Sitrep for April 18-21, 2025 (as of 07:30 a.m. UTC+3)

Frontline Situation Update

In the Kursk region, according to a Russian Ministry of Defense report, Russian forces captured the village of Oleshnya on April 19. However, according to pro-Russian milblogger Kirill Fyodorov, fighting for the village is still ongoing. As of the 2010 census, the population of Oleshnya stood at 104.

In the Belgorod region, the Ukrainian Air Force struck a bridge in the village of Grafovka, located slightly east of the current frontline. According to the Ukrainian Telegram channel Soniashnyk, the strike was carried out using a French AASM Hammer glide bomb, dropped from a Mikoyan MiG-29 fighter aircraft. It is worth noting that F-16 fighter aircraft often accompany Ukrainian MiG-29s to provide cover. France has not imposed territorial restrictions on the use of its weapons against targets in the Russian Armed Forces' rear.

The Pokrovsk direction has seen little change in recent days, with the exception of a claim by the Russian MoD on April 19 about the alleged full capture of the village of Shevchenko. Most of the settlement was already under Russian control, while the rest was still contested.

Ukrainian journalist Yurii Butusov described a possible provocation involving Shevchenko: since the RuAF announced its capture before the start of the ceasefire, they could have brought in new units during the truce, while any response from the Armed Forces of Ukraine would have been considered a violation of the ceasefire. We doubt that a deliberate provocation was actually planned in this area. If that had been the case, the Russian MoD would likely have accused the AFU of violating the ceasefire, as they did in the case of the villages of Sukha Balka and Bahatyr.

Since no such statements were made regarding Shevchenko, we tend to view the situation as another “advance on credit”—an attempt by the Russian command to rush announcements of real and fabricated gains before the start of the ceasefire.

In the Lyman direction, the RuAF, according to DeepState, advanced in the area of the village of Nove and captured the village of Katerynivka—before the announcement of the "Easter truce." On April 20, after the ceasefire had begun, the Russian MoD further claimed the capture of the village of Novomykhailivka, located north of Katerynivka. We do not interpret this as a false flag attack, but rather as another “advance on credit”—the village is marked as contested on DeepState’s map.

In the Toretsk direction, Russian forces have advanced in the above-mentioned village of Sukha Balka. They continue their attempts to straighten the frontline by advancing from the village of Tarasivka, located north of the captured villages of Baranivka and Vozdvyzhenka, toward the village of Nelipivka, south of Toretsk. It is worth noting that these preparatory actions are necessary for further advances towards the junction on the Pokrovsk-Kostiantynivka highway.

In the Novopavlivka (Kurakhove) direction, no changes in the frontline have been recorded; however, the DeepState updated their map to reflect previous advances of Russian forces near Rozlyv. Earlier this month, we suggested that the territory to the east of the village had already been captured.

Ukrainian and Russian Strikes

In the early hours of April 18, Russian forces attacked the city of Kharkiv with three Iskander-K cruise missiles. Photographs from the site show a 9M727 missile with the corresponding markings.

One missile hit a civilian business while the airburst of another one damaged residential buildings. As a result, one person was killed and 119 were injured.

We find it extremely hypocritical to announce a ceasefire the day after such an attack on a residential area.

Easter Truce

On April 19, Vladimir Putin announced an “Easter truce” lasting 30 hours—from 6:00 p.m. Moscow time until midnight the following day. The declaration came unexpectedly just one hour before the truce was scheduled to begin. Though both sides later accused each other of violations along the frontline, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy acknowledged that no air raid alerts were issued in Ukraine on Easter Day (April 20).

A full ceasefire was not achieved, but the intensity of combat operations appeared to decrease somewhat — at least in certain sections of the frontline.

Given how late the announcement was made, there is every reason to believe the order to cease fire was not relayed to Russian troops in time. As Kyiv Independent military correspondent Illia Ponomarenko noted, it is highly doubtful that Russian soldiers near the line of contact received the order in a timely manner. Both Ponomarenko and the pro-Russian Telegram channel Voyenny Osvedomitel [Military Informant] suggest that Putin declared the truce solely to impress Donald Trump. The truce, which did not fully halt combat operations but merely reduced their intensity, appears to be more of a political gesture than a genuine peace effort, seemingly intended to appeal to Trump’s view of Putin as a peacemaker.

That impression was further reinforced by Russia’s refusal to accept Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s offer to extend the truce for 30 days. According to Zelenskyy, Putin’s response would “reveal Russia's true intentions, as 30 hours are enough for headlines, but not for genuine confidence-building measures.” By the evening of April 20, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated that Putin had not issued any order to prolong the “Easter truce,” and once the 30-hour period ended, combat operations resumed.

According to a BBC source within the AFU, Ukrainian troops were immediately ordered to cease fire following the truce announcement and to focus on documenting any violations. Meanwhile, reactions from pro-Russian milbloggers were mixed. Some shared local reports of an informal order to halt fire and tried to justify why a full ceasefire was virtually impossible to achieve. Others, however, welcomed the brief pause in fighting.

Both sides used the truce to evacuate the bodies of the dead, rotate personnel, and clear mines in certain areas.

In the Lyman direction, Russian forces were pulling out damaged engineering equipment that had gotten stuck at a ford on the Zherebets River, which was preventing other vehicles from crossing the river. In some areas, the intensity of shelling decreased, but in most directions, Ukrainian forces did not observe any changes.

During the "Easter truce," there were no reports of civilian deaths. Seven people on both sides of the frontline were injured due to shelling, drone strikes or landmine explosions. This number is significantly lower than the average daily number of wounded—in January and February, there was an average of 33 casualties per day, which rose to 43 in March and reached 48 in the first two-thirds of April (statistics for 2024 can be found in our report on this topic).

The Wall Street Journal published an article claiming that the ceasefire declared by Putin was an "easy diplomatic victory" and allowed Moscow to showcase its willingness to negotiate and desire for peace. Ruslan Leviev disagrees with this assessment and believes that the Kremlin might miss the opportunity to freeze the war on terms favorable for itself. Russia continues to insist on deliberately unfeasible demands, such as the recognition of the annexation of Crimea, and the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions, including areas it does not control. Ukraine will never accept such terms, and Trump has no leverage to force it to comply. Even halting the delivery of already allocated aid from the Biden administration and stopping intelligence sharing would not be critical enough for Ukraine to recognize the annexation of the five regions and effectively capitulate. If Russia were to agree to freezing the war along the current frontline, it could instead demand terms that, while painful for Kyiv, could potentially become the basis for negotiations. Putin is likely hoping to secure more favorable terms in the future.

The Kiel Institute for the World Economy in Germany has calculated that the European Union could replace US assistance to Ukraine by increasing its contributions by just 0.2 percent of the EU’s total GDP. But such a step would require participation from the bloc’s largest economies—Germany, France, Italy and Spain—as well as the United Kingdom, which is no longer a member of the EU. Yet, when the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, proposed in March 2025 an additional €40 billion [$46 billion] financial aid package for Ukraine, France, Italy and Spain opposed the initiative. A scaled-down proposal is now being developed, calling for €5 billion [$5.8 billion] to prioritize the delivery of all types of ammunition to Ukraine, including artillery rounds.

Theories have circulated online suggesting that because Ukraine receives significantly more bodies of fallen soldiers in exchanges with Russia, it must be suffering heavier losses. This assertion is misleading. The disparity in numbers is due to the nature of the fighting: Russia is advancing into Ukrainian positions, and the battlegrounds often remain contested or gradually fall under Russian control. As a result, Russian forces are able to retrieve the bodies of their dead from these areas, while the Ukrainian military often cannot.

Russian forces reportedly destroyed a HIMARS MLRS near the village of Starovarvarivka, west of the city of Kramatorsk. Some pro-Russian sources have claimed that a HIMARS resupply vehicle was also destroyed in the strike. However, this is inaccurate, as HIMARS launchers are self-loading and no such vehicle exists.

South Korean intelligence and other Western media sources have repeatedly reported that North Korea has supplied the Russian army with the 240mm M1991 MLRS in addition to the Koksan M1989 self-propelled howitzer. However, there has been no confirmed evidence that such systems are in service with the RuAF. A video has been released showing Russian soldiers somewhere in the rear installing slat armor on an M1991 MLRS. It remains unclear why footage of these MLRS had not surfaced earlier, but we suspect that several months may have been spent training the crews.

A video has been released showing a strike by a modified version of the Shahed-136 (Geran-2) loitering munition, apparently targeting military trucks (painted in camouflage colors) in Sumy. Attacks by Shaheds on such small tactical targets (as opposed to power substations, factories, or residential areas) are relatively rare—we have seen only a few such cases throughout the war.

Pro-Russian channels claim that the targeting for this strike was done by another reconnaissance Shahed, equipped with an electro-optical system instead of a standard camera. If this is the case, it suggests that the Shahed-136 (Geran-2) loitering munition is becoming a platform for Russia to produce various UAV modifications tailored for different tasks.

Ukrainian manufacturers are also continuously improving their UAVs and releasing new versions. Information has emerged about the development and start of serial production of a new "drone-missile" called Bars [Leopard], with a claimed range of up to 800 km [500 mi]. The line between drones and missiles is sometimes difficult to define, but we conditionally classify such aircraft as cruise missiles.

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