The Concis: Ukraine Frontline Edition

Saturday, June 7, 2025

Saturdays are supposed to be my time to review the frontline. That’s what I told myself, that I should stay focused on the battlefield while the political noise roared in the background. But this week, that noise has become impossible to ignore—regular one-hour-plus phone calls between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump keep pulling focus.

Still, I looked up and down the map, trying to find a shift worth noting. But the picture was almost exactly the same as it was in the last week of May: 7,700 casualties this week, just about where it was seven days ago. No notable movement. No territorial gains. The Russians are still miles away from Pokrovsk and still bogged down in the fight for Toretsk. That’s lithium and coal—two strategic resource hubs—but the front hasn’t budged in months.

Putin needs to take both towns if he wants to make real progress. Right now, he isn’t getting his way, despite having 630,000 troops in the field and losing over 35,000 of them in the past four weeks alone. So we shift gears. Because while the frontlines are frozen, there are major developments happening off the battlefield.

Putin is busy selling Russians on a grand strategic vision—a battlefield dream. According to the Institute for the Study of War, that dream now includes the seizure of 222,700 additional square kilometers of Ukrainian territory by the end of this year.

I know. I’m not joking.

The ISW reported this morning that Russia’s new internal war map lays out a plan to hold a total of 336,300 square kilometers of Ukraine by the end of 2026. That’s nearly double the roughly 162,000 square kilometers Russia controlled in the early weeks of the 2022 full-scale invasion. For perspective, the entire area of Ukraine is around 603,500 square kilometers. In Putin’s new plan, Russia ends up with more than half the country.

His army doesn’t have enough tanks. It doesn’t have enough armored vehicles. Some troops ride golf carts to the frontline. Others walk. Some hop on motorcycles and speed toward the trenches. They’re launching dismounted assaults—unprotected, exposed—across a frontline saturated with drones, against an opponent who, for the first time since the start of the war, is approaching artillery shell parity. That’s why the lines haven’t moved in months.

Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief General Oleksandr Syrskyi reported on May 13 that Russian forces have suffered about 177,000 casualties since January 1, 2025. That’s an average of 1,351 men per day. And for what? In all of 2024, Russia seized just 0.4% of Ukrainian territory. So far this year, they've added only 0.2%. At this pace, they’ll end the year with the same statistic: tens of thousands of dead, for a few tenths of a percent.

But now Putin is telling his generals he wants to double Russia’s territorial gains. He wants to double the size of Ukraine under occupation. What he couldn’t achieve in three years—now he says he’ll do it in 18 months. With a deficit budget. And just $20 billion in liquid reserves.

Obviously, it’s nonsense.

A fantasy for his demoralized commanders. A bedtime story to keep the troops grinding forward without asking questions. He has to convince Russian families that these mindless sacrifices mean something. This is how he does it.

This is what happens when you live under a dictatorship. They start the day with a lie and end it with one. Every word is fiction. Every promise is rot. They’re all the same.

Quietly, something else unfolded this week—and it matters. Putin told Trump he had to retaliate—hard—for Ukraine’s June 1 operation that destroyed nearly a third of Russia’s long-range bomber fleet.

So, he did. He retailiated with missiles and drones.

• 8 Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missiles.

• 36 Kh-101 cruise missiles.

• 1 Kh-31P anti-radar missile.

• 369 drones.

Total: 45 missiles.

????

Russian ultranationalists admit that Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb has forced Russia onto the back foot. They say it’ll take more time before Russia can resume large, complex missile strike packages.

I believe them.

Ukraine has taken a clean bite out of Russia’s offensive potential—and in doing so, bought itself a critical window. That bite matters. It slows the tempo. It disrupts planning. It buys time.

Yesterday, Ukraine used that time wisely. They turned their fury back toward Russian airfields. Again.

• The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces struck Engels Air Base in Saratov Oblast and at Dyagilevo Air Base in Ryazan Oblast, damaging at least three fuel and lubricant tanks at Engels and causing a fire and secondary explosions in the area.

• A geolocated image shows a large fire with possibly secondary detonations at the Bryansk International airport near Oktyabrskoye.

• Ukrainian forces destroyed a Mi-8 combat helicopter and damaged a Mi-35 combat helicopter parked at the Bryansk airport.

Ukraine is no longer just defending against the arrows. It’s going after the archer. That shift in posture—from reactive to offensive—marks a turning point. What unfolds from here will shape the next six months of this war in decisive ways.

Now, I’ve saved the most important piece of news for the end.

Do you know the most potent weapon in Putin’s hands? It’s not his tanks. It’s not the artillery, or the missiles, or the 145 million Russians. It’s certainly not the nukes.

It is Elvira Nabiullina.

She’s the head of the Russian Central Bank. And as long as she’s in that seat, you can’t write off the Russian economy. It might still collapse—but if it does, it will be despite her efforts, or because someone crippled her ability to act.

This is where the West has failed. Europe and the United States should have built a centralized sanctions unit years ago—a serious team that could match her, pressure her, counter her. Not just draft penalties and release talking points, but enforce and escalate them with speed, precision, and unity. They didn’t. They still don’t. But now, the irony: what the West couldn’t do, Russia might be doing to itself.

Yesterday, the Russian Central Bank cut interest rates—from 21% down to 20%. That might sound minor. It’s not. It’s a red flag. Inflation in Russia hit a staggering 20% in March 2025. There is no way Nabiullina made this decision voluntarily.

She was forced.

In March, the Russian government conducted a federal audit of the Central Bank. And in the days leading up to the June rate meeting, senior Kremlin officials started saying publicly that they “expected” the bank to lower rates.

A and B led to C.

Political pressure crushed monetary independence.

This is madness. The Russian economy is still on its feet largely because of Nabiullina’s choices—especially the decision to keep rates high, which cushioned everyday Russians by shifting more of the pain onto corporations and oligarchs. Now the idiots around Putin have cracked the seal. They’ve pulled the lid, even if just a little.

And no one knows what will spill out.

But one thing is certain: inflation in the second half of 2025 won’t be 20%. It’ll be worse.

Putin’s most potent weapon is being dismantled from within.

Just perfect.

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