Russia’s army has failed to meet every target date its leadership set for seizing Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his 29 June evening address. He put the count at 15 missed deadlines since the full-scale invasion began. He tied the repeated failures to mounting pressure on Russia, from its battlefield losses to a deepening fuel crisis at home.
Fifteen target dates, none met
Zelenskyy said Russia’s political leadership stays fixated on the Donbas. He described a recurring delusion that Moscow would fully capture the region, repeated again and again.
“Russia’s political leadership remains obsessed with Donbas. They have entertained this delusion – that they would fully capture Donbas – 15 times already,” he said.
He then walked through the dates Moscow had set. In 2022, Russia named five:
- 31 March
- 9 May
- 1 June
- 15 September
- 31 December
In 2023, Putin set 1 March, then pushed it to 31 December. Two more dates passed in 2024.
In 2025, the Kremlin marked three target dates:
- 1 September
- 1 December
- 25 December
This year it has already shifted the date twice, starting at 31 March, moving to 1 September, and now landing on 31 December, Zelenskyy noted.
Russia grinds into Ukraine’s “fortress belt” even as its advance stalls everywhere else
The cost of the next reset
Zelenskyy said another reset is likely if Russia keeps fighting. He turned the warning toward Russians not yet sent to the front.
“If Putin wants to sacrifice another million of his soldiers to keep smashing against this wall, then the million Russians who have not yet been mobilized into the Russian army and are arguing in gas lines should think about what awaits them next,” he said.
He thanked the brigades holding Ukrainian positions, noting the assaults run heaviest in Donetsk Oblast.
A war Russia can no longer keep “over there”
Zelenskyy linked the missed deadlines to Ukraine’s strike campaign. He said Russia, long mocked as a gas station, now faces gasoline shortages of its own. He called the effort Ukraine’s plan of long-range and mid-range sanctions, carried out with precision rather than terror, and said it makes the occupation harder to sustain.
He opened the address with the day’s attacks. Russian drones hunted civilian vehicles in Zaporizhzhia, while a strike on an enterprise in Dnipro killed people and wounded more than two dozen. Kherson, Kharkiv, Donetsk Oblast, and Sumy Oblast also came under fire. He added that Ukraine has a busy international schedule ahead and expects results from the G7 and the Coalition of the Willing.
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