THROUGHOUT more than four years of fighting, there has often been talk of a “turning point.”
More often than not though, Russia’s war in Ukraine has then settled back into a familiar pattern with the ebb and flow of ground offensives and counteroffensives.
As the conflict has dragged on, another familiar but no less vicious pattern has emerged too, as both sides exchange drone and missile strikes deep inside each other’s territory.
Just this past month, the intensity of that air war increased again with two consecutive Russian aerial attacks on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and other cities that were the largest since the start of the war.
Last week it was Russia’s turn to again feel the “deep strike” reach of Ukrainian drones, when just hours before the opening of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, an attack set ablaze an oil terminal in the city and also hit a nearby naval base.
The attack on his home city cast a cloud over president Vladimir Putin’s showcase economic gathering and brought an unusually frank admission from the Russian leader.
“To our regret, some of them break through,” Putin said of the drone strikes. “Russia has an air defence system; we need to improve it, strengthen it, and we will do that.”
But despite these ongoing tit-for-tat aerial attacks between the two sides, the talk yet again among many military and diplomatic analysts is of a significant “turning point” in Europe’s largest, bloodiest conflict since the Second World War.
Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself appears to sense what appears to be a shift in the war’s dynamics and these past few days has sought to revive dormant peace talks by writing an open letter to his Russian counterpart.
In the letter, published late Thursday, Zelenskyy offered a face-to-face meeting and a ceasefire during negotiations on a broader peace deal.
It was the first such missive from the Ukrainian leader to Putin since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
“We see that the United States is fully focused on the issue of Iran, and it would be wrong to simply wait until the war in Europe returns to the centre of its attention,” Zelenskyy wrote. “Ukraine proposes ending this war through direct engagement between us – and you. I am proposing a meeting.”
Asked whether he would meet Zelenskyy, whom the Kremlin chief was careful not to name but to refer to only as “the letter’s author”, Putin was blunt.
“I don’t see the point in meeting; the only point is for the Ukrainian side to halt the advance of our armed forces. But we need agreements – not for six months, not for three months, but for the long term.
“Let the experts get to work and come up with some solutions. After that, we can meet,” the Russian leader insisted.
Russian war bloggers were equally dismissive of Zelenskyy’s letter, casting it as a malicious public relations stunt to stir up discontent inside Russia rather than end the war.
But even if such a cynical interpretation of Zelenskyy’s letter had a modicum of truth behind it, then the Ukrainian leader would only be capitalising on the growing evidence that Russian discontent with the war is in fact real.
Analysts attest that it’s those very signs of discontent, along with others, such as a growing optimism in Kyiv that it can fight Russia to a ceasefire, that have fuelled the latest speculation of an inflexion point having been reached this time around.
Such is the resonance of that point having been reached, that some analysts like research fellow Jack Watling, of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), maintain that a ceasefire “is now a realistic possibility”.
“Ukraine’s mood shift is not the result of a radical transformation of how the war is being fought but rather stems from a subtle turn in several trends that together point to a major change in the war’s trajectory,” wrote Watling recently in the pages of Foreign Affairs magazine.
So just what are these trends and the impact they are having on the war? Perhaps more importantly too, do they have the capacity to bring about that elusive durable ceasefire?
One of the first factors in attempting to answer such questions is to examine the issue of manpower and territorial gains.
AS a number of studies have shown, Russia is now paying more for less ground than at any point in the course of the war. Its monthly casualty rates, now reportedly above 30,000, are said to have exceeded its recruitment rates since 2025.
As Watling points out, for all of 2024 and most of 2025, Russia was able to muster more recruits than it was losing.
This effectively allowed Russian forces to double down on the intensity of frontline assaults even though they were suffering high casualties. By contrast, Ukraine was suffering more casualties than it could replace with fresh troops.
Watling and other analysts say that this led to the complacent belief in the Kremlin “that, even if progress was slow, the Russian military would eventually occupy the entirety of the Donbas, the contested region in eastern Ukraine that Russia laid claim to in 2022”.
Such confidence allowed Moscow at that time to dig its heels in over any moves towards peace negotiations brokered by the Trump administration.
This confidence was born out of the assumption that should talks fail, then time would tell in Russia’s favour on the battlefield.
Related to the manpower and personnel factor is the evidence also that Russia’s rate of advance is collapsing. According to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), Russia’s forces gained 9.76 square kilometres per day in the first four months of 2025, but only 4.6 over the same period this year – less than half last year’s pace.
“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 at the ISW.
While slowing Russia’s advance on the battlefield, Kyiv’s drones and aerial abilities meanwhile have also transformed Ukraine’s fightback by taking the war to Russia.
The mass production of UAVs – vastly increased since last year – allows Kyiv to wage the long-range drone war and maintain a shorter-range “kill zone” along the front line.
This has largely compensated for Ukraine’s shortage of troops, further slowing Russian offensives many feared would accelerate last year and this spring.
Strikes deep into Russia are also having a significant impact on the war’s trajectory. These days – in contrast to the early stages of the war – Ukraine is prosecuting a sustained air barrage against targets more than 1000 kilometres behind Russian lines.
This has been brought about by new domestically produced long-range strike drones and cruise missiles. Last week’s hit on St Petersburg during the Economic Forum – sometimes dubbed “Putin’s Davos” – is a stark case in point.
Backed by some €90 billion in EU loans, Kyiv is pouring resources into domestic arms production in a bid to reduce dependence on Western weapons and the political constraints that often accompany them.
Ever since the war became bogged down in its earlier stages, Ukrainian policymakers have recognised the importance of bringing the war home to Russia.
Kyiv, though, has also been under no illusions about the deep reluctance of Ukraine’s allies to authorise strikes against targets inside the Russian Federation using Western weapons.
This has left Ukraine with little choice but to prioritise the development of domestically produced long-range drones and missiles capable of penetrating deep into Russia.
As Peter Dickinson of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center recently pointed out, Ukraine’s bombing tactics are also evolving, especially with regard to key logistical hubs.
“Ukrainian attacks on Russia’s oil industry have proved particularly effective. During spring 2026, a series of spectacular drone strikes against port terminals succeeded in disrupting Russian exports, while attacks on refineries led to reports of significantly reduced capacity,” Dickinson observed last month.
Ukrainian officials, he says, believe that by targeting Russia’s energy industry, they can deprive the Kremlin of a vital economic lifeline that funds the ongoing invasion.
All of this has meant that in Russia, resentment is deepening over a war that has crept ever closer to home.
According to Russia’s state-owned polling institution, the Russian Public Opinion Research Centre (Vciom), its index of “personal protest potential,” an indicator of respondents’ willingness