Who is winning the war in Ukraine?

US negotiators must not be misled by Russia's "stalling tactics", outgoing German foreign minister Anna Baerbock has warned.

The latest assessment from the Institute for the Study of War concluded that continued Russian efforts to "hold the temporary ceasefire in the Black Sea hostage" were designed to "stall efforts toward a general ceasefire and extract additional concessions from the West".

It comes just days after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Moscow of "trying to drag the US into endless, meaningless discussions about fake conditions to buy time and then try to seize even more land", with Russia "preparing for new offensives in Sumy, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions".

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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 are accusations that some are employing "dubious measures", including that they "round people up randomly".

Ukraine's "inherent weakness is that it depends on others for funding and arms", wrote 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, yet this has not stopped Vladimir Putin from bolstering his fighting force even further. On Tuesday he ordered 160,000 Russian men aged between 18 and 30 be called up to the reserves in what is the "largest conscription drive in 14 years", said Sky News.

While Russian authorities claim it has nothing to do with the war in Ukraine, "in the long term, it has everything to do with the conflict, and the wider geopolitical tensions", said Sky's Moscow correspondent Ivor Bennett.

Putin's aim is to have a bigger army than America's, with 1.5 million active servicemen.

The latest draft is "a result of this, and it's a sign of Russia's relentless militarisation. Whatever the outcome of peace talks, the Kremlin will remain on a war footing for some time yet."

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 the country's president, 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".

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 February, UALosses, a web project that records Ukrainian casualty data from open sources, listed more than 70,400 names.

Moscow has also had to respond to extensive losses in Ukraine, with more than 100,000 verified by the BBC and Mediazona as soldiers killed in Ukraine. "The true number could be more than double," said the BBC.

Ukraine's General Staff estimates that Russia has lost a total of 859,920 troops, a figure believed to include "dead, wounded, missing and captured" soldiers, said The Kyiv Independent in February.