As Kyiv, its European allies, and Washington continued to seek ways to end the fighting in Ukraine, Russia outlined plans for an autumn offensive, with the army chief saying the military was establishing the upcoming goals for the Kremlin’s military forces.
“Today we are defining the tasks for the groups of the armed forces that are aimed at the autumn period,” Valery Gerasimov, chairman of Russia’s General Staff, said on August 30.
“The combined group of troops continues a nonstop offensive along almost the entire front line. The strategic initiative lies entirely with Russian forces,” Gerasimov claimed.
Gerasimov claimed that 99.7 percent of Ukraine’s Luhansk region of Luhansk is controlled by Russian forces, along with 79 percent of Donetsk, 76 percent of Kherson, and 74 percent of Zaporizhzhya.
The Russian occupation percentages are impossible to verify. The Kremlin claims to have annexed all four regions. Ukraine has vowed not to cede any sovereign territory to Russia in a pace deal.
Ukrainian military spokesman Viktor Trehubov, pushed back on the Russian claims, telling national TV that Kyiv’s forces were having success in holding back enemy troops in the Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk regions.
“Despite its aggressive actions, despite success at some points in pressuring Ukrainian positions, Russia has scored no quick victories,” he said.
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump, in an interview with conservative news site Daily Caller, expressed less confidence that he could arrange a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy but thought a three-way meeting with him included was still possible.
“We got along,” he said about Putin. “You saw it, we’ve had a good relationship over the years, very good, actually.”
“That’s why I really thought we would have this done,” he said, referring to a Putin-Zelenskyy bilateral meeting. “I would have loved to have had it done.”
No End To Violence
Despite the talk of peace, Russia has shown no signs of ending the violence. Many observers say the Kremlin is not interested in immediate peace talks, believing it holds the military advantage against the outgunned and outmanned Ukrainian forces.
Zelenskyy accused Moscow of using diplomatic delays to intensify attacks and urged stronger sanctions against Russia’s banking and energy sectors.
The Ukrainian leader said his country’s intelligence reports showed that Russia was poised to launch a new offensive in eastern Ukraine, with some 100,000 troops concentrated near the highly strategic mining city Pokrovsk.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on August 30 said he believes the Kremlin will not agree to a diplomatic solution to the war in the near term.
“All efforts of the past weeks have been answered with an even more aggressive approach by this regime in Moscow against the population in Ukraine,” Merz said.
“This will also not stop until we ensure together that Russia, at least for economic reasons, and perhaps also for military reasons…can no longer continue this war.”
