While US President Donald Trump still hopes to bring peace between Russia and Ukraine, Russian leader Vladimir Putin has large-scale plans for further occupation of territories that could tear Ukraine away from the Black Sea.
Politico reported, citing senior Ukrainian officials who visited Washington, that Moscow will seek to expand its presence in eastern Ukraine this year. This includes seizing the entire Donetsk and Luhansk regions by the fall, before creating a buffer zone along the northern border by the end of the year.
Moscow's plans for next year are even more ambitious. The Russian president is seeking to occupy all of Ukraine east of the Dnieper River, which divides the country in two, said Colonel Pavlo Palisa, deputy chief of staff to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Russia also hopes to seize the southern Ukrainian regions of Odessa and Mykolaiv, he said, which would cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea, a vital channel for Ukrainian grain exports.
“Unfortunately, they are not talking about peace. They are preparing for war,” said Palisa, who briefed a bipartisan group of senators on Wednesday as part of a delegation led by Zelensky's chief of staff, Andriy Yermak.
It is unclear whether Russia can achieve these goals. Moscow is making slow progress on the battlefield but has struggled to make the large territorial gains seen at the start of the war.
Military analysts predict that Russia will accelerate its operations in a summer offensive to increase pressure on Ukraine, but note that Moscow may struggle to maintain the pace in 2026. Russia has shown no intention of ending the war anytime soon.
Western officials have repeatedly said they have seen nothing in their intelligence to suggest that Putin has abandoned his goal of Kiev's surrender.
Russia outlined its terms for ending the war in a memorandum presented Monday during talks with Ukraine in Istanbul. It included demands for international recognition of Moscow's annexation of the Crimean peninsula and four Ukrainian regions partially occupied by Moscow. It calls on Ukraine to permanently abandon its ambitions to join NATO and to limit the size of its armed forces. Kiev has rejected these proposals.