Ukraine war: who is winning?

With Russia still advancing in the east of the country but Ukraine continuing to hold territory across the border in the Kursk region, both sides are looking to maximise their battlefield position ahead of Donald Trump's return to the White House early next year.

Trump campaigned on the promise to end the war in "24 hours" but details of his plan "remain vague", said Al Jazeera. Observers say it most likely involves ceding some or all of the Russian-occupied areas – which currently accounts for almost 19% of Ukraine’s territory – and a promise not to expand Nato for 10 or 20 years in exchange for a peace deal or a freeze of front-line positions.

Can Ukraine win the war?

In October, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy unveiled his own highly anticipated and much-trailed five-point "victory plan" which he claimed could bring an end to the war by the end of next year.

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Along with a guaranteed invitation to join Nato, it called for specific weapons support from Western allies and a non-nuclear deterrence mechanism with the power to destroy Russia’s military, though "he said there is an additional secret addendum that he could not disclose", said Reuters.

As Ukraine battles to slow the advance of Russia further into its territory, the outcome of the war looks increasingly likely to be decided by two key factors: supply of soldiers and maintaining international support.

Earlier this year, Zelenskyy 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. Al Jazeera has reported that "feared patrols" are 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 – in addition to an advantage in raw manpower – "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.

The prospect that the Trump White House cuts some or all aid to Ukraine is very real and has focused minds on both sides. In the immediate aftermath of his father's election win, Donald Trump Jr. warned Zelenskyy he was 38 days from losing his "allowance".

Lieutenant General Ihor Romanenko, the former deputy head of the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, told Al Jazeera that the armed forces are already bracing for the worst but cautioned it was still hard to predict what the famously unpredictable president would do.

If the "worst-case scenario" for Ukraine materialises, said CNN, namely if the US stopped providing aid, Europe did not step up its assistance and Ukraine was not able to access the $50 billion or so in frozen Russian assets promised to it by the G7, then Russia would "likely start to make much bigger gains" which could force Kyiv to the negotiating table.

What about Ukraine's incursion into Russia?

Russia's Kursk region, on the border with Ukraine, has been engulfed in conflict for over two months. Kyiv's surprise incursion into the southern region was "designed partly to pressure Russian generals to scramble forces from other parts of the eastern front in Ukraine", said Reuters. The continued presence of Ukrainian forces on Russian soil has caused considerable embarrassment to the Kremlin and anger among the local population.

In August, Kyiv claimed it had controlled over 1,250 square kilometres of Russia's territory, including 92 settlements, but a spokesperson for Russia’s counteroffensive in the Kursk region claimed this week that about 50% of the territory captured by Ukraine during the incursion had been retaken.

Also, it "remains unclear how Ukraine's leaders intend to translate this tactical success into strategic or political gains" with the incursion offering "opportunities," but also carrying "considerable risks and costs".

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.

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". But in September, The Wall Street Journal reported that about one million Ukrainians and Russians have been killed or wounded since the war began. The report also said that, in the first half of 2024, three times as many people died in Ukraine as were born.

In September, the BBC's Russian unit said that more than 70,000 people fighting in Russia’s military have now died in Ukraine, and for the first time, volunteers – civilians who joined the armed forces after the start of the war – "now make up the highest number of people killed on the battlefield" since the invasion began in 2022.

Ukraine does not habitually release casualty figures, but as of November 2024 UALosses, a web project which records details of Ukrainian soldiers killed in the conflict, had gathered more than 65,000 names.

As for civilians, the Norwegian Refugee Council reported that more than 3,200 civilian casualties were recorded in Ukraine between June and August this year – a 33.7% increase compared with the same period last year.