According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), it will take 91 years and more than 50 million casualties for the Russian army to implement the plan to create a “buffer zone” on the territory of almost all of Ukraine, as recently announced by the Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, at the current rate of advance and level of losses.
Between January 1 and May 24, 2025, Russian troops advanced an average of 14.3 square kilometers per day, losing about 1,500 people daily. Given this pace, ISW has calculated that to occupy 587,000 square kilometers of Ukraine’s territory (in line with Medvedev’s rhetoric), Russia will have to wage war for almost a century.
Analysts note that even to capture only the remnants of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions, Russia would need almost 4 years.
ISW also emphasizes that these estimates do not take into account geographical and defensive obstacles – fortified Ukrainian cities, the Dnipro River, and the need for naval assaults – and therefore even they are optimistic from the Kremlin’s point of view.