'Wishful thinking, outright lies' — Ukraine dismisses Russia's claims of battlefield success
Russia's 2025 spring–summer campaign has ended with "almost nothing," Ukraine's General Staff said on Aug. 31, dismissing the Kremlin's recent claims of battlefield success as "wishful thinking" and "outright lies."
"After three and a half years of full-scale Kremlin aggression, yet another of its 'seasonal' offensives has ended in almost nothing," it said in a post on Facebook.
The statement came in response to a statement by the chief of the General Staff of the Russian army, Valery Gerasimov, who said Russian forces hold a strategic advantage on the battlefield, and made clear Russia has no intention of ending the war in Ukraine.
"The figures presented by the occupiers regarding captured territories and settlements are heavily exaggerated," the General Staff said.
"The only 100% verified result achieved by Russia since the beginning of 2025 is its own losses — over 291,000 soldiers killed and wounded."
It added that Russia also lost 2,174 armored fighting vehicles, 1,201 tanks, 7,303 artillery systems, and 157 multiple launch rocket systems destroyed or damaged.
In a post on social media the same day, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had suffered the heaviest losses in Donetsk Oblast.
"Particularly in the Pokrovsk direction, where they concentrated their main efforts but failed to achieve any of their strategic objectives," he added.
During 2025, Russian forces failed to take full control of any major Ukrainian city, the General Staff said.
In his comments the previous day, Gerasimov also said that "targeted massive fire strikes continue," referring to the regular mass missile and drone attacks that Russia launches against Ukrainian cities.
He claimed these are "launched only against military objects and facilities of Ukraine's military-industrial complex," though Russian missiles and drones regularly hit residential buildings and civilian infrastructure.
In the latest attack on Kyiv on Aug. 28, 25 people were killed, including four children. Three of them were aged 2, 14, and 17. The attack damaged more than 20 locations, including a shopping center in the city center.
"As for the aggressor (Russia's) state's claims of 'precision strikes only against military targets' — thousands of Ukrainian civilians know the real price of such boasts, losing their homes, relatives, and loved ones every day," the General Staff said/
"Wherever a Russian 'Iskander' missile falls, a so-called 'UAF command post' or 'foreign mercenary base' is declared. The consequence of Russia’s constant violations of international humanitarian law is human lives."
