| Problem Statement

The war in Ukraine is now in its fifth year. Both the front lines and the negotiations to end the war remain effectively deadlocked. In the meantime, our attention has been drawn to the Iran War, likely because it threatened aspects of our daily lives such as oil prices and supply chains. As a result, the war in Ukraine has temporarily receded from our focus.

However, in terms of the security implications for the Korean Peninsula, the war in Ukraine is more directly relevant to us than the Iran War. This is not to say that the Middle East war has no bearing on our security, but rather that the war in Ukraine involves, to a significant degree, the major actors tied to our core security interests, including Russia, China, the United States, Europe and NATO, and North Korea. Moreover, a series of recent reports point to signs that the war may be entering a new phase.

A summary of the most notable recent reports includes the following: Russia's GDP has shown a trend of negative growth; immediately after President Zelensky authorized the "40-Day Influence Operation," the largest drone attacks since the start of the war struck twelve regions, including Moscow, Belgorod, Kursk, Crimea, and the Black Sea/Sea of Azov area; President Putin, for the first time, publicly acknowledged that Ukraine's long-range drone offensive has caused fuel shortages; long lines of ordinary citizens have formed at gas stations, and it has become difficult to obtain the necessary grades of gasoline; factions advocating the use of nuclear weapons have emerged within Russia; and unease has spread among the elite class, with Putin's approval rating falling to its lowest point since the start of the war.

A review of the literature indicates that a considerable body of research has already examined, in detail, the modalities and conditions for ending wars, the process by which stalemates give way to negotiations, and the relationship between a leader's domestic political survival and the decision to end a war. It is also true, however, that no single, comprehensive analytical framework exists for the war-termination process. This paper therefore starts from several common-sense premises drawn from historical observation and experience and, drawing on recent research, examines whether the war in Ukraine is entering a new phase toward its conclusion, before considering the outlook ahead and its policy implications.

These premises include the following: the simple fact that no war can continue indefinitely; the fact that a war continues until its sustainability is exhausted, a dynamic that holds even when total victory is not the objective, since sustaining the fight still serves to secure a more favorable position in eventual negotiations; and the fact that the conduct of a war is composed of capability and will, where capability depends on troop strength, weapons and military intelligence, and financial resources, while will refers to national will, encompassing not only the leadership's resolve but also the consent of the public.

| Capability and Will

(Troop Strength) Let us begin with troop strength. The focus here is on how many troops are being lost or gained, and at what rate. Accordingly, what matters are the current troop deployment, the available reserve pool, and the rate of loss and replenishment (that is, the rate at which new troops replace losses).

In Russia's case, President Putin himself has stated that Russia has deployed 700,000 troops to the Ukrainian front.¹⁾ Russia officially maintains approximately one million active-duty troops and nearly two million reservists. This means that if Russia were to abandon its current contract-based recruitment system in favor of a mobilization order, it could secure an additional two million troops. The problem, however, is that the replacement rate needed to offset the loss rate among the 700,000 troops at the front has begun to decline, and ordering mobilization is itself difficult given the political risk involved.²⁾

To examine the replacement rate, let us first look at the scale and pace of troop losses. Most Western analytical institutions generally assess that Russia's total casualties since the start of the war exceed one million, with average monthly deaths alone surpassing 30,000.³⁾ Russia's annual recruitment target for 2026 is reportedly 409,000, a figure broadly consistent with Western analyses projecting monthly deaths above 30,000. The replacement rate resulting from these personnel losses has been analyzed in detail by Germany's SWP (German Institute for International and Security Affairs), the IISS, and CSIS.⁴⁾ In summary, these analyses find average monthly losses of roughly 30,000 to 34,000 against average new recruitment of only about 27,000 per month in the first quarter of this year, a net monthly decline of 3,000 to 7,000 troops, meaning losses outpace replacements by roughly 20 percent. This suggests that "Russia has begun losing troops faster than it can replace its dead," and that the incentives underlying its contract-based recruitment system have reached their limits.

