Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he plans to increase his armed forces’ lethality as part of a strategy to disarm Moscow and flip a deadlocked negotiating table.
“The task of Ukrainian gadgets is to guarantee a level of destruction of the occupier at which Russian losses exceed the decision of reinforcements they can send to their forces each month,” he told military personnel on Monday.
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“We are talking about 50,000 Russian losses per month, right here is the optimal level,” he said.
Video analysis, Zelenskyy these days said, showed 35,000 confirmed kills in December 2025, up from 30,000 in November and 26,000 in October. But on Monday, he clarified that the 35,000 had been “killed and badly wounded occupiers”, who would not be returning to the battlefield.
His commander in chief, Oleksandr Syrskii, conservatively estimated “more than 33,000” confirmed kills in December.
Ukraine believes it has killed or maimed 1.2 million Russians since Russia’s rotund-scale invasion in 2022.
The Center for Strategic and International Research these days estimated that Russia had suffered 1.2mn casualties, including at least 325,000 deaths, and Ukraine up to 600,000 casualties, with as many as 140,000 deaths.
Al Jazeera cannot verify casualty estimates from either facet.
The war is at demonstrate stalemated, with Russia struggling to make meaningful territorial gains.
Russia held accurate more than a quarter of Ukraine a month into its rotund-scale war, in March 2022, according to geolocated footage.
The following month, Ukraine pushed Russian forces back from a string of northern cities – Kyiv, Kharkiv, Sumy and Chernihiv – leaving Russia in possession of one-fifth of the nation.
In August and September 2022, then-ground forces commander Syrskii masterminded a campaign to push Russian forces east of the Oskil River in the northern Kharkiv station, and Russia itself withdrew east of the Dnipro River in the southern station of Kherson, leaving it with 17.8 p.c of the nation.
In the last three years, Russia increased that quantity to 19.3 p.c.
For almost six months, Russia has struggled to snatch two towns it has almost surrounded with 150,000 troops in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk station.
“In Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, the Ukrainian Defence Forces proceed to contain the enemy, which is trying to infiltrate the northern districts of both cities in small teams,” Syrskii said last week.
Russia claimed it had captured the northern metropolis of Kupiansk last month, however Russian military journalists say Ukrainian forces have retaken sustain an eye on of the town and surrounded the Russian assault power within it.
The engine of war
Zelenskyy’s strategy involves increasing domestic drone production and honing the expertise of drone operators, because drones now hit 80 p.c of targets on the battlefield.
“In exactly the past year alone, 819,737 targets had been hit – hit by drones. And we clearly chronicle every single hit,” he said on Monday.
The military has instituted a level plan, rewarding drone operators for the quantity and precision of their hits.
That reflects a plan achieve in place in April 2024, providing financial rewards to ground troops for destroying Russian battlefield gear, culminating in $23,000 for capturing a battle tank.
Zelenskyy appointed Mykhailo Fedorov as defence minister this month, who previously served as digital transformation minister and deputy prime minister for innovation, education, science and technology.
Last week, Fedorov began to appoint his advisers. They consist of Serhiy Sternenko, who last year created Ukraine’s largest non-state vendor of military drones, to step up drone production. Fedorov’s damaged-down deputy at the digital transformation ministry, Valeriya Ionan, was achieve in charge of international collaborations, thanks to her ride with Silicon Valley giants love Google and Cisco. Fedorov also appointed Serhiy Beskrestnov as technological adviser. Beskrestnov is an professional on Russian drone and digital warfare innovation.
Russian assaults pound Ukraine
Zelenskyy’s war aims stem in part from the fact that Russia refuses to quit its campaign to snatch more of Ukraine.
Regardless of US President Donald Trump’s efforts to bring about a ceasefire, talks remain deadlocked over the future of Donetsk.
Russia’s worst attack against Ukrainian cities and vitality facilities last week came on Saturday, enthralling 375 drones and 21 missiles, as Russian, US and Ukrainian delegations had been negotiating a ceasefire in Abu Dhabi.
The strike left 1.2 million homes without vitality nationwide, including 6,000 in Kyiv.
Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said 800,000 homes in Kyiv had been aloof without vitality following three outdated strikes this month. “Constant enemy attacks unfortunately sustain the situation from being stabilised,” he wrote on social media.
Zelenskyy told Ukrainians in an night video address that electricity provide concerns had been aloof widespread in Kyiv, Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro and in the Chernihiv and Sumy regions.
“We are scaling up assistance features and warming centers,” he said, adding that 174 [crews] had been working to fix the damage in Kyiv alone. Shmyal said 710,000 of us had been aloof without vitality in Kyiv.
A Czech grassroots initiative fundraised $6m to aquire a total lot of electrical generators for Ukrainian households. On Friday, the European Price said it was sending 447 generators to Ukraine.
On Wednesday, Russian drones killed three of us. Two of them had been a young couple in Kyiv killed when a drone struck their apartment constructing. Rescuers realized finest their four-year-aged daughter alive.
“When I carried her out, the lady started crying very hard, and then she began to shake violently,” said Marian Kushnir, a journalist who was a neighbour of the couple.
At least five more of us died when a drone struck a passenger train in the northern Kharkiv station, and two young of us and a pregnant woman had been wounded when 50 drones rained down on the southern port of Odesa.
Talks in Abu Dhabi ended without a ceasefire. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov had said earlier than they began that Russia was not prepared to compromise on any of its territorial demands.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said talks had been specializing in the nub of disagreement between the two facets, which is Ukraine’s refusal to hand over the remaining one-fifth of Donetsk that Moscow does not sustain an eye on.
Talks are scheduled to proceed in Abu Dhabi on Sunday, officials said.
Unvarnished fact from Zelenskyy
In a scathing speech to the World Financial Discussion board in Davos, Zelenskyy accused his European allies of “wait-hoping” the Russian threat would disappear after almost four years of war in Ukraine.
“Europe depends finest on the belief that if danger comes, NATO will act. But no one has really considered the Alliance in action. If Putin decides to take Lithuania or strike Poland, who will acknowledge?” Zelenskyy asked.
US President Donald Trump’s threat to take Greenland by power on January 17, he said, revealed Europe’s lack of readiness when seven Nordic nations sent 40 soldiers to the island.
“For of us that send 30 or 40 soldiers to Greenland – what is that for? What message does it send? What’s the message to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin? To China? And grand more importantly, what message does it send to Denmark – the most important – your terminate ally?”
In contrast, said Zelenskyy, Trump was prepared to snatch Russian tankers selling sanctioned oil, and achieve Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on drug charges, whereas Putin, an indicted war criminal, remained free. “No security guarantees work without the US,” he said.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte echoed these sentiments in a speech to the European Parliament on Monday [January 26].
“If anyone thinks right here . . . that the European Union or Europe as a total can defend itself without the US, sustain on dreaming,” he said. “You can’t.”
