Putin Has Postponed The Complete Takeover Of Donbas For The 16th Time

The Kremlin leader gave his military another six months.

The Kremlin is once again postponing the timeline for taking full control of Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, which has become an obsession for Vladimir Putin, who is demanding that the military advance to the administrative borders of the Donbas.

According to sources close to the Kremlin Bloomberg, Putin expects the complete capture of the region—which accounts for 4.4% of Ukraine’s territory and was home to more than 4 million people before the war—to take place within the next 6 months.

Last August, army commanders promised Putin that the Ukrainian front would collapse by October or November, and that the Donetsk region would finally be fully captured by the middle of the fourth year of the war. In the spring of 2026, the timeline was pushed back to this fall. In the summer, military officials promised that the Donbas would come under their full control by the end of the year.

Now, according to sources cited by Bloomberg, the timeline has been pushed back to the end of February. Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Pavlo Palisa claims that the Russian military is asking to extend the deadline to March 31 of next year, although Russia’s political leadership is eager to capture the Donbas more quickly.

Since the start of the war, according to estimates by the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War, Putin has already pushed back the deadline for the complete capture of the Donetsk region 15 times; the Russian military continues to control 79.89% of the region (21,170 square kilometers). In August, Russian troops were advancing in the Donbas at a rate of 2.36 square kilometers per day, and at that pace, the region will not come under the Kremlin’s control before October 2032, according to ISW calculations.

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