Source of the claim: The Wall Street Journal (July 13, 2025)

Ian Lovett and Daniel Kiss wrote in a July 13, 2025 article, entitled “A Never-Ending Supply of Drones Has Frozen the Front Lines in Ukraine,” “In the battle for Ukraine, the front line is increasingly at a standstill.” However, Russia’s territorial gains in June 2025 (which is the most recent full month to precede this July 13, 2025, article) totaled 234 square miles, according to RM’s analysis of ISW data. This gain represents a 21% increase compared to Russia’s gain in May 2025, which totaled 194 square miles, according to RM’s analysis of ISW data (see Table 1). DeepState’s data on Russia’s gains reveal a similar increase in the period May–June 2025 (see Table 1).

Moreover, if one compares the territorial gains which Russia made in Ukraine in June 2025¹ with the average monthly rate of change in territorial control in the five months of the year preceding June 2025 (Period I, see Table 2) and in the 18 months preceding June 2025 (Period II, see Table 2), then one finds that the June 2025 rate is significantly higher than the average rate during either of these two periods, no matter whether ISW or DS data is used to make the calculations. Nor does Ukraine’s control of 5 square miles in western Russia, according to ISW data, offset the aforementioned Russian gains to generate a net “standstill.”

Thus, our analysis of ISW and DS data reveals that it was not accurate to portray the situation on the Russian-Ukrainian front in June 2025 as “increasingly at a standstill,” no matter whose definition of “standstill” ² one uses.³

Table 1

Table 2

* The data provided by ISW for the months February 2024 and August 2024 is highly anomalous and has therefore been excluded from the calculation of the average for December 2023–May 2025. Battlefield reports do not indicate a successful Russian offensive during those two months that would explain such sudden increases. Additionally, the figures depart sharply from the data reported by DeepState for those two months. (February 2024: ISW +864 square miles, DS +46 square miles. August 2024: ISW +1,000 square miles, DS +140 square miles.) As a result, we have decided to exclude them from our calculations. That said, using ISW data from September 2024 to the present, RM staff have calculated that RM’s monthly reported changes in territorial control remain within the ±10% margin of error of other reporting organizations.
 

Footnotes:

1. June 2025 is the latest month for which full monthly data was available at the time WSJ made its claim on July 13, 2025.
2. Merriam-Webster’s ("a state characterized by absence of motion or of progress”) or Dictionary.com’s ("a state of cessation of movement or action”).
3. RM’s calculations, based on ISW data, indicate that even if Russia were to focus all of its offensive power on conquering the rest of Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions—which Russia has declared as its own—along with the Luhansk region, at the current rate of 121 square miles per month (which ISW calculated for the period June 21–July 21, 2025), it would take Russia six years to complete the conquest. Still, while incremental, the most recent Russian monthly advances remain far from being at a “standstill.”