The next four phases of Ukraine’s collapse.

by Gordonhahn, July 14, 2025, https://gordonhahn.com/2025/07/14/les-quatre-prochaines-phases-deffondrements-de-lukraine/

*Translated by Wayan, proofread by Hervé, for Saker Francophone .

I wrote some time ago : “ With the collapse of the front and the army on the verge of dissolving, Zelenskiy’s post-Maidan regime is deeply divided and in danger of dissolution, which could lead to state collapse, internecine warfare, and widespread chaos .” Below, I detail these four imminent or potential collapses—collapses of the battlefront, the Ukrainian army, the Maidan regime, and the Ukrainian state itself—because this issue is of crucial importance to the question of war or peace in Ukraine and to the challenges that will be faced in any reconstruction.

A dysfunctional Ukrainian army, regime, and state will prevent Kyiv from concluding any peace process and treaty that U.S. President Donald Trump or others might develop. In fact, the peace effort Trump is beginning to enlist Russian President Vladimir Putin in will almost certainly be thwarted by a cascade of two or more of the four major dysfunctions, collapses, and crises that appear to await Ukraine unless the war ends or a radical shift occurs in the correlation of Russian and NATO-Ukrainian forces. The first two of these collapses, of the front and the army, will almost certainly occur this year. The last two—of the Maidan regime and the Ukrainian state—may be postponed until next year.

The collapse of the military front in Ukraine

Ukraine’s defensive fronts have slowly weakened and increasingly collapsed over the past year. Throughout last year, Russian territorial gains and, for most of this year, Ukrainian losses increased monthly, just as I predicted more than a year ago. The infamous Institute for the Study of War , a Washington-based organization that relies on Ukrainian propaganda and turns itself into “ data ,” falsely claimed : “ Russian forces gained 4,168 square kilometers (1,609 square miles, GH), largely consisting of fields and small settlements in Ukraine and Kursk Oblast, at a reported cost of more than 420,000 casualties in 2024. Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi said on December 30 that Russian forces suffered 427,000 casualties in 2024. ISW observed geotagged evidence to estimate that Russian forces advanced 4,168 square kilometers in 2024, indicating that Russian forces suffered approximately 102 casualties per square kilometer of Ukrainian territory seized .”

The propaganda element here lies primarily in the claim that Russia’s territorial gains were ” largely fields and small settlements ” and in the figures for Russian losses. The Russians seized ” largely fields and small settlements ” because the landscape of Ukraine, like that of any country, is largely made up of arable land and small villages.

However, Russia did capture several small towns and the main Ukrainian strongholds of Avdiivka, Vuhledar, Kurakhove, Selydove, Novosilevke, Toretsk, and almost all of Chasov Yar. The Russians may not have suffered 420,000 casualties over the course of the entire war, let alone in 2024. For 2024, the Mediazona institute—which, in affiliation with the BBC and the Russian opposition outlet Meduza , scours internet sources, social media, obituaries, and regional government announcements—counted 120,000 Russians killed in action between the start of the country’s ” special military operation ” in February 2022 and the end of 2024. It found that at least 31,481 Russian soldiers died between January 1, 2024, and December 17, 2024. Even if we increase this figure by 50%, taking into account the typical 1:3 ratio of killed to wounded, we still arrive at a figure of only about 180,000 Russian casualties in 2024, half of the reported Ukrainians/ ISW .

What is going on here? The acceleration of what I have called Russia’s ” attrition and advance ” strategy has been downplayed by ISW by accompanying it with data on territorial gains from the Ukrainian Defense Minister and other Ukrainian military sources on Russian losses in order to give the impression of massive Russian losses disproportionate to the ” modest ” territorial gains. This is done to support the Western myth that Russia is throwing away the lives of its soldiers in ” human wave ” attacks.

ISW carefully avoids the prospect of negative comparison by omitting any mention of Ukrainian casualties, mimicking the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and US-funded ” Ukrainian ” news outlets such as Ukrainskaya Pravda .

The raw data show that Russian territorial gains have indeed increased throughout the year on a nearly monthly basis, with the possible exception of December, which saw a decline compared to November. As Western media outlets finally began to expose the fallacy of the “ Ukraine is winning ” propaganda line in the fall of last year, the New York Times referenced data from a military expert with the Finland-based Black Bird group, Pasi Paroinen.

It turned out that Russian gains were being made all along the front line, from the north at Kharkiv to the south at Zaporozhye. Paroinen’s measurement of Russia’s overall gains in the first ten months of 2024 confirmed my own expectation of an intensified Russian advance. Russian advances during this period amounted to over 1,800 square kilometers and were made at an increasingly accelerated pace:

“ Half of Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine so far this year have been made in the last three months alone. In August, Ukraine’s defensive lines buckled and Russia quickly advanced 16 km. In October, Russia made its most significant territorial gains since the summer of 2022, as Ukrainian lines buckled under sustained pressure. October’s gains amounted to over 257 square km of land in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region alone .” Russian forces advanced 2,356 square kilometers in September, October, and November 2024, making 56.5% of their 2024 territorial gains during this period . November proved to be the most successful month for Russian forces in terms of territorial gains in 2024, “ advancing at the significantly higher rate of 27.96 square kilometers per day ” during that month.

ISW was careful not to compare Russia’s territorial gains in 2024 with those made in 2023, so as not to highlight the crucially important trend of accelerating Russian advances and Ukrainian retreats, but France 24 television picked up the slack . It noted that the Russian military had advanced in 2024 “ seven times more than in 2023 ,” taking “ 610 square kilometers in October and 725 square kilometers in November. These two months saw the Russians capture the most territory since March 2022, in the opening weeks of the conflict. Russia’s advance slowed in December, reaching 465 square kilometers in the first 30 days of the month. But it is already nearly four times greater than in the same month last year and two and a half times more than in December 2022. ”

Now, a major collapse of Ukraine’s defense fronts along the entire or nearly entire battle line—which stretches from Kherson just north of Crimea in the east, then north through Donetsk to Kharkiv and Sumy—is imminent. Some fronts may hold out longer, but they are unlikely to survive 2025. Russian forces are beginning to encircle the crucial industrial, mining, and transport center of Pokrovsk. After its fall, perhaps in two months, Moscow’s army will have a relatively unimpeded march toward Dnipro, Zaporozhye, and other points less south of the Dnieper. After that, the territorial advance will continue to accelerate at an ever-increasing pace and could lead to major breakthroughs across the Dnieper at any moment now, given the already dire and deteriorating state of Ukraine’s armed forces.