Russian President Putin and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov continue to publicly exaggerate battlefield gains while reaffirming Moscow's commitment to its original maximalist war aims.
The inflated claims appear designed to convince the West that Ukrainian defenses are collapsing — a narrative ISW says the Kremlin is pushing to pressure Kyiv and its partners into accepting Russian demands ahead of potential peace talks.
Putin claimed on 17 December that Russian forces had seized Siversk and other "strategically important settlements." ISW assessed that Russian forces have seized only about 77 percent of Siversk.
Gerasimov went further, telling foreign military attachés on 18 December that Russia controls Kupiansk — despite mounting evidence that Ukrainian forces are liberating significant portions of the town — and that Russian troops hold 50 percent of Kostiantynivka.
Russian leaders claim three times more than actual control
ISW found no evidence supporting Gerasimov's Kostiantynivka claim. The think tank assessed that Russian forces have seized just 1.6 percent of the town while maintaining a presence within only five percent through infiltration missions or assaults.
Even pro-war Russian milbloggers — typically inclined to amplify Moscow's narrative — claim only 11 percent control, far below Gerasimov's figure.
During a 17 December ceremony awarding medals to Russian servicemembers, Putin declared that Russia will achieve all of its goals. A recipient of the Hero of Russia medal stated that Russian forces are fulfilling Putin's mandate to seize Russia's "ancestral lands."
Putin's statements align with his recent public rhetoric indicating his commitment to the 2022 maximalist war aims, which ISW assesses means he will not accept a peace agreement based on the US-proposed 28-point plan.
2025 territorial gains: smaller than Delaware
Gerasimov claimed Russian forces have seized over 6,300 square kilometers in 2025 — slightly more than Defense Minister Andrei Belousov's 17 December claim of 6,000 square kilometers. ISW assessed Russia has actually seized approximately 4,700 square kilometers this year.
Even accepting Gerasimov's inflated figure, it amounts to just 1.04 percent of Ukraine's total territory — an area only slightly larger than the US state of Delaware.
ISW noted that these exaggerated claims actually undermine the Kremlin's own cognitive warfare effort to portray a Russian battlefield victory and Ukrainian defensive collapse as inevitable. Gerasimov appears to have used his briefing to foreign military officials to amplify claims from Putin's and Belousov's addresses at the 17 December Russian Defense Ministry board meeting.
Same script, different briefing
This pattern of exaggeration is not new. In October, ISW reported that even Russian milbloggers were publicly dismissing Gerasimov's claims of encircling Ukrainian troops near Pokrovsk and Kupiansk as fiction, with one describing the battlefield situation as "100% chaos."
ISW also assessed on 18 December that Defense Minister Belousov's claims about quickly seizing Ukraine's "Fortress Belt" were undermined by his own timeline — Russian troops have been trying to seize Pokrovsk alone for nearly 140 days.
