Ukrainian military expert and former SBU officer (2004–2015) Ivan Stupak said this on Espreso TV.“I’ll explain why the Russians are ramping up pressure with this idea of: ‘Let’s quickly get results, let’s push harder, let’s press and everything will collapse.’ Because for 3.5 years they’ve essentially been stuck in Donbas. There’s been gradual pressure on Ukrainian defenses, but once again: the breakthroughs they imagined simply haven’t happened,” he said.Stupak noted that the part of World War II starting when Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union until its end lasted 1,480 days. By around January 2026, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine will have lasted the same length of time, and the aggressor will need to show at least some kind of victory by then.“And now let me give you just a few small numbers, and you’ll understand what might be strongly triggering them. In terms of numbers: the so-called ‘Great Patriotic War’ in the Soviet Union lasted 1,480 days. Remember this figure: 1,480. That was the time it took for the Soviet Union to push Nazi Germany from the outskirts of Moscow all the way to central Berlin, until the war ended. Everything — everything — took 1,480 days. Today, the full-scale war has already lasted 1,273 days. And during this time, they haven’t captured a single major district center, let alone a regional ceter  in Ukraine.That’s why I think as this mark approaches — sometime around January 2026, when the timelines align — they’ll be rushing to show their population at least something, some kind of victory, because for Russians this war has already been dragging on unpleasantly long. That’s why they’re insisting on the quick surrender of territory to present it as a major achievement. And at the same time, they keep pushing this narrative in the information space: ‘Let’s press harder, and Ukraine’s defenses will collapse,’” the military expert noted.Fighting in the urban agglomeration in the Donetsk region, which includes Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka, could last at least a year and a half, according to military expert and former spokesperson of the Ukrainian Armed Forces' General Staff Vladyslav Selezniov.