Russia is increasing the pace of attacks in eastern Ukraine ahead of what Ukrainian officials and analysts believe will be a major new offensive designed to give it a better bargaining position in ongoing ceasefire talks. Despite that, Russia has reportedly seen a decrease in the amount of territory it has captured while Ukraine has made incremental gains.
“The intensity (of Russian attacks) in the Pokrovsk direction began to increase significantly in the second half of March and reached the level of the end of 2024, when the defense south of the city sometimes simply collapsed,” the Ukrainian DeepState open-source mapping group stated on Telegram Tuesday. About a third of more than 200 clashes across the front lines Tuesday took place in and around Pokrovsk, the Ukrainian military stated. The city is a key logistics hub for Ukrainian forces in the region.
The uptick comes as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia is planning a new push along a wide swath of the 620-mile front lines.
“According to our intelligence, Russia is preparing for new offensives in Sumy, Kharkiv, and Zaporizhzhia regions,” Zelensky said last week. “They are dragging out negotiations and trying to drag the U.S. into endless, meaningless discussions about fake conditions to buy time and then try to seize even more land.”
Russian President Vladimir “Putin wants to negotiate territory from a stronger position,” Zelensky added. “He only thinks about war. So, our job — all of us — is defense in the broadest sense of the word.”
“They are preparing offensive actions on the front that should last from six to nine months, almost all of 2025,” Ukrainian military analyst Oleksii Hetman, who has connections to the military’s general staff, told The Associated Press.
Any new Russian push would likely be aided by the transfer of tens of thousands of troops from Kursk, where Ukraine has only a limited presence in what used to be a 500-square-mile salient. Meanwhile, Ukraine is also moving troops out of that area, according to the official Russian RIA Novosti news outlet.
“The Ukrainian Armed Forces have redeployed four brigades from the Kursk direction to try to hold Pokrovsk and recapture Selidovo and Kurakhovo,” the outlet claimed, citing security forces.
Adding to Ukraine’s concerns, Putin has called up 160,000 men aged 18-30. That is Russia’s highest number of conscripts since 2011, the BBC noted.
“The spring call-up for a year’s military service came several months after Putin said Russia should increase the overall size of its military to almost 2.39 million and its number of active servicemen to 1.5 million,” the outlet explained. “That is a rise of 180,000 over the coming three years.”
Though Vice Adm. Vladimir Tsimlyansky said the new conscripts would not be sent to fight in Ukraine, previous waves of those troops have been deployed on what Russia calls a “Special Military Operation.”
Despite increasing its tempo of attacks, Russia has gained the least amount of ground since last July, when Putin’s troops launched their major offensive in the Donbas region, according to DeepState.
“Russian troops managed to occupy 133 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory in March,” stated DeepState, a Ukrainian analytical project that provides updates daily on the current state of the front lines using open-source data. “Compared to November, monthly losses of territory have fallen by almost six times.”
The slowdown in Russian advances is not the result of a pause ahead of ceasefire negotiations, DeepState posited.
“This does not mean that the enemy has sat on its ass and is waiting for a ‘negotiator,’” DeepState suggested. “The [Russians] have resumed offensive operations in several directions.”
The reduction in Russian territorial gains comes as Ukrainian forces have made incremental advances in Donetsk.
Ukrainian commanders say constant drone attacks have played a key role, reducing the ability of Russian armor to operate, forcing Putin’s troops to advance in many cases on motorcycles and by foot in so-called meat waves.
However, Russian sources, including the Defense Ministry (MoD), said they have imposed heavy casualties on Ukraine.
“The Tsentr Group of Forces took more advantageous lines and positions,” the Russian MoD claimed on Telegram. “Losses were inflicted on manpower and hardware of three mechanized brigades, one assault brigade, one infantry brigade, and one jaeger brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine near Grishino, Shevchenko, Krasnoarmeysk, Novosergeyevka, and Dimitrov.”
The continued fighting comes as U.S. President Donald Trump tries to broker a deal between the two sides that would first see a 30-day ceasefire, with the ultimate goal being a peace deal to end this full-on war. The prospects of that seem daunting, which you can read more about later in this piece.
