higher.
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Again we’ve had an exchange of bodies, or cargo 200, between the two sides.
If you thought the last numbers were jaw-droppingly unbelievable, this time is even worse:
Recall the Ukrainian side confirms the figures of Russian bodies they return, but do not confirm the number of Ukrainian bodies Russian returns to them, for reasons which seem obvious.
I’ve been covering every exchange since last year, and last time we had the ratio as follows:
Russian losses: 429
Ukrainian losses: 4,304
Ratio: 10.03 to 1
Now we add to it today’s numbers, and get:
Russian losses: 464
Ukrainian losses: 5,213
Ratio: 11.24 to 1
Note the Russians actually got 35 military bodies, the remaining 8 were civilian.
As jarring as the disparity might seem, I obviously do not realistically think the KIA ratio is quite that lopsided in reality, but I’m simply reporting the facts as they are. The exchange of bodies shows an incredibly lopsided record—justify it however you’d like for yourself. As usual, there’ll be the claims of “Russians are moving forward so they pick up more bodies”, and as usual I counter with: “Russians are moving forward because they’re killing more Ukrainians, forcing the AFU to retreat.” If AFU was winning and killing more Russians, then Russians wouldn’t be “moving forward.” If you’ve been watching the Kursk footage you’d know how bad the kill ratio is up there—virtual mountains of AFU corpses are littering every street.
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A Russian Il-38N anti-submarine craft buzzed the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier near Japan while being intercepted by an F-35 and F-18:
Many Americans were outraged that a Russian patrol craft was able to get within feet of a flagship Nimitz Class aircraft carrier worth nearly $20 billion in such a way.
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As part of its campaign to drum up war fears against Russia, the EU is beginning to roll out a series of cringe-worthy ads urging the population to put together “survival bags” in case of war with Russia:
Hungarian Foreign Affairs Minister scathed the charade:
It’s all meant to create an atmosphere of crisis to bring citizens in line with the Eurocrats’ illegal confiscation of funds and anti-democratic practices in pushing for war.
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Amidst news of Russian ‘economic demise’, Russian international reserves reportedly increased by $8.5 billion this week, according to the Bank of Russia:
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Another piece of reporting from the last premium article has been corroborated by Oryx. I spoke of the diminishing Russian tank losses, and how they are trending toward a break-even level in terms of new production, rather than refurbishments:
Granted, I would expect them to shoot up again if Russia does launch a series of wide-scale spring offensives on every front, but we’ll see—perhaps Russia will continue sticking to the new ‘light attack’ tactics while preserving heavy armor.
There has been increasing discussion surrounding suggestions that Russia may be in a stage of stockpiling its better and newer equipment for some future offensive, or perhaps for a potential NATO clash. This was emphasized by another chart showing that current in-production IFVs—which essentially amounts to BMP-3s—have been dipping in proportional losses, while older BMPs take their place:
This appears to suggest—at least according to one reading of the data—that Russia may be holding back the newer gear, which corresponds to a previous German intelligence report:
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An interesting chart showing upcoming Russian satellite launch schedules:
The first, ‘Marathon’ are a series of Russian communication satellites akin to Starlink, though not the ‘official’ Russian Starlink equivalent, which is a separate project being developed. It’s meant more for various future gadgets and electronic objects to communicate to each other.
The Skifs are another series of broadband internet comms satellites, and Messenger M1 is likewise a separate communications satellite project for internet and wireless transmission.
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Last time we showed Medvedev demonstrating new anti-drone laser weapons, this time Russia has shown off a laser ‘rifle’ reportedly capable of taking down drones:
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Ukrainian aviation channel complains that Russian Buks have learned to shoot down their JDAMs, with French AASM Hammers faring slightly better due to their lower drop heights. Meanwhile, Russian EW continues to paralyze the accuracy of their bombs:
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On that note, Russian AD carried out what appears to be the first shoot down of an ATACMS via a kinetic ‘hit-to-kill’ rather than fragmentary warhead:
You can see the accuracy of the hit above.
The latest Pantsir-SM-SV system carries the 57EBM-E missile with kinetic kill technology—reportedly seen on the left below:
Interestingly, this comes days after reports that the first Russian Pantsir-SM-SV was seen on the front:
The article notes:
The armament includes two types of surface-to-air missiles. The system can fire the standard 57E6 missile, as well as the two-stage 57E6M, which features a higher-speed booster, improved aerodynamic performance, and kinetic impact warhead referred to as "Zavesa." The 57E6M reaches speeds up to Mach 5.5 and can intercept targets at ranges up to 35 kilometers. Some reports also mention a 57EBM-E missile variant that uses “hit-to-kill” technology and does not carry an explosive warhead. The use of this type of interceptor is intended to engage ballistic or hypersonic threats through direct kinetic impact.
It does seem to check out because the impact point on the ATACMS looks like a small interceptor hit it, otherwise the missile may have completely disintegrated. If true, then for a SHORAD AD system like the Pantsir to be taking out ballistic missiles like the ATACMS so accurately is quite an unprecedented accomplishment no other country can lay claim to.
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That survival bag ad is painful to watch. Also absolutely useless. Like most EU projects.
Woohoo. Simplicius time.
I noted Putin ordered those he was willing to work with. Europe was last.
"work with Europe as well, despite their inconsistent behavior and constant attempts to lead us up the garden path."
Given their current "Reassurance" I doubt the French or British will be on Putin's Christmas list.