Bild analyst: Russia’s summer offensive in Ukraine ends in failure

Russia’s summer offensive in Ukraine has collapsed, with Moscow failing to acgueeve its main objectives between April and August 2025, according to Bild military analyst Julian Röpcke.

Bild, Germany’s largest daily newspaper, is known for its tabloid style and mass readership, but also for high-impact and military reporting. 

“Russian forces tried to capture Pokrovsk in Donetsk region, but their August breakthrough ended with all units either destroyed or captured,” the journalist wrote.

In northern Ukraine, Russia’s plan to create a so-called “security belt” also fell short, with troops securing less than 70 kilometers of territory. In the south, in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions, the front line held, which forced Moscow to effectively abandon its offensive. 

Over the summer, Russian forces captured only 0.3 percent of Ukraine’s territory (about 1,800 square kilometers), while Ukrainian drones sharply intensified strikes on Russian oil refineries up to 1,200 kilometers away.

“This is now the fourth summer of the war. And those who believed the Russian army was about to achieve a decisive victory and Ukraine’s defense would collapse were proven wrong,” Röpcke said.

Earlier, analysts from the monitoring project DeepState reported updated data on Russian advances: in 1,010 days of full-scale war, Russia has captured less than 1 percent of Ukraine’s territory.