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Elsewhere on the battlefield, Ukraine is holding on to small sections of Russia’s Belgorod and Kursk regions while Putin’s troops have pushed into Sumy Oblast, which borders both. Here are some of the key takeaways from the latest Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessment.
- Kharkiv: Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Kharkiv direction on March 31 but did not advance.
- Luhansk: Russian forces recently advanced in the Kupyansk and Lyman directions but did not gain ground toward Borova.
- Donetsk: Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Chasiv Yar, Pokrovsk, and Siversk directions but did not make any confirmed advances. They did gain ground toward Kurakhove and Velyka Novosilka. Meanwhile, Ukrainian forces recently marginally advanced in the Toretsk direction.
- Zaporizhzhia: Russian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on March 31 but did not advance.
- Kherson: Russian forces continued limited offensive operations in the Dnipro direction on March 31 but did not advance.
Ukraine received the text of the U.S.’s vastly expanded mineral resources deal on March 28 and carried out the first round of consultations with U.S. partners, Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on April 1, the Kyiv Independent reported. However, the issue has reignited the spat between Trump and Zelensky.
“Ukraine was ready to sign the previously developed framework agreement. Now we have received a proposal for development and a new text of the agreement,” Sybiha said at a press conference. “I confirm that we have begun consultations with the United States on the text of the agreement. Ukraine is determined to conclude a document that would meet the interests of both countries.”
The new proposal was put forward by the U.S. Treasury Department and “goes well beyond the initial draft, particularly on future US rights and reimbursement for past assistance,” CNN reported. It would “give the U.S. more access to Kyiv’s rare earth minerals, according to two people familiar with the discussions and a copy of the draft proposal obtained by CNN on Thursday.”
The deal would apply to all mineral resources, oil and gas across all of Ukraine, the sources told CNN. It does not, however, include concrete security guarantees in the country’s ongoing war with Russia, one of Ukraine’s main interests.
A key part of the proposal “requires Ukrainian enterprises to contribute to a joint U.S.-Ukraine investment fund that would be overseen by a five-person board consisting of three members from Washington and two from Kyiv – prompting concerns that Ukraine would be ceding sweeping control of key assets to the United States,” according to the network.
Over the last two days, Trump has accused Zelensky of trying to back out of the deal, saying he would face “big problems” if he did. He added that Zelensky wanted to tie the deal to NATO membership, which Trump said Zelensky knows won’t happen. Zelensky shot back that he would not accept past U.S. support as debt and said the conditions of the deal under negotiation are “constantly changing,” but overall, Ukraine feels positively toward a future agreement.
One Ukrainian member of parliament slammed the deal.
“Just a little more — and they’d offer us slavery,” groused MP Oleksiy Movchan.
Some conditions in the proposed U.S. mining deal are too harsh, he added. Any cooperation must ensure that profits stay in Ukraine and fund its reconstruction.
Putin suggested placing Ukraine “under temporary governance under the U.N. umbrella as part of efforts to reach a peaceful settlement” of the three-year-old war, CBS News reported.
“Speaking to the crew of a Russian nuclear submarine in televised remarks broadcast early Friday, Putin reaffirmed his claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, whose term expired last year, lacks the legitimacy to sign a peace deal,” the network stated. “Kyiv maintains that elections are impossible to hold amid a war.”
Trump insisted progress was being made in negotiations with Russia over a Ukraine war peace deal, but said that he would consider imposing further sanctions to put pressure on Moscow.
Putin has effectively refused a U.S. proposal for an immediate and full 30-day halt in the fighting, despite Trump’s prodding, The Associated Press noted. Also, a partial ceasefire in the Black Sea that could allow safer shipments “has fallen foul of conditions imposed by Kremlin negotiators.”
Russia is holding out on a Black Sea deal in order to “stall efforts toward a general ceasefire and extract additional concessions from the West,” according to an assessment late Monday by the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, the wire service stated.
Ukraine has repeatedly attacked Russian assets in the Black Sea region.
After meeting with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Finnish President Alexander Stubb offered some observations about the U.S. president’s ongoing negotiations with Putin.
