Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, March 1, 2025
Davit Gasparyan, Angelica Evans, Grace Mappes, Olivia Gibson, and Frederick W. Kagan with William Runkel
March 1, 2025, 5:00 pm ET
Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.
Click here to see ISW's interactive map of Ukraine's offensive in Kursk Oblast.
Click here to see ISW’s 3D control of terrain topographic map of Ukraine. Use of a computer (not a mobile device) is strongly recommended for using this data-heavy tool.
Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.
Note: The data cut-off for this product was 11:30am ET on March 1. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the March 2 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.
Senior US officials are suggesting that the United States may cut all aid to Ukraine, although US President Donald Trump has not indicated any such intention. Cutting the current flow of aid to Ukraine would directly undermine President Trump’s stated goal of achieving a sustainable peace in Ukraine. The New York Times and Washington Post, citing unnamed senior Trump Administration officials, reported on February 28 that the Trump Administration is considering canceling all US military assistance to Ukraine, including any final aid shipments that former US President Joe Biden approved.[1]
Ukrainian forces, enabled by essential US assistance, are inflicting unsustainable losses on Russian forces while holding them to marginal gains. This situation, combined with the severe challenges Russia will face in 2025, offers the United States great leverage in peace negotiations. A suspension of ongoing US military assistance to Ukraine would encourage Russian President Vladimir Putin to continue to increase his demands and fuel his conviction that he can achieve total victory through war. ISW has repeatedly highlighted the importance of continued and timely Western military assistance to Ukraine and observed a correlation between the magnitude of the Russian gains in Ukraine and delays or halts in Western military support.[2] Ukrainian forces have leveraged US-supplied military systems, including Patriot air defense systems and HIMARS and ATACMS long-range strike systems, to defend against nightly Russian drone and missile strikes, enhance Ukraine's strike capabilities, complicate Russian logistics and command and control (C2), and disrupt Russia's defense industrial base (DIB). Ukrainian efforts, aided by the steady flow of Western aid, have significantly slowed Russian advances along the front, inflicted significant Russian personnel and equipment losses, and undermined Russia's efforts to project economic and domestic stability amid rising pressures from the war.[3] Russia's economic, force generation, and defense industrial constraints provide key opportunities that Ukraine, the United States, and its Western allies could leverage to extract concessions from Putin in peace negotiations.
The cessation of US military assistance and monetary assistance aimed at strengthening Ukraine's defense industry could help tip the balance of the war and give Russia greater advantages on the battlefield in Ukraine, increasing the likelihood of a Russian victory in Ukraine. Russia would leverage the cessation of US aid to Ukraine to seize more territory in Ukraine and attempt to exhaust European support – the approach Putin has outlined in his theory of victory.[4] Ending US aid to Ukraine and enabling further Russian gains would also embolden Putin and strengthen his belief that Russia can seize and control Ukraine and other former Soviet countries, including current NATO member states. The Kremlin will likely intensify its military campaign in Ukraine and attempt to exploit any delay or cessation of US military assistance to Ukraine - as the Kremlin did in Spring 2024.[5]
Curtailing aid to Ukraine would risk diminishing US influence in the world and emboldening US adversaries. Russia, Iran, North Korea, and the People's Republic of China (PRC) have formed a bloc aimed at defeating the United States and its allies around the world and are currently testing the limits of US commitment to its allies in Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia-Pacific region.[6] PRC President Xi Jinping stated during a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in late February 2025 that the PRC and Russia are "true friends" who "cannot be moved away" from each other and will not be influenced by "any third party."[7] Russia established bilateral comprehensive strategic partnership agreements since the start of the war with the PRC in May 2023, North Korea in October 2024, and Iran in January 2025.[8] Putin continues to rely on Iranian drones an...
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