Explainer: What Russia could achieve in Ukraine by Trump's 50-day deadline

U.S. President Donald Trump gave a 50-day ultimatum to Russia to end the war in Ukraine, promising to impose harsh sanctions otherwise.

Experts who spoke with the Kyiv Independent, however, say that Russia can take advantage of the once again extended deadline and scale up its summer offensive, ongoing since May.

Russia could realistically advance closer to Pokrovsk and Kostiantynivka in the eastern Donetsk Oblast by trying to encircle them as much as possible in the next few months, but the capture of either logistic hub is unlikely, according to Ukrainian and Western military experts interviewed.

If tactics remain the same, in the next 50 days, Russia could capture 10 more villages and about 700 square kilometers of land at most, and entrench in a new battleground — Dnipropetrovsk Oblast — according to Ruslan Gorbenko, a lawmaker from the ruling Servant of the People who regularly travels to the war-torn east and keeps in touch with the military.

Since launching the summer offensive campaign, Russian troops have occupied about 400-500 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory, roughly the size of New Orleans, each month, according to Pasi Paroinen, a military analyst with the Finland-based open-source intelligence collective Black Bird Group.

Paroinen said that Russia is trying to push simultaneously across the front line rather than focusing on a specific area, and appears to be struggling to keep up its pace. But this could work if Russia manages to find weak spots in the Ukrainian defense and exploit them over time, he added.

"If (Russian troops) concentrate on one direction, they could capture a city," Gorbenko told the Kyiv Independent, referring to either fully capturing the partly controlled Chasiv Yar or Toretsk, or taking Kostiantynivka under siege.

Relying less on equipment such as tanks and armored vehicles, Russia is increasingly using a few-men assault groups supported by a vast number of first-person view (FPV) drones and motorcycles to prioritize mobility. Crawling forward one after another, the small Russian assault squads try to reach the Ukrainian positions, often zeroed in by glide bombs or drones.

Russia has begun to increasingly use Shahed-type drones along the contact line, rather than just in the rear, according to Roman Pohorilyi, co-founder of the Ukrainian open-source mapping project DeepState Map. He stressed that Russian drones are constantly targeting Ukrainian personnel and logistics.

John Hardie, deputy director of the Russia Program at the D.C.-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), believes that Russia would continue to press forward at a similar pace due to equipment constraints and "extreme force quality degradation."

Factors that would define Ukraine's ability to hold off the Russian offensive include its capability to manage reserves as the manpower situation worsens and the level of support from Western allies — particularly the U.S., according to experts and soldiers.

Petro, a senior sergeant with the 38th Marine Brigade manning Pokrovsk, said that there is "a huge problem" with Russian FPV and Shahed-type drones, as well as glide bombs. But he said that Russia's assault tactic remains the same, calling it "meat assaults in small groups."

"Three (Russian soldiers) advance, two are killed, and one reaches the trench," Petro, who asked for his surname not to be disclosed due to security concerns, told the Kyiv Independent.

The Kyiv Independent spoke with Ukrainian and Western military experts, as well as soldiers on the ground, to lay out the current battlefield situation as Trump declared his 50-day deadline on Moscow.

What's happening north?

Since Moscow opened a new front in Sumy Oblast in June, Russian troops have captured about a dozen border villages, according to Paroinen from the Black Bird Group.

The captured villages are "very small," and Russian troops have only advanced 10 to 15 kilometers from the border since then, Paroinen said, citing his open-source intelligence collective's analysis.

With Russia still eyeing Donetsk Oblast as a priority, it appears to be holding the Sumy operation "on the budget," mostly refraining from using heavy equipment such as tanks, infantry vehicles, and even armored personnel carriers, he added.

The Russian deepening advance in Sumy Oblast began shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin called for "a security buffer zone" along the border in May. President Volodymyr Zelensky warned in May that 50,000-strong Russian grouping was amassed near Sumy Oblast.

While Ukraine had the time to prepare and reinforce fortifications in the region, following Kyiv's cross-border incursion into Russia's Kursk Oblast just across the border in August 2024, the initially fast-paced Russian counterattack revealed Ukraine's vulnerability in the area.

Paroinen said, citing open-source visual evidence, that Ukraine likely did not spend its time well to build extensive fortifications during the seven-month-long fighting in Kursk Oblast. The apparently poorly prepared defense lines, coupled with many battle-hardened Ukrainian units being transferred to the east after the withdrawal from Kursk Oblast in March, made the defense of Ukraine's Sumy Oblast more vulnerable.

Kyiv has managed to counterattack to some extent.

Reinforcing Sumy Oblast with units, such as the 225th Assault Regiment, Ukraine liberated the village of Andriivka located about five kilometers from the border, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced in June.

Managing to slow down the Russian push in Sumy Oblast, the Ukrainian units are trying to recapture some areas on the western side of the Russian-occupied foothold next to the border, according to Pohorilyi from DeepState Map.

But eastward of the area where Ukraine is trying a counterattack, Russian troops are aiming to capture the village of Yunakivka as a step toward beginning an offensive toward the regional center of Sumy, Viktor Kevliuk, an analyst at the Ukrainian think-tank Center for Defense Strategies, said.

