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The commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces has warned that a turning point in the war against Russia is “still a long way off”.
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In a post on Telegram, Oleksandr Syrskyi, who took command of Ukraine’s military in February 2024, said that while his troops had slowed Russia’s advance and had been inflicting increasing casualties on Vladimir Putin’s invading forces, it was critical not to “underestimate the enemy”.
“The aggressor has not abandoned its plans for the complete occupation of the Luhansk and Donetsk regions,” he wrote. “They are seeking to expand their offensive operations in the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, as well as to establish and expand a buffer zone in the northern regions of Ukraine”.
He added that the “intensity” of Russian missile and drone strikes had also increased.
The front line is largely frozen in Ukraine, but Moscow has continued to bombard the country with missile and drones, launching devastating attacks on cities such as Kyiv and Kherson.
In response, Ukraine has launched a targeted campaign aimed at disrupting Russia’s energy industry, carrying out strikes on oil facilities such as refineries, depots, and terminals in an effort to hamper one of Moscow’s most critical sources of income.
The attacks have sparked a fuel crisis across Russia and Russian-occupied territories, with long queues at petrol stations and rising prices forcing Moscow to introduce a ban on diesel exports as it seeks to mitigate the impact.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the Security Service of Ukraine had struck refineries in Stavropol and Tver, as well as an oil pumping station in Ufa and an oil loading terminal in Rostov as part of the strategy.
Syrskyi, who previously served as the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces, said Ukraine had hit 697 targets inside Russia over the last six months.
Despite only minor changes along the front, casualty rates have remained high on the battlefield.
According to data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Ukrainian forces have suffered between 525,000 and 625,000 casualties and between 125,000 and 150,000 fatalities from February 2022 to June 2026. Russia’s military has seen 1.4 million casualties and up to 450,000 deaths over the same period.
Speaking at the 2026 NATO summit in Ankara this week, Zelenskyy said nearly 28,000 Russian soldiers were “eliminated” in June alone, the vast majority having been targeted by drones, which have been a defining feature of the war in Ukraine.
It came as US President Donald Trump announced that the United States would grant Kyiv permission to produce its own Patriot air defence missiles.
Zelenskyy has long asked for more Patriot missiles to boost Ukraine’s air defences.
The Patriot is one of the US military’s main air and missile defence systems and is regarded as one of the most advanced in the world.
“We’re going to give a license to you to make Patriots,” Trump told Zelenskyy in Turkey, adding that he had yet to inform the missile’s manufacturers of the move.
“That will work out alright,” he added.
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