The UK Ministry of Defence has brutally mocked any potential demands by Vladimir Putin for Ukrainian land by revealing that, at current rates on the battlefield, it could take Russia four years to take control of the Ukrainian territory it wants. It is feared Ukraine ceding territory to Russia will be a key demand of Putin when he meets Donald Trump in Anchorage, Alaska, today for talks on ending the Ukraine war.
Putin ordered the invasion of Russia’s southern neighbour in February 2022, but a lightning-fast raid with tanks and special forces to seize the Ukrainian capital Kyiv failed after it was pushed back by a brave Ukrainian defence. Since then, the conflict has largely become a war of attrition with a massive 600-mile-plus front line in the east of Ukraine claiming an estimated 260,000 Russian lives. Ukrainian military losses are also believed to be high, at around 100,000 – as well as 13,500 civilians. Neither Russia nor Ukraine releases regular updates on their war casualties.
Through a ‘meat-grinder’ strategy often not valuing the lives of its own forces, Russia had gradually made gains in the east of Ukraine but nowhere near as much as the Kremlin must have hoped. Putin has stated that he wants full control of Ukraine’s eastern regions, including Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson, despite his army only holding a fraction of these areas at present.
Posting on X, the Ministry of Defence account took a dim view of any Putin demands for land. It wrote: “It has been reported that the Russian President has reiterated longstanding maximalist demands regarding Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, including the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the four internationally-recognised Ukrainian oblasts of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson.”
The post continued: “Based on the rate of Russia’s incremental battlefield advances so far in 2025, it would take Russian forces approximately 4.4 more years to gain 100% of the four Ukrainian oblasts’ territory.
“Based on Russia’s daily casualty rate in 2025 so far, as reported by Ukrainian General Staff, 4.4 more years of war would lead to approximately 1,930,000 Russian casualties (killed and wounded).”
The withering MoD post added that the losses likely to be incurred by Russia continuing to wage war on Ukraine would add to the “1,060,000 casualties Russia has already likely sustained” since launching the invasion in 2022.
President Trump has already said he believes a peace deal would likely require the swapping of Ukrainian territories by both sides, but his old political rival Hillary Clinton had a message for him today on X.
“If Donald Trump negotiates an end to Putin’s war on Ukraine without Ukraine having to cede territory, I’ll nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize myself,” she wrote.
Clinton, Trump’s 2016 Democratic opponent, linked to her appearance on the “Raging Moderates” podcast, where she offered Trump some advice: “He is not meeting with a friend. He is meeting with an adversary.”