“Number one, [Trump] is probably the only person in the world who can mediate the peace between Ukraine and Russia. Why? Because Putin respects and, in many ways, fears Donald Trump,” Stubb told Fox News. “Secondly, the point I had was that we need a ceasefire and we need a date for the ceasefire. And that date should be the twentieth of April. If President Putin, who’s the only one not accepting the ceasefire, because Americans want it, the Europeans want it, the Ukrainians want it, if he doesn’t oblige by the ceasefire, then we should go for a colossal set of sanctions coming from the United States and Europe.”
Outgoing German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock arrived in Kyiv on Tuesday morning, on the heels of Berlin promising a further €130 million ($140 million) in aid for Ukraine, the German DW publication reported.
Baerbock warned the U.S. not to be misled by what she described as “stalling tactics” by the Kremlin, DW noted, adding that Trump “has made repeated concessions to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, but that has yet to yield results at the negotiating table.”
“At the upcoming meeting of NATO foreign ministers, we will make it clear to the American side that we should not engage with Putin’s stalling tactics,” Baerbock said. “It is Putin who is playing for time, does not want peace and continues his illegal war of aggression.”
Secretary of State Marco Rubio will travel to Brussels, Belgium, to attend the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting to “discuss security priorities for the Alliance, including increased Allied defense investment and securing lasting peace in Ukraine,” department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters. “Secretary Rubio will also discuss the shared threat of China to the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific alliances at a NATO session with representatives of the Indo-Pacific Partners. Lastly, the Secretary will discuss plans for The Hague Summit this summer.”
Despite diplomatic efforts to end mutual attacks on power infrastructure, Sybiha said Russian forces struck an energy facility in the city of Kherson Tuesday morning, leaving tens of thousands of residents cut off from the power grid.
“After [talks in] Riyadh, one of the agreements with the US was to refrain from attacks on energy infrastructure,” Sybiha said. “However, Russia continues to violate this agreement. Energy facilities in the cities of Kherson and Kharkiv and Poltava Oblast have already been damaged. And this morning, another Russian strike damaged an energy facility in Kherson, leaving 45,000 residents cut off from the power grid.”
Moscow has “claimed that its side of the energy ceasefire has been in effect since March 18, when Russian President Vladimir Putin allegedly declared a halt on such attacks following a call with U.S. President Donald Trump,” the Kyiv Independent noted. “In spite of this, Russian forces also reportedly attacked Kherson’s energy infrastructure on March 27, violating the terms of the U.S.-brokered limited ceasefire.”
Ukrainian officials did not say what Russia used to strike the Kherson power facility. However, Moscow did not launch a Shahed drone attack Tuesday against Ukraine for just the second time this year, the Ukrainian Militarnyi news outlet reported.
“It is currently unknown what caused this step by the aggressor country,” the outlet reported. “The last time there were reports about the absence of Shahed drones in Ukrainian airspace was on March 14 this year.”
Prior to that, the last time there were no Shahed drone attacks was Oct. 14, 2024, according to the Ukrainian War Monitor X account.
Still, Russia has launched thousands of drone attacks.
In its monthly report, the Ukrainian Air Force stated that during March 2025, the air defense of the Ukrainian Defense Forces destroyed 4,043 enemy aerial targets.
Speaking of Shaheds, Ukraine has recovered one of these drones containing cardboard inside instead of a warhead. Ukrainian drone expert Serhii Flash suggests that the most likely reason is that Russia is using these drones as decoys. Russia has been using drones to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses and get them to use up valuable and limited effectors.
The Netherlands is financing a large-scale drone project for Ukraine, the Netherlands Defense Ministry (MoD) announced.
“This should help Ukraine to be able to stop Russian attacks at the front,” the MoD stated. “The Netherlands is releasing €500 million (about $540 million) for this, the Netherlands Defense Ministry announced. “This is part of the €2 billion (about $2.16 billion) acceleration package in support for 2025.”
The Ukrainian Army will receive 15,000 uncrewed ground vehicles (UGV) this year, according to the director of the procurement department of the Ministry of Defense, Gleb Kanevsky. While a number of variants have already been fielded, the use of these systems is still in the early stages, Kanevsky told the Ukrainian Ekonomichna Pravda news outlet.
