The situation 1168 – May 28. 2025

• Western insider reporting about Kremlin demands to end the war in Ukraine continues to align with repeated public statements from Kremlin officials outlining Russia's demands, indicating that Russia's goal of Ukrainian capitulation and destruction of NATO remains unchanged.
• Putin reportedly maintains his demand that Ukraine cede all of the four oblasts that Russia has illegally annexed but not fully occupied, even as Kremlin officials have signaled that Russia has territorial ambitions beyond these four oblasts.
• Putin continues to demonstrate his willingness to achieve his war aims militarily through a prolonged war in Ukraine during which Russian forces would continue to only make gradual, creeping advances.
• The Kremlin continues to promote its long-standing false narratives that the threat of NATO expansion forced Russia to invade Ukraine in 2022, and that NATO continues to threaten Russia's security.
• The Kremlin continues to promote Russian President Vladimir Putin's envisioned Eurasian security architecture — a Russian-led bloc aimed at countering the West and NATO.
• Russia and Belarus reduced the scope of the September 2025 Zapad-2025 joint Russian-Belarussian military exercise and relocated the main maneuver away from Belarus's western borders, likely to promote a veneer of cooperation and distract from Russia's limited military capacity outside of the Ukraine theater.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to forward an unofficial Russian ideology formulated on Russian nationalism and to try to unify Russian society in support of Russia's war in Ukraine.
• Ukrainian forces conducted a series of long-range drone strikes targeting Russia's defense industrial base (DIB) on May 27 and 28.
• Ukraine’s Western allies continue to provide military aid to Ukraine.
• Ukrainian authorities recently identified a Russian servicemember responsible for the execution of two Ukrainian prisoners of war (POW) in January 2025.
• Russian forces recently advanced in Kursk Oblast and near Chasiv Yar, Toretsk, Pokrovsk, and Velyka Novosilka.

The full update of the Russian offensive 1168 is available on UNDERSTANDING WAR