What's happening east?

The eastern front has been the main theater for Russia's offensives throughout most of the war. The summer campaign is no different.

From trying to recapture the territories in the northeastern Kharkiv Oblast that Ukraine took back during its fall 2022 counteroffensive to entering the central-eastern Dnipropetrovsk Oblast for the first time, Moscow has slowly made gains.

In the Kupiansk sector along the Oskil River in Kharkiv Oblast, Russian troops have slowly built up a bridgehead on the western side of the waterway over the summer, past the Russian-occupied village of Dvorichna, according to Paroinen from the Black Bird Group.

By increasing their presence west of the Oskil River, Russian troops can now start pushing southward toward Kupiansk and begin threatening the Ukrainian rear west of the city, the expert added. While he says that the Russian progress has been "really slow," Ukraine hasn't been able to effectively counterattack either, and Moscow could eventually recapture Kupiansk, though the timeframe is unclear.

Down in the Chasiv Yar sector of Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine is holding onto parts of the hilly town, including the central area and microdistricts to the west, according to Pohorilyi.

Capturing Chasiv Yar — though unlikely in the near future — would be a "disaster" as Moscow could use the heights to attack the neighboring town of Kostiantynivka, Pohorilyi added.

Just southward in the Kostiantynivka area, Russian troops are "crawling endlessly" and trying to disrupt the Ukrainian logistics, according to Pohorilyi. He added that they are trying to advance from Chasiv Yar, the nearby fiercely contested town of Toretsk, to the southeast, and the occupied village of Novoolenivka to flank Kostiantynivka from three sides.

Serhii, a soldier with the 93rd Mechanized Brigade operating in the area, said it has become extremely dangerous to enter Kostiantynivka due to the Russian FPV drones' precise targeting.

"There are just ruins (in Kostiantynivka) and it's just f*cked," Serhii, not providing his last name due to security concerns, told the Kyiv Independent.

The focal point of Russia's offensive, however, is still the Pokrovsk sector, with Russian troops closing in on the key logistics hub, experts say.

Since picking up the pace earlier this year, Russian troops have been trying to build a pocket around Pokrovsk by aiming to encircle the key city from the west, south, and east. Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, said in June that Russia has about 111,000 troops stationed in the area.

Russian troops have bolstered the southern flank of Pokrovsk since launching the summer campaign in May by advancing westward and reaching the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast border for the first time.

Russian troops have also gotten closer to the supply route from the north that runs through the town of Dobropillia to Pokrovsk, putting it in drone range, according to Paroinen.

"The situation in Pokrovsk is now starting to turn into a salient battle where the Russians are advancing on the flanks, and the Ukrainian positions inside and around town will start to get worse and worse," Paroinen said.

Petro, the senior sergeant with the 38th brigade operating in the area, said the main road connecting Pokrovsk with Pavlohrad in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast is in Russian fire range, further restraining logistics.

Within the next two months, Russian troops could capture the village of Rodynske, about seven kilometers to the north of Pokrovsk, and possibly Bilytske further north.

"Our 38th Brigade holds the front near Pokrovsk, but the flanks cannot hold," Petro admitted.

In the adjacent Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Russia said in early July that its troops captured the village of Dachne — a claim denied by the Ukrainian side. Experts believe that Russian troops would try to deepen their advance into the region that is seeing fighting for the first time in the war, though they believe it is part of Moscow's propaganda campaign to show that yet another Ukrainian region is now partly controlled by Russia.

Retired Lieutenant Colonel Bohdan Krotevych, who served as the chief of staff of the famed Azov Brigade till February, said he is certain that Russia recently slowed down its offensive operations to gather forces and renew a push.

CNN reported on July 17, citing Ukrainian officials, that Russia may be “days or weeks away” from ramping up its summer offensive by using 160,000 troops amassing along the battlefield.

The Kyiv Independent couldn’t independently verify the figure.

Kevliuk from the Center for Defense Strategies said he hasn’t heard such a number, stressing that Syrskyi estimated the Russian strategic reserves around 123,000.

What's happening south?

While Ukrainian officials have warned of a possible Russian offensive in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia Oblast multiple times, experts say that the situation there has been rather stable and they don't expect it to change soon.

Russian troops have attacked near the village of Kamianske on the western side of Zaporizhzhia Oblast and captured several Ukrainian positions, but it is "a small skirmish" compared to the overall scale of the war, according to Paroinen. He added that the situation could potentially worsen in the future, but it would depend on the combat effectiveness of the Ukrainian units deployed there and both sides' manpower and resource levels.

Pohorilyi said Russia has almost entirely depended on infantry assaults in the area.

In the southern Kherson Oblast, experts said that skirmishes continue in the Dnipro River's delta, but they don't see a desire by Russian troops to cross into the western bank, where the regional capital Kherson is located.

The situation in Kherson Oblast has remained largely unchanged throughout the summer offensive. But militarily, it makes sense for both sides to send out small patrols, which occasionally clash with each other, to collect information and potentially capture prisoners-of-war (POWs) for better intelligence gathering, Paroinen said.