Putin Mocked After 15 Failed Attempts To Seize Particular Ukrainian Region

Vladimir Putin has been mocked after trying and failing to fully seize Ukraine’s Donbas region “15 times”.

The Donbas, made up of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts to the east of Ukraine, has been mostly under Russian occupation since Putin launched his illegal invasion in 2022.

But the Kremlin has struggled to establish full control over the last 10% of the region – despite repeated attempts.

It comes as Putin’s grip on power is said to be weakening, especially as long-range drone strikes from Ukraine rock the everyday lives of the general Russian public.

His Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was quick to call attention to Putin’s failures on Monday.

“Since the start of the full-scale war, the Russian army has been given as many as 15 deadlines for capturing our Donetsk region,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly online address.

“Russia’s political leadership remains obsessed with Donbas. They have entertained this delusion – that they would fully capture Donbas – 15 times already.”

He claimed Putin has set multiple deadlines for his troops to capture the region but instead has endured more than 1.5 million casualties.

“In 2022, the deadlines were 31 March, then 9 May, 1 June, 15 September, and 31 December,” the Ukrainian president said.

“In 2023, Putin set two more deadlines for capturing Donbas: 1 March, and then, when that failed again, they moved it to 31 December. In 2024, there were again two such deadlines.”

Zelenskyy claimed Putin wanted to show US president Donald Trump – who has been trying, unsuccessfully, to end the conflict – that Ukraine would “supposedly fall”.

But he continued: “If Russia does not end its war, they will have to move this deadline again as well.

“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 mobilised into the Russian army and are arguing in gas lines should think about what awaits them next.”

Away from the Donbas, Russia has captured all of the Luhansk region and a large proportion of Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

Together with the Crimea peninsula, which has been occupied since 2014, Putin holds around a fifth of Ukraine’s sovereign territory.

But Ukraine seems to hold the cards on the warfront at the moment.

Even Trump, typically sympathetic to Russia, has acknowledged: “Zelenskyy is doing pretty well. No matter how you look at it, he’s holding his own at least.”

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