From: Transform Ukraine By Douglas Landro / November 28, 2025
In Moscow, Ryabkov declared Russia would accept nothing less than complete victory while Russian forces advanced into central Kupyansk and infiltrated toward Myrove; in western Zaporizhia, entire battalions were “practically wiped out” with crews stripped from tanks to fill infantry ranks; in Pokrovsk, Ukrainian counterattacks recaptured positions as both sides measured progress in meters on day 1,373—when diplomatic maximalism collided with grinding battlefield reality
The Day’s Reckoning
The words came from Moscow at mid-morning. “There can be no talk of any concessions or any surrender.” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov wasn’t negotiating. He was issuing an ultimatum for Ukrainian capitulation while Russian forces measured their daily advances in meters.
At the moment Ryabkov spoke, Russian infantry were picking their way through rubble in central Kupyansk. The town they’d been trying to capture for months was finally yielding—slowly, bloodily, street by street. Their supply corridor ran just 4.3 kilometers wide. One Ukrainian counterattack could cut it.
Three hundred kilometers south, Ukrainian soldiers in northwestern Pokrovsk were doing exactly what Moscow said couldn’t happen. They were counterattacking. Recapturing positions. Disrupting Russian timetables. The briefings would note “Ukrainian forces repelled attacks.” The reality was harder and more specific: Ukrainians were taking back ground.
Near Hulyaipole, Ukrainian forces pushed to the highway. In western Zaporizhia, a Russian milblogger was posting what his commanders wouldn’t admit: entire battalion wiped out, three to five survivors from every ten or twelve who attacked, tank crews stripped from vehicles because there weren’t enough infantrymen left breathing.
Moscow demanded total victory. Its forces were consuming soldiers faster than mobilization could replace them.
Day 1373. Russian attacks in dozens of locations. Minimal territorial changes. Catastrophic casualties. Ukrainian counterattacks. Adaptations. Survival. The grinding continued. The arithmetic never changed. Neither side could win this way. Both sides kept fighting.
The Ultimatum from Moscow
Sergei Ryabkov chose his words carefully on November 27. “There can be no talk of any concessions or any surrender” of Russia’s “key aspects.” The Deputy Foreign Minister wasn’t leaving room for interpretation. The modified US peace proposal—the one diplomats had been quietly circulating for weeks—was dead on arrival.
Russia would achieve its “stated goals” through negotiations, Ryabkov explained. Translation: recognition of annexed territories, Ukrainian neutrality, limits on Ukrainian military capabilities, abandonment of NATO aspirations. Everything Moscow had demanded since February 2022. Nothing had changed.
If negotiations faced “any setbacks,” Russia would continue the war. Ryabkov invoked the “understanding” reached at the Alaska summit—an understanding nobody had publicly confirmed existed. The ambiguity was deliberate. Moscow was claiming American acceptance of Russian terms through diplomatic fog, leveraging closed-door meetings to pressure Ukraine into frameworks that guaranteed Russian victory.
Voice of Ukraine 