DISINFO: Ukraine wants a ceasefire because of the catastrophic state of the army

This disinformation story is part of a wider campaign aiming to manipulate the information environment around Vladimir Putin’s call for direct negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul in May 2025.

The American Institute for the Study of War (ISW) made no such statements. On the contrary, they wrote about Russian losses in the war against Ukraine.

"The Russian military is reportedly generating enough forces to replace losses and is reinforcing the size of the Russian force grouping in Ukraine despite experiencing an increased casualty rate per square kilometer gained. Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to be embracing significant losses in exchange for diminishing returns to make battlefield gains and manage perceptions about Russia’s military capabilities to pressure Ukraine in negotiations." ISW reported.

While in practice Russia is blocking any real move that could advance actual peace in Ukraine, Ukraine, together with its allies, strives for sustainable peace under democratic conditions, and not an authoritarian Kremlin that seeks to erase not only Ukrainian statehood, but also to destroy the Ukrainian population. Ukraine is indeed suffering irreparable losses due to Russia's bloody aggression, both among the military and among the civilian population. But Ukraine is forced to defend itself; if the Ukrainian Defense Forces had not resisted Russian troops, these losses would have been hundreds of times higher - the revealed facts of Russia's atrocities against the Ukrainian population in Kyiv's Bucha in 2022 once again emphasize this.

Over 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed on the battlefield since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview with NBC published on February 16,2025. Additionally, 380,000 Ukrainians were injured on the battlefield.

However, Russian military losses are much higher. As of May 15,2025, Russia has lost a total of 970,590 troops since the full-scale invasion began, Ukraine's General Staff reported. The estimate, which is broadly in-line with estimates made by Western intelligence agencies, likely includes those killed and captured.

Russia is fighting against the civilian population of Ukraine, killing old people, women and children. According to the United Nations (latest data as of April 2025), since the beginning of the full-scale war in Ukraine, more than 13,000 civilians have been killed. Another 32,000 have been wounded. The actual number of victims is much higher – the Russian occupation of part of Ukrainian territory does not allow us to count the number of victims among Ukrainians. The exact number of civilians taken prisoner, missing, and forcibly taken to Russian territory is also unknown.

Additionally, Ukraine has been able to verify Russia’s deportation of 19,546 children to date, although the true figure is likely to be much higher because Russia frequently targets vulnerable children without anyone to speak for them. Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab placed the number of deported children closer to 35,000 as of March 19, 2025.

See other examples of similar disinformation narratives, such as claims that Ukraine cannot dictate the peace terms because it lost the war, that the Nazi Zelenskyy regime is within months of falling, that UK and France are unable to accept defeat in Ukraine, or that Ukraine and Europe have lost in the Ukrainian conflict.