How Ukraine turned the tide against Russia

Ukraine appears to be gaining momentum on the battlefield in its grinding fight with Russia, regaining territory for the first time in years as it outflanks Moscow’s forces through its domination of drone warfare. 

Defense analysts this week said the war had entered a new phase, with Kyiv poised to break a stalemate that has been in place since late 2023, with neither side able to make significant gains along a nearly 700-mile front line.

Kyiv is now calling the next six months “crucial” for it to seize the battlefield initiative, as Moscow has responded to the momentum with threats of escalation and stepped up aerial strikes.

“For the very first time since 2023, the Ukrainians have actually managed to take back more terrain than the Russians did,” said George Barros, a longtime analyst on Russia now with the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

In a report this week, ISW said the Ukrainian gains show the war is shifting in favor of its forces, at least for the time being, thanks to Kremlin troops stagnating in battlefield advances and Kyiv’s forces effectively using drones and innovative tactics to break out of old positions.

Drones have proven to be the most effective tool for the Ukrainians, who have used them to extend the so-called kill zone — the space around the front line where troops are most vulnerable to attack — more than 10 miles in both directions, according to Anatol Lieven, a senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.  

“The Russians simply cannot accumulate the kind of mass and armor needed for a breakthrough,” Lieven told The Hill.

“Only a few months ago, but certainly a year ago, the majority of analysts were saying that by now Russia would have captured the whole of the Donbas,” he added, referring to the region that Russia sees as a “priority goal” to take. “In fact, Russia is still far, far from achieving that objective.”

That has allowed Ukraine to transition from a positional war — in which battle lines barely move, with neither side able to amass the forces necessary to make any serious push into the other’s held territory — to now begin to take more terrain than the Russians did beginning in April. 

“That’s because the Ukrainians have gotten more effective at denying the Russians their advances,” Barros told The Hill.

Barros said the shift has been months in the making, dating all the way back to late 2025, when the Ukrainians began striking Russian ground-based radars, electronic warfare stations, surface-to-air missiles and drone capabilities, effectively blinding Moscow’s forces from incoming air threats.

Peter Rough, a senior fellow and director of the Center on Europe and Eurasia at the Hudson Institute who returned from Ukraine earlier this month, said the Ukrainians have shown remarkable innovation when it comes to drone warfare.

He relayed a conversation he had with a military medic, in which the man told him he hadn’t treated a gunshot wound in six months because of all the action around drones.

“There are snipers who have been retrained, sometimes begrudgingly, for drone systems,” Rough noted.

The progress has allowed Kyiv to land more long-range strikes further into Russia on oil and military facilities, dealing blows to the country’s economy and war efforts. Case in point, Ukraine early Wednesday morning struck a Russian air base in Voronezh, a military aircraft repair plant in Taganrog, and an oil refinery in Tuapse.

It has also empowered Ukraine to begin new mechanized assaults that have slowly pried back land from Russian control faster than Moscow could take it.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last week declared Ukraine had retaken nearly 230 square miles of territory since the start of the year. Moscow currently controls nearly 20 percent of the country’s territory.

Russia is “going backwards on the battlefield,” Anne Keast-Butler, director of the U.K. communications intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters, said in an annual public address Wednesday. 

She added that nearly 500,000 Russian soldiers have been killed since the start of the Ukraine war in February 2022.

Russia has responded to the changing atmosphere by escalating attacks on Ukraine and expanding its threats to surrounding European countries. 

The Russian Foreign Ministry on Monday threatened a fresh wave of “systematic strikes” targeting “decision-making centers and command posts” in Kyiv, warning foreign nationals and diplomats they should leave.

An overnight drone attack on Ukraine went astray, slamming into an apartment building in eastern Romania, injuring two people in the NATO member country, officials said. 

As NATO members responded with promises to protect every inch of the alliance’s member countries, Dmitry Medvedev, a top adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, warned Europe’s “peaceful sleep is over.”

Russia said the new strikes were a response to an alleged Ukrainian drone attack last week that Moscow claims hit a student dormitory in the Luhansk region and killed at least 21 individuals.

Last weekend, Russia launched one of its heaviest strikes on Kyiv since the fighting began, firing 90 missiles and more than 600 drones, which killed at least four people and injured another 87. 

Ukraine is seeking to rally global support during what it says is a pivotal time in the conflict. Zelensky wrote a letter to President Trump and the U.S. Congress this week appealing for more Patriot air defense munitions, given signs that Russia is preparing to “intensify its campaign of terror.”

Andriy Biletsky, a senior Ukrainian commander, told Reuters on Wednesday “the next six to nine months are a turning point.”

Biletsky, who commands Ukraine’s revered Third Army Corps, told the outlet he believes Moscow’s forces are exhausted and unable to make any significant battle wins. 

“The lack of personnel no longer allows them to advance the way they did, for example, a year ago,” Biletsky told Reuters.

That advantage gives Kyiv the chance to make enough gains to strengthen its position in peace negotiations — which are stalled for the time being, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged last week. 

“We just sort of sensed that there wasn’t a lot of progress being made,” Rubio said. “We’re also not interested in getting involved in an endless cycle of meetings that lead to nothing.” 

He added that Washington remains open to mediating future talks, stressing that a negotiated settlement — not a military victory — is the only way to end the war.

But Barros argued outside countries should seize on Ukraine’s current advantages and help it exploit the gains, warning that they’re not going to be permanent. 

“What the United States and international partners supporting Ukraine are looking at is an extremely rare, ephemeral opportunity to lean into helping Ukraine exploit this advantage that they have while they still have it,” he said.

“I’m not prepared to argue that it’s going to be here nine months from now. So we really have to look at this window for what it is.”