The UGVs are largely used for the transportation of equipment, supplies, wounded and weapons, he noted.
“Why is Ukraine not using robotic platforms against the Russians on a large scale? The first reason is that most robots are still technologically immature,” Kanevsky explained. “The platform must have reliable communication because it can be easily lost due to terrain distortions or other obstacles. The robot must be cross-country, that is, not get stuck in grass, snow, sand, and mud. At the same time, it must be relatively cheap, because it is a consumable.”
The second reason “is that the army has not yet learned to use them effectively,” Kanevsky suggested. “The military must understand the capabilities of robots and correctly lay routes. At the same time, most units have not yet had enough time to develop tactics and determine what characteristics ground robots should have.”
Speaking of Ukrainian UGVs, after a Russian T-90M Breakthrough tank recently stopped after becoming entangled in barbed wire, Ukrainian ground drones encircled it with more barbed wire overnight in an apparent attempt to further immobilize it.
The Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR) released a video compilation of its first-person view drones (FPV) launching attacks on Russian equipment in Crimea. GUR stated that the video shows the drones dodging Russian air defenses to strike a Project 03160 Raptor class high-speed coastal vessel and a Project 02510, or BK-16 high-speed assault boat.
The FPV drones also struck a Russian “TOR-M2” anti-aircraft missile system, GUR claimed.
Earlier this month, GUR released a video compilation it said showed FPV drones, launched from uncrewed surface vessels, attacking Russian air defense systems and other equipment in Crimea. You can read more about that here.
Ukraine released a full image showing one of its latest ground-based so-called ‘FrankenSAMs,’ a cobbled together surface-to-air missile system. The system, set up on a donated Humvee, uses repurposed Soviet-era heat-seeking R-73 air-to-air missiles as interceptors. You can read more about it in our story here. At the time of writing that piece, what the vehicle was being used for wasn’t known. Now we know it is a Humvee.
A Ukrainian Air Force MiG-29 carried out a “pinpoint strike” on a Russian command post in Kherson Oblast with two Joint Direct Attack Munition-Extended Range precision-guided bombs (JDAM-ERs), according to Ukrainian journalist Yuri Butusov.
The attack “neutralized the ‘high-ranking’ officer corps along with equipment on one of the enemy’s unmanned launch pads in the Oleshky air defense zone, Kherson region,” the Ukrainian Sunflower Telegram channel stated. “Such strikes deprive enemy forces of clear control, and also significantly demoralize the military. No leadership – no landing on our islands.”
Speaking at an Atlantic Council event focused on Ukrainian children abducted by Russia, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) insisted that their repatriation be part of any peace deal.
“Any peace agreement that’s being talked about right now has to include returning these kidnapped children,” Grassley stated, adding that those rescued, “say they were placed in camps and constantly bombarded with Russian propaganda to make them forget who they are.”
Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, “international watchdogs and human rights organizations have tracked more than 19,000 Ukrainian children illegally abducted by Russia and relocated to Russia, Belarus, and temporarily Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine,” the Atlantic Council stated. “Under Russian captivity, Ukrainian children have reportedly been subject to frequent abuse, forced adoption, and compulsory ‘re-education’—all part of a Moscow-led effort to indoctrinate children and erase Ukrainian identity.”
The Ukrainian Birds of Magyar drone unit displayed their FPV drone skills, flying one into a Russian base and taking out sleeping Russian soldiers.
Last week, Russia destroyed an iconic restaurant set in a replica of a wooden sailing ship during a bombardment of the Ukrainian vacation resort city of Dnipro.
In the wake of a Russian operation to recapture the Kursk city of Sudzha by having its troops crawl through a gas pipeline, a replica has been set up allowing people to crawl through. You can read more about that operation in our initial story here.
Putin signed a decree on March 20 ordering all Ukrainians in occupied territory to either obtain Russian citizenship or leave by Sept. 10. If they don’t leave within 90 days, they’ll be forcibly deported. The decree has apparently led to an increase in Russian law enforcement activities.
That’s it for now.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com