After incremental gains for months, Russian forces are advancing on Ukrainian battlefields at the fastest pace this year. They are bombarding Ukrainian cities with some of the biggest drone and missile strikes of the war. They have even opened another front in northern Ukraine.

The Kremlin’s summer offensive appears to be underway.

Military analysts say it is clear that Russian forces this month began their latest concerted attempt to achieve a breakthrough, even as Moscow’s representatives have engaged in the first direct peace talks with Ukraine since 2022.

In particular, Russian forces are pushing into the remaining Ukrainian-controlled territory in the Donbas area in the east, in the fourth year of a conflict that has become a war of attrition. They used the winter lull to build up equipment reserves, improve battlefield communications and tweak the tactics and technical abilities of attack drones, said the military analysts.

Despite some localised battlefield successes, the pace of Russia’s advances remains slow, and few analysts expect it to achieve a decisive victory this summer that would reshape the war.

Russia’s intensified bombing campaign and mounting civilian casualties are already hurting geopolitically. President Donald Trump has stopped praising President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and threatened new American sanctions against Russia. Ukraine is deepening its alliance with major European nations. And the Ukrainian public is more sceptical than ever of Russia’s peace overtures.

“What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realise is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD,” Trump said in a social media post on Tuesday. “He’s playing with fire!”

The Kremlin has not directly commented on the offensive or announced its start. Putin has said merely that the Russian forces are creating a “buffer zone” with Ukraine to protect Russian civilians from enemy raids.