Ukraine has deployed approximately 250,000 to 300,000 troops at the front,⁵⁾ and President Zelensky has publicly stated that Ukraine recruits roughly 30,000 troops per month.⁶⁾ The problem lies in Ukraine's monthly troop losses, estimated at roughly 4,000 per month.⁷⁾ If this estimate is accurate, it suggests that Ukraine's monthly recruitment exceeds its monthly losses, a structure that, in stark contrast to Russia's, could be interpreted as one in which replenishment substantially outpaces attrition.

This does not mean, however, that Ukraine is better off. Whereas Russia's troop crisis is, in essence, a matter of "numbers" (losses versus replacements), Ukraine's, according to a Carnegie analysis, is a matter of its "conversion system" (DOTMLPF: doctrine, organization, training, materiel, leadership, personnel management, and facilities). This underscores that what matters is how much of Zelensky's stated "30,000 to 34,000 mobilized per month" actually converts into combat power deployed at the front.⁸⁾

In sum, Russia and Ukraine are experiencing troop crises of fundamentally different character. Russia's losses are overwhelmingly large, but it still retains a demographic buffer (two million reservists), and its crisis lies in the fact that the incentives underlying its contract-based recruitment system have reached their limits. Ukraine, by contrast, faces comparatively smaller losses in absolute terms, but is experiencing a crisis in its conversion system, manifested in draft evasion, desertion, and related problems.

(Weapons) In conventional forces (tanks, aircraft, ships, and troop numbers), Russia clearly maintains an overwhelming advantage. As numerous analyses have already noted, however, drones have emerged as the pivotal weapon of the battlefield.⁹⁾ Beyond substituting for conventional weapons, drones are also serving as a stand-in for the troop shortages afflicting both sides discussed above, and for this reason they are widely regarded as the decisive weapon that will determine the course of the war in Ukraine. Assessments of which side holds the advantage in drone capability remain divided, with arguments made for both Ukrainian and Russian superiority. Russia has pursued a state-led, mass-replication approach based on Iranian Shahed designs, waging a war of attrition through sheer numbers, whereas Ukraine, drawing on a private startup ecosystem in which frontline feedback feeds directly and immediately back into production lines, is generally assessed to be generationally ahead in areas such as fiber-optic FPV (first-person view) drones, AI-enabled autonomous strike systems, and hybrid maritime drones. That said, Russia too has been working to close the gap, developing new Shahed variants aimed at targets in Europe and leveraging its advantages in electronic warfare and mass production capacity. This suggests that neither side holds a fixed advantage, but rather that the two are locked in a technological competition whose balance shifts continually.¹⁰⁾

(Financial Resources) Russia's capacity to finance the war is increasingly approaching its limits. Sustaining troop replenishment and supplying weapons such as drones, as discussed above, both require enormous financial outlays, and examining fiscal capacity is therefore essential to gauging how sustainable the war effort remains. Russia's defense spending had roughly doubled by 2025 compared with pre-war levels. Notably, the pace of that increase has been clearly slowing: owing to difficulties in financing defense spending, Russia's finance minister announced in December 2025 that the 2026 defense budget would be frozen at 2025 levels. These financing difficulties are also connected to the fact that oil and gas revenues, which accounted for two-fifths of the federal budget early in the war, have fallen by roughly half, to about one-fifth, over the past four years. While defense spending has doubled since the war began, the declining share of revenue derived from energy exports means that the resulting shortfall has had to be filled through tax increases in non-oil sectors. Publicly available data show that taxes have risen steadily since the start of the war,¹¹⁾ with particularly sharp increases in 2025 and 2026, a period that coincides precisely with the decline in the share of fiscal revenue drawn from energy exports. This, in turn, aligns closely with the core drivers of both negative GDP growth (the "war-boom backlash") and the widening fiscal deficit. In other words, while Russian public finances may appear to be moving away from their vulnerability to oil-price swings, a more accurate reading is that, combined with the onset of negative GDP growth, the character of Russia's fiscal pressure is shifting from one driven by external shocks to one driven by the structural erosion of its tax base. That is to say, regardless of whether oil prices rise or fall, Russia has entered a phase in which the contraction of the economy as a whole is being reflected more directly in its public finances.

Despite these warnings from the Russian Ministry of Finance and Central Bank regarding financing difficulties and structural fiscal pressure, Russia has signaled its determination to continue the war, going so far as to revise its budget law to increase this year's defense spending by 40 percent. The tension between the structural depletion of fiscal capacity and the will to continue fighting, however, remains an issue that could resurface at any time.

Whereas Russia is confronting the limits of internal resource mobilization, moving through a sequence of fiscal exhaustion, tax increases, and mounting pressure on defense financing, Ukraine faces a vulnerability of a different character: since it has never been in a position to sustain the war through its own resources, the political sustainability of Western support is the decisive variable. In short, the two sides' risks stand in contrast: Russia's risk is endogenous, rooted in the limits of its economic and fiscal position, while Ukraine's is exogenous, dependent on alliance politics, particularly shifts in U.S. priorities.¹²⁾

(Will) The trajectory of the will to continue fighting can be gauged, in part, through public opinion polling. Recent survey indicators within Russia show that support for military action, Putin's approval rating, and overall government approval have all been declining in tandem, while support for peace negotiations has recently begun to rebound. These recent data can be read as a sign that cracks are beginning to appear in what had until now been a gently sloping trend of policy support. This trend is particularly notable in that it falls in June and July of 2026, precisely 52 to 53 months after the war began in February 2022, a timing that aligns almost exactly with the findings of a 2019 study by Kuijpers.¹³⁾ Kuijpers, applying statistical analysis to ten country cases, found that the positive "rally-round-the-flag" effect generated by military intervention, meaning increased support for the leader, remains statistically significant for up to 50 months (roughly 4.2 years) following the intervention. Given that Ukraine's "40-Day Influence Operation" was launched on June 25 of this year, and that the months immediately preceding it, April through June, saw a concentration of strikes on oil refineries that made fuel shortages in Crimea and on the Russian mainland tangible to the public, this timing also suggests that the direct mediating factor behind the dissipation of the rally effect may not be the military shock itself, but rather the public's felt experience of economic cost.¹⁴⁾

Meanwhile, according to surveys by KIIS (the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, Ukraine's leading independent polling and sociological research institute), Ukrainians' resolve to hold out indefinitely is declining, but their attitude toward negotiations themselves is evolving, not toward "unconditional rejection" but toward what might be called "conditional pragmatism."¹⁵⁾ The director of KIIS summarizes this as a stance that "rejects capitulation but remains open to painful compromise." In other words, rather than a simple shift in public opinion from "keep fighting" to "let's stop now," what appears to be unfolding is a deepening and more sophisticated calculation over "precisely what conditions would be acceptable."

| Outlook

As discussed above, both Russia and Ukraine are approaching certain limits on both the capability and the will fronts that bear on the war's continuation, spanning troop strength, weapons, financial resources, and domestic public support for continuing the war. In other words, the objective forces structurally pushing toward an end to the war are gradually accumulating. At present, however, the defining feature appears to be that these forces have not yet translated into a political decision at the leadership level. This suggests that the objective situation, including shifts in public opinion, and the political incentives facing each side's leadership do not necessarily move in the same direction.

For Russia's leadership, ending the war or agreeing to a ceasefire without achieving its originally stated objectives would amount to political defeat. This may give it an incentive not to treat deteriorating public opinion as an opportunity to seek an exit strategy, but rather to offset it through escalation or continued fighting. Russia's apparent pursuit, under the current conditions of a protracted war of attrition, of a strategy of gradual pressure characterized by slow but steady advances may itself be a product of this political calculus.¹⁶⁾ This disjunction between the trend in public opinion and the Russian leadership's will to continue fighting is evident in other instances as well. President Putin, for example, has continued in recent weeks to signal a willingness to negotiate while at the same time sending a steady stream of messages indicating that he intends to maintain a substantively hardline stance. In a television interview, he stated that he was prepared to continue talks with American envoys aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, yet rejected a proposal to halt the long-range strikes that have harmed both sides. Amid Ukraine's intensifying strikes on Russia's energy sector, he also rejected a Kyiv proposal to limit the use of long-range missiles, stating that Moscow would continue the war it has now waged for more than four years, and made clear that any resumption of negotiations would be based on Russia's existing position, including the terms put forward at the 2022 Istanbul talks, which called for Ukraine to cede its eastern Donbas territory.¹⁷⁾ Furthermore, Russia holds "a strong motivation to use this war as an opportunity for a structural transformation that, beyond a mere regional conflict, promotes a reordering of the European security order and a deepening of global bloc formation." Yet should the war become protracted, "confining it to nothing more than a regional conflict or military clash could also provoke considerable resistance from within Russia itself."¹⁸⁾

Turning to Ukraine's side, the collapse of confidence in security guarantees has placed Ukraine in the paradoxical position of demanding harder terms for any ceasefire. Western support for Ukraine also appears to remain solid, as reflected in the completion of the final legislative procedures for the EU's 90 billion euro loan package (April 2026) and NATO's pledge of 70 billion euros in military equipment, support, and training (July 2026).

In sum, while both sides' capacity to continue the war is steadily diminishing, their respective bottom lines and resolve, each maintaining that "this is not a condition on which the war can end," remain firm. This is the structural backdrop to the stalled state of the negotiation process on both sides as of July 2026. The analysis above suggests that the current pattern of protracted attrition warfare between the two sides is likely to continue for the time being. Ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7 to 8, 2026, President Trump remarked that an end to the war was much closer than people believed, saying he was very strongly convinced that Putin wanted to end the war, and Zelensky likewise added that he wanted to end the war now. The Kremlin, however, stated flatly on July 16 that there were no grounds to expect an early resumption of the negotiation process, and Lavrov, too, said on July 9 that trust in the West's willingness to negotiate had been completely exhausted.¹⁹⁾

However, it is a matter of common sense that no war can continue indefinitely. Moreover, whenever the capability to sustain a war fails to keep pace with the will to sustain it, there remains an ever-present possibility that the current stalemate could give way. Directions such a shift might take include a dramatic diplomatic compromise, a Russian mobilization order, or an increase in nuclear rhetoric. A rapid victory by either side is, in theory, one conceivable possibility, but based on the evidence presented above, it does not appear realistic in practice. If so, more specifically, when might such an inflection point, a turning point capable of shaking the current stalemate, actually arrive?

The period most worth watching is likely to be the one in which the various pressures pushing the war toward an end or a ceasefire accumulate most intensively. With this in mind, the latter half of this year through the first half of next year appears the most likely window. It is during this period, in other words, that the gap between the capability and the will to continue the war seems most likely to surface explosively, revealing the inflection point that will determine whether the path ahead leads toward continued war or toward peace.

First, Ukraine's "40-Day Influence Operation" is set to conclude in early August. The results of its efforts to isolate Crimea and strike Russian oil refining facilities will be comprehensively assessed at that point, and whether the operation is extended may itself serve as a signal. Should it be extended, the current situation is likely to persist or worsen; should it instead be halted or shift into a lull, this would suggest the possibility of moving in step with Western pressure for a diplomatic compromise. Second, the coming July and August period is one in which strikes on Russia's oil refining capacity could translate into food and price problems that the public feels immediately. Russia's crude oil processing volume has fallen to 3.91 million barrels per day, its lowest level in 21 years, and as of early July, 43 percent of refining capacity was reportedly offline.²⁰⁾ As a result, Russia has, since July 8, banned even the export of diesel. Beyond the resulting fuel shortages for military operations, this diesel shortage is likely to inflict broad damage on everyday life, particularly since it disrupts the operation of agricultural machinery and transport trucks, which could deal a real blow to Russia's midsummer harvest and to fuel supply in remote areas. Should Russia's fuel crisis coincide with the winter heating season, its impact could be compounded. Third is the point at which the depletion of Russia's National Wealth Fund (NWF) and its rising national debt will produce a form of hardship that the public feels directly,²¹⁾ a point generally projected to fall sometime between the second half of this year and next year. During the boom years of its energy exports, Russia set aside a portion of its revenue as a kind of rainy-day reserve, building up the National Wealth Fund and drawing on it to cover fiscal shortfalls; the fund currently stands at only about 50 percent of its pre-war level. To guard against the scenario of the fund's outright depletion, Russia has itself frozen further drawdowns from the fund and has instead been issuing large volumes of government bonds to cover its widening fiscal deficit. The point at which the public begins to directly feel the pain caused by this bond issuance is now approaching. In other words, as bond issuance grows too large, the interest burden rises correspondingly, and the government eventually reaches a point at which it must make actual cuts to social spending such as pensions, subsidies, and public-sector wages.

Of course, it cannot be assumed that the forces pushing toward an end to the war or a ceasefire will necessarily also work to hasten peace. It cannot be ruled out that, in order to break through the pressures described above, Russia's leadership might abandon its contract-based recruitment system in favor of a shift to forced mobilization. This is a card that Putin has consistently avoided playing, and were it actually invoked, it holds the potential to reproduce a shock comparable to the one seen during the partial mobilization of September 2022, when approval ratings plunged and cracks appeared among the elite (a large-scale exodus of the population, sporadic unrest, and an influence on the Prigozhin mutiny, among other effects). Should Russia invoke a mobilization order to break through the limits of its contract-based recruitment system, this is most likely to occur after the September general election. An even more shocking scenario is the possibility that Russia might use nuclear weapons. On this point, GCRI (Global Catastrophic Risk Institute) has observed that a nuclear strike would be an enormous gamble carrying the risk of escalation to Russia's total destruction, but that if battlefield losses came to threaten Putin's grip on domestic power, such a strike could come to be seen by Putin as a "rational gamble."²²⁾ This is a matter that warrants close attention, particularly in light of the fact that debate over the possibility of Russia's use of nuclear weapons has recently continued to appear in the media.²³⁾

| Policy Implications

To begin, South Korea should proceed on the assumption that a further deployment of North Korean troops is likely in the second half of this year, and should prepare accordingly.²⁴⁾ As analyzed above, Russia is currently struggling with a sharp decline in its troop replenishment rate, and unless it shifts to a mobilization order after this September's general election,²⁵⁾ the existing contract-based recruitment system is no longer sustainable. Even should Russia bear the domestic political risk of issuing a mobilization order, North Korean troops have already proven useful to Russia in certain regions and phases of combat. Given these considerations, any additional North Korean deployment would naturally be welcomed by Russia. The problem is that, unlike previous deployments, this one is likely to occur at Russia's request, meaning the price Russia will have to pay for it will also rise. For our part, we should bear in mind the possibility that Russia may transfer advanced core military technologies it has thus far been reluctant to share, and should consider, on the basis of intelligence sharing and joint assessment between South Korea and the United States, establishing clear red lines in advance.

It is somewhat premature to discuss policy responses for the period beyond the first half of next year. In broad terms, however, two possible trajectories are likely to emerge over time. The first is an end to the war that amounts to a ceasefire for rearmament. Under this scenario, the alliance-level closeness that North Korea-Russia and China-Russia relations have developed during the war would persist even after the war ends, effectively extending the current security architecture. The second possibility is different: that in order to close the gap with the United States and China and preserve its status as a global power, Russia itself may take the initiative in resetting its relations with major countries, including the United States, Europe, and China, as well as South Korea.²⁶⁾ Should this scenario materialize, much of Russia's foreign relations would enter a period of readjustment, and space would open for the normalization or advancement of relations between South Korea and Russia as well. In an uncertain, transitional situation such as this, what matters is not so much prediction as avoiding the premature foreclosure of one's own options. In either case, it will be important for South Korea to deepen strategic dialogue and policy coordination with its allies and partner countries, since the new security architecture likely to emerge after the war ends will probably be a case of multicausality, a world in which a single outcome is shaped by a combination of multiple conditions that also interact with one another.

1. The remark came on Russia Day (June 12, the anniversary of the adoption of the 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Republic), when Putin met with war veterans. According to Interfax, he said, "It is clear that we have a large grouping of troops there [at the front]. It is more than 700,000."
2. On the morning of September 21, 2022, President Putin declared a partial mobilization targeting privates and sergeants under 35, junior officers under 50, and senior officers under 55, a move triggered directly by Ukraine's autumn counteroffensive. Because it directly contradicted his earlier pledge that there would be no mobilization, the announcement came as a considerable shock to the Russian public, prompting a mass exodus abroad, regional protests, and even controversy over forced conscription at border checkpoints, all of which entailed substantial political cost.
3. Early in the war (March 2022), Russia's Ministry of Defense released an official death toll just once, putting the figure at 1,351. Since then, the ministry has effectively stopped issuing regular official casualty statistics. In September 2022, then-Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu cited a figure of 5,937 killed in action, a number that was likewise far below Western estimates, which run into the tens of thousands.
4. Janis Kluge (Russia economy expert, German Institute for International and Security Affairs, SWP), analysis presented April 12-13, 2026; IISS-related figures (remarks by Nigel Gould-Davies and analysis by economist Janis Kluge, June 2026); CSIS (report dated July 1, 2026).
5. In January 2024, the Washington Post reported that while President Zelensky claimed 500,000 troops were deployed on the battlefield, the actual figure was estimated at around 300,000. The most recent CSIS report (July 1, 2026) estimates that approximately 400,000 Russian troops are facing off against approximately 250,000 Ukrainian troops along the front.
6. President Zelensky, interview with Sky News (UK), February 27, 2026, as cited by RBC-Ukraine.
7. CSIS's report dated July 1, 2026 puts Ukraine's cumulative casualties since the start of the war at approximately 600,000 (a figure broadly consistent with other reports). Converted to a monthly basis, this works out to roughly 18,000 casualties per month; applying the standard wartime casualty-to-death ratio of 1:4 yields an estimated average of just over 4,000 deaths per month.
8. Voluntary enlistment in Ukraine has fallen sharply since the conclusion of its last major offensive operation in 2023. Attempts to compensate through coercive conscription, a practice that has even given rise to the coinage "busification," have instead drawn in lower-quality recruits, worsening problems of discipline, physical fitness, and morale; reports indicate a substantial rise in desertion (some 200,000 cases), draft evasion (some 2 million cases), and unauthorized absence (AWOL).
9. "However, exports of large-caliber artillery shells, which have until recently formed the core of North Korea-Russia military cooperation, are likely to decline in 2026. This is because the character of the war is changing. Heavy artillery is playing a diminishing role at the front as time passes, and drones are now the single most important weapon. Russia will no longer need to import large quantities of artillery shells from North Korea, and as a result, the scale of North Korea-Russia arms and munitions trade, along with North Korea's export revenue from this trade, is likely to decline in 2026 as well." (Andrei Lankov (Visiting Research Fellow, Sejong Institute), "Outlook for Russia in 2026: The Ukraine War, Domestic and Foreign Policy," Sejong Focus, December 11, 2025).
10. "The Atlantic Council observes that Ukrainian drone units continuously update their software and tactics, with countermeasures and adaptations cycling on a near-weekly basis" (March 23, 2026, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/the-big-story/the-coming-compute-war-in-ukraine/).
11. The examples include the introduction of a first windfall profits tax in 2023-2024, direct increases to income and corporate taxes in 2025, a VAT increase and sweeping tax reform in January 2026, and, in April 2026, Putin's abandonment of his pledge to freeze tax rates through 2030.
12. While the July 2026 NATO summit in Ankara succeeded in codifying the political message that support for Ukraine would not waver, most assessments hold that this has not fully resolved uncertainty over the political sustainability of the underlying financing. This is because, in terms of actual fund flows, the summit largely reaffirmed existing programs rather than committing new money; there is no evidence that the €20 billion in previously pledged but undisbursed funds, outstanding even before the summit, has since been resolved; and past pledges have historically been fulfilled at a rate of less than half.
13. Dieuwertje Kuijpers, "Rally around All the Flags: The Effect of Military Casualties on Incumbent Popularity in Ten Countries 1990-2014," Foreign Policy Analysis, Vol. 15, No. 3 (2019).
14. CSIS analysts Maria Snegovaya and Jade McGlynn argue that economic costs erode Russian public opinion more powerfully than military shocks do. Drawing on survey data accumulated since 2022, they find that individuals' perceptions of their own economic well-being and broader economic outlook have consistently shown a positive correlation with support for the war. In the early period of the war (roughly 2022 to 2024), high levels of support coincided with a surge in real wages at a pace not seen since the mid-2000s, a "war boom" generated by expanded wartime government spending, including a defense-industry windfall, soldiers' pay, and the defense budget. Since early 2026, by contrast, as economic growth has stalled and the outlook has worsened, this causal relationship, in which the war once sustained the economy but the economy has now begun to erode support for it, appears to be reversing. Maria Snegovaya and Jade McGlynn, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), July 7, 2026.
15. KIIS (Kyiv International Institute of Sociology), report dated June 8, 2026, kiis.com.ua, id=1615.
16. 러시아-우크라이나 전황과 북러 관계 진행 상황, 2026. 6. 11., 이상준, 이슈브리프(아산정책연구원).
17. In a television interview, Putin stated that he was prepared to continue talks with American envoys aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, but rejected a proposal to halt the long-range strikes that have harmed both sides (Bloomberg, June 28, 2026). Amid Ukraine's intensifying strikes on Russia's energy sector, he also rejected a Kyiv proposal to limit the use of long-range missiles, stating that Moscow would continue the war it has now waged for more than four years. He further stated that, should negotiations resume, they would be based on Russia's existing position, including the terms put forward at the 2022 Istanbul talks, which called for Ukraine to cede its eastern Donbas territory (Al Jazeera, June 29, 2026).
18. 러시아-우크라이나 전황과 북러 관계 진행 상황, 2026. 6. 11., 이상준, 이슈브리프(아산정책연구원).
19. Ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara on July 7 to 8, 2026, President Trump remarked that an end to the war was much closer than people believed, saying he was very strongly convinced that Putin wanted to end the war; Zelensky likewise added that he wanted to end the war now. The Kremlin, however, stated flatly on July 16 that there were no grounds to expect an early resumption of the negotiation process, and Lavrov, too, said on July 9 that trust in the West's willingness to negotiate had been completely exhausted.
20. Kyiv Post/Reuters, cited July 2026.
21. Veritas Europaea, "The Real Russian Economy: War Budgets and Structural Decay" (May 27, 2026): The Atlantic Council has warned that the trigger for visible public discontent will not be inflation but cuts to social spending—"the moment pensioners actually receive less, local clinics close, or the subsidies sustaining rural Russia are cut off, and that moment is approaching."
22. "Ukraine and Nuclear War, 2026," GCRI (gcri.org/publications/commentary/ukraine-nuclear-war-2026).
23. This debate was first sparked by an article Sergei Karaganov, Honorary Chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and Academic Supervisor at the Higher School of Economics, published in Profile in June 2023, in which he argued that Russia should lower its threshold for nuclear use and should even consider limited preemptive nuclear strikes against European NATO states in order to cut off Western support for Ukraine. Related debate and reporting have continued since.
24. President Zelensky stated on his X account on July 25, 2026 that "Russia wants an additional 30,000 troops from North Korea," adding that "preparations to receive them [North Korean troops] in Voronezh, Russia, have been underway since June."
25. In a Sky News interview on July 27, 2026, Zelensky projected that Russia could issue a large-scale mobilization order, involving 300,000 to 500,000 troops, in late September to early October, following the State Duma elections in September.
26. Major General Vadym Skibitsky, Deputy Head of Ukraine's Defense Intelligence (GUR), stated at a roundtable titled "New Contours of European Security" held in Kyiv that "Russia is acutely aware that if it fails to resolve this war by 2026, the gap with the United States and China will become permanent, leaving it a 'regional power' in Eastern Europe forever" (Business Insider, 2026, citing remarks by GUR Deputy Head Skibitsky). Kyrylo Budanov, Head of Ukraine's Military Intelligence (HUR), the agency to which the GUR belongs, likewise stated in a February 27, 2026 interview with Ukrinform that "under Russia's own strategy, failing to extricate itself from this war by 2026 means losing even the chance at global leadership: it would remain, at best, a 'regional power,' a status it could never accept" (Kyiv Independent/Ukrinform, February 27, 2026, citing remarks by HUR Head Budanov).

※ The opinions expressed in 'Sejong Focus' are those of the author and do not represent the official views of Sejong Institute.