Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to conclude the war by the end of 2026 on what he sees as victorious terms, including full control over Donbas, a person familiar with the situation told Bloomberg.
Some senior Kremlin officials believe the war has reached a dead end with no clear way to resolve it, the news agency reported on 22 May 2026, citing people familiar with the situation. The nervous mood is shared by many in Russia's elite.
Putin's reported terms
Putin is also seeking a broader security agreement with Europe that would effectively acknowledge Moscow's territorial gains, according to one of the sources. Russian forces have failed to capture Donbas for more than a decade, Bloomberg reported.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied that Putin had set any such deadline, Bloomberg reported. On 9 May 2026, Putin said he was ready to meet President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a third country, but only to sign final agreements ending the war.
Battlefield assessment
Ukrainian forces had stabilized much of the front by mid-May 2026, based on data from DeepState, a battlefield mapping service that works with Ukraine's Defense Ministry, Bloomberg reported. Ukraine's casualty ratio has improved to roughly one Ukrainian soldier for every five Russian troops, Finnish President Alexander Stubb said last month.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio repeated that assessment in a Fox News interview on 13 May 2026, saying Ukraine now had Europe's "most powerful armed forces." Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov told reporters that 35,203 Russian soldiers were killed or severely wounded in April.
Fedorov said the goal is "to inflict at least 200 enemy losses for every square kilometer of advance." He had previously said that 50,000 Russian casualties a month would make the war unsustainable for Moscow, Bloomberg reported.
Mobilization risk and Ukrainian challenges
"Russia is facing setbacks on the battlefield," said Nigel Gould-Davies, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. "In order to sustain its war efforts in Ukraine, the Kremlin will almost certainly have to impose a second partial mobilization" within the next 12 months, he said.
Ukraine faces a war-weary population increasingly unwilling to join the army, and broader conscription remains deeply unpopular, Bloomberg reported. Kyiv has also flagged shortages of ammunition for US-made Patriot missile systems, the only weapon that has proved effective against ballistic missiles, according to the outlet.
