Which side is winning the war: Russia or Ukraine?

The recent peace talks in Abu Dhabi ended abruptly with Russia, Ukraine and the United States requiring just three hours to declare the latest round of negotiations concluded.

On the second and final day of meetings, representatives emerged with “little to show”, and “offering scant sign of progress” towards ending a war that is about to enter its fifth year, said Kim Barker in The New York Times.

In fact a peace deal “looks close” between Russia and Ukraine, “except on everything that matters”, said Eva Hartog in Politico. Control of the Donbas region, security guarantees and the efficacy of a ceasefire are major issues on which agreement has not been reached.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

As the war continues, each side has claimed small victories but the overall dimensions have barely shifted.

Can Ukraine win the war?

“Despite the Trump administration’s efforts to mediate peace talks”, Russia has maintained a “relentless offensive that has continued unabated”, said The New York Times.

At home, “more than 1,100 apartment buildings in the capital are still without power”, said Kathryn Armstrong of the BBC. Moscow has been launching “widespread deadly” attacks on Ukraine’s energy sector, as well as killing seven people and injuring 15 in Druzhkivka with cluster bomb strikes in recent days.

With Ukrainian morale believed to be at breaking point, the outcome of the war is increasingly likely to be decided by two key factors: the supply of soldiers and maintaining international support.

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 massive conscription drives.

Putin aims 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.

Its superiority in personnel and materials – along with the use of new “infiltration tactics”, reported by Deutsche Welle – has seen it make slow but steady progress on the battlefield, gradually expanding the amount of Ukrainian territory it controls over the past year.

The average rate of Russian gains in 2025 was 176 square miles per month, according to data from the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. Russia made its largest monthly territorial gains in November, but the suggestion by Putin and senior Russian government and military figures that Ukraine’s frontline faces “imminent collapse” is a “false narrative”, said the institute. Such claims are likely to be “an effort to coerce the West and Ukraine into capitulating to Russian demands that Russia cannot secure itself militarily”.

As winter approached, Putin “shifted the war to Ukraine’s energy and logistics systems”, said Sergey Maidukov on Al Jazeera. While this “looks like a replay of past winters”, where Russia “tried to freeze Ukraine into surrendering”, by the end of last year, the strategy had “evolved”. Now, “the aim is not merely to punish Ukraine but to also destabilise Europe” via the influx of refugees who would be forced to flee across the borders if Ukraine’s energy system collapsed during the winter months.

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.

The Trump administration’s initial 28-point plan to end the war suggests Russia’s “minimum requirement” remains “occupying the entirety of the Donbas region (comprising the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk)”, said The Economist. Most contentiously, this includes territory it has so far failed to take by force. Other provisions include limits on the size of Ukraine’s army and missile capability, and barring it from Nato membership or hosting Nato peacekeepers on its soil.

Kyiv was quick to denounce these demands as amounting to capitulation, and has countered with its own 20-point framework, hammered out with US negotiators. Describing the plan as “the main framework for ending the war”, Zelenskyy has proposed security guarantees from the US, Nato and European countries to prevent further Russian aggression, with the potential option of establishing a demilitarised “free economic zone” in eastern Donbas.

While this represents a softening of Ukraine’s position, it is still unlikely to be palatable to Putin. The Russian president would gladly have taken as a win a “Kremlin-friendly peace plan that enshrines Ukraine’s perpetual subordination”, said The New York Times. But he’ll also see “a failed process” as a victory if it leads Donald Trump to “pull remaining support for Ukraine”. With his economy struggling and his troops mired in a slow advance that’s had a steep cost in “lives and matériel”, Putin’s capacity for continued war “isn’t limitless”. But he believes “time is on his side” and his goal hasn’t shifted: he “wants to break Ukraine”.

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”.

As of January this year, Russian forces have suffered “nearly 1.2 million casualties” since they invaded Ukraine in 2022, which would mark “more losses than any major power in any war since World War II”, said think tank Center for Strategic & International Studies. “At current rates, combined Russian and Ukrainian casualties could reach 2 million by the spring of 2026.”

Ukrainian casualty tolls – including deaths, injuries, and soldiers classified as missing – are around 500,000 to 600,000, compared to Russia’s 1.2 million, said Brad Lendon of CNN.

This has increased dramatically, even within the last year. In June, Russia’s wartime toll reached a “historic milestone”, said The Guardian, with more than a million troops killed or injured since the start of the invasion, according to the UK Ministry of Defence.

Russia Matters cited MoD estimates for October 2025 that put the number of Russian soldiers killed or wounded at 1,118,000.

While Moscow has remained tight-lipped about how many of its soldiers have been killed or wounded, the recently concluded summer offensive “has come at an enormous cost” but “achieved no major objectives”, said The Economist.