The Russian army has once again been given a specific deadline for completing the capture of Donbas. As reported by RBC-Ukraine, citing a report by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), on August 23, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that Vladimir Putin recently ordered Russian military forces to complete the capture of Donetsk Oblast by December 31, 2026. According to the Ukrainian leader, among the key operational objectives of the Russian leadership remain Konotop, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk — all three cities are part of Ukraine's fortified defensive line, the "Fortress Belt."

New Deadline: December 31, 2026

The date set by the Kremlin — December 31, 2026 — is not the first attempt to tie the offensive to a specific calendar deadline. According to ISW's assessment, since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian leader has set separate deadlines for the capture of the entire Donetsk Oblast 15 times. None of these fifteen deadlines has been met: each time, Russian troops ended up short of the stated objectives, and the front-line situation remained well behind the political promises.

Fifteen Unmet Deadlines

Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War emphasize that the deadlines set by the Kremlin are systematically disconnected from the real situation on the battlefield. In their assessment, Russian troops are unlikely to capture all of Donbas by the end of 2026, if they achieve that goal at all. The regular "shifting" of deadlines, experts believe, indicates a gap between the rhetoric of Russia's top military and political leadership and the army's actual capabilities at the front.

The Real Situation: Figures on Territorial Control

At present, the Russian Federation controls approximately 21,170 square kilometers, or about 79.89% of the territory of Donetsk Oblast. In Luhansk Oblast, Russian troops control approximately 26,624 square kilometers, i.e., about 99.77% of the territory. Thus, the actual gap between the "near-total" control of Luhansk Oblast and the nearly 20-percent "window" in Donetsk Oblast explains why the latter region remains a zone of active combat and a key target of new orders.

Ukrainian Armed Forces Offensive Operations and the Territorial Balance in 2026

Earlier, Zelenskyy reported that since the beginning of 2026, Russia has occupied about 990 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory, while the Defense Forces have liberated approximately 820 square kilometers. The President stated that by the end of the year, Ukraine expects to equalize these figures. In addition, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are conducting active offensive operations on the Oleksandrivsk direction: since the beginning of the year, Ukrainian military have liberated 26 settlements in Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.

Contradictory Data

The wording of the sources contains a significant inconsistency in geographic scope. The headlines of several media outlets and the general rhetoric speak of "deadlines for the capture of Donbas" as a whole, whereas the ISW itself in its report records 15 deadlines specifically for Donetsk Oblast, not for Donbas as a whole (Donetsk + Luhansk oblasts). Given that Luhansk Oblast is already about 99.77% under Russian control, the "fifteen deadlines" in fact relate to the Donetsk direction. Moreover, the very fact of Putin's new order is conveyed indirectly through Zelenskyy's statement, rather than through direct confirmation from Russian sources, which makes this part of the information dependent on one side of the conflict.