Russian President Vladimir Putin likely used a meeting with Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev to justify his refusal to freeze the front line in Ukraine and his decision to continue the war as he has done so far.
Putin met with Tokayev in Omsk for the Russia-Kazakhstan Interregional Cooperation Forum on July 25, and Tokayev said that many find it difficult to understand the origins of Russia's war in Ukraine and called on Russia and Ukraine to freeze the front line and return to negotiations in the Istanbul format.
This is according to the "Institute for the Study of War" (ISW).
Putin did not respond to Tokayev in the public part of the meeting, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin later gave Tokayev a detailed report on the war and told him that it was impossible to freeze the current front line because Russia needed to achieve its goals on the battlefield.
Peskov repeated the Kremlin's claim that the fighting could stop "by the end of today" if Ukraine "takes the appropriate decisions." Kremlin officials have repeatedly urged Ukraine to capitulate to maximalist military demands.
Putin faces a plummeting approval rating as he continues to wage his war in much the same way he has since 2022.
The Kremlin continues to signal to Russians that they must be prepared to bear the costs of a long war against Ukraine, and may have used Putin’s meeting with Tokayev as a venue to remind Russians of this justification.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that Russia is continuing to prepare for forced conscription of reservists and is preparing to accept some 30,000 new North Korean soldiers amid staggeringly high combat casualties. On July 25, Zelensky said that Russian forces suffered about 222,500 casualties, including 131,000 killed and 93,000 wounded, from January to July 2026 (about 31,785 casualties per month) and recruited only about 221,000 personnel (about 31,571 recruits per month) during the same period.
Zelensky noted that most of the wounded Russian soldiers were seriously injured, as Russian forces have poor front-line medicine. On July 24, Zelensky said that Ukraine had intelligence that the Kremlin was preparing for a "significant" a wave of forced calls to the reserve in the fall of 2026, but did not specify whether this official mobilization would consist of a large call-up or a phased call-up.
Russia holds elections for the State Duma (parliament) in mid-September 2026, and Putin is likely to wait until after those elections to announce a new wave of mobilization, which would be very unpopular with the Russian population, which is facing growing economic, social and emotional consequences of Putin's war of the past four and a half years.
Russia extends ban on gasoline exports until the end of 2026. Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Economy Minister Alexander Novak said that Russia is extending the ban on gasoline exports until the end of 2026 and will consider lifting the ban on diesel exports "as the market recovers."
The Russian government temporarily banned the export of gasoline and diesel on April 1 and July 8, respectively, as Ukraine has stepped up its long-term strike campaigns against Russia's oil refining capacity and a medium-term campaign against Russian logistics, including fuel supplies to occupied Ukraine and the front lines.
Many regions of Russia and occupied Ukraine continue to struggle with fuel shortages, although Russian officials increasingly claim that the economic situation and fuel crisis are stabilizing.