Who is winning the war in Ukraine now?

Russia launched more than 100 attack drones into Ukraine hours after Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump spoke by phone about a possible ceasefire, according to Ukraine's air force.

The US president had announced Russia and Ukraine will "immediately start negotiations toward a ceasefire" but this was countered by a much "less upbeat report" of the call by Putin himself, said Sky News. The Russian leader reiterated that the root causes of the conflict must first be eliminated before any ceasefire agreement. This is the language Putin "often uses as code to mean the removal" of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "and the installation of a Russian proxy government, as well as the incorporation of five illegally annexed Ukrainian regions into Russia".

Speaking before a meeting with EU defence ministers in Brussels, Germany's Defence Minister Boris Pistorius accused Russia of "playing for time", while continuing its assault on Ukraine.

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Can Ukraine win the war?

With peace talks continuing to stall even as Ukraine battles to slow the advance of Russian forces further into its territory, the outcome of the war is increasingly likely to be decided by two key factors: supply of soldiers and maintaining international support.

Zelenskyy has already lowered the age of military conscription in Ukraine to 25 in an attempt to boost troop numbers. But conscription remains a touchy topic in Ukraine, and officials have had to tread lightly amid dwindling enthusiasm for military service. Last year, Al Jazeera reported "feared patrols" hunting for potential conscripts, as officials searching for recruits "stalk nightclubs, concerts and subway stations". There were accusations that some were employing "dubious measures", including efforts to "round people up randomly".

Ukraine's "inherent weakness is that it depends on others for funding and arms", said the BBC's international editor, Jeremy Bowen. On the other hand, Russia "makes most of its own weapons" and is "buying drones from Iran and ammunition from North Korea" with no limitations on how they are used. It also enjoys an advantage in raw manpower, bolstered by yet another massive conscription drive last month. Putin's aim is to have a bigger army than America's, with 1.5 million active servicemen, "a sign of Russia's relentless militarisation", said Sky News' Moscow correspondent Ivor Bennett.

Yet despite its manpower advantages, Russia's gains on the battlefield have "slowed dramatically" in recent months, said The Telegraph. Western officials and analysts say Ukraine was able to stall Russia's "potentially war-winning offensive" in the east of the country "through a combination of improved drone tactics and defences".

What does victory look like for each side?

Before Russia launched its invasion in February 2022, Putin outlined the objectives of what he called a "special military operation". His goal, he claimed, was to "denazify" and "demilitarise" Ukraine, and to defend Donetsk and Luhansk, the two eastern Ukrainian territories occupied by Russian proxy forces since 2014.

Another objective, although never explicitly stated, was to topple the Ukrainian government and remove Zelenskyy. "The enemy has designated me as target number one; my family is target number two," said Zelenskyy shortly after the invasion. Russian troops made two attempts to storm the presidential compound.

Russia shifted its objectives, however, about a month into the invasion, after Russian forces were forced to retreat from Kyiv and Chernihiv. According to the Kremlin, its main goal became the "liberation of the Donbas", including the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia – but Moscow has made little progress in achieving this aim.

Russia has since scaled back its objectives. The Kremlin's "minimum requirement" appears to be "occupying the entirety of the Donbas region (comprising the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk)", said The Economist. It also wants to regain "control of Russia's own Kursk region, which Ukraine has partly occupied", and hold on to "the 'land bridge' it seized in the early stages of the war connecting Crimea to Russia".

As it stands, there is "no reason" to believe Putin wants long-term peace, said Sky News military analyst Michael Clarke, because "that's not good for his rule".

Ukraine's main objective remains the liberation of its occupied territories. That includes not just those held by Russia since the February 2022 invasion, but a return to its internationally recognised borders, including Crimea.

How many Russian and Ukrainian troops have died in the conflict?

True casualty figures are "notoriously difficult to pin down", said Newsweek, and "experts caution that both sides likely inflate the other's reported losses".

More than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and 380,000 injured on the battlefield, Zelenskyy said in an interview with NBC in February, with "tens of thousands" missing or in Russian captivity. However, in May, UALosses, a web project that records Ukrainian casualty data from open sources, listed nearly 74,000 as having been killed in the war so far.

Moscow has also had to respond to extensive losses in Ukraine. As of early May, the BBC Russian Service, in collaboration with independent media outlet Mediazona and a team of volunteers, using open source data from Russian cemeteries, military memorials and obituaries, has identified the names of 106,745 Russian soldiers killed during the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, 45,287 of them in 2024.

"The true number is clearly much higher", with military experts estimating the BBC/Mediazona tally may cover between 45% and 65% of total deaths, which would mean losses of between 164,223 and 237,211 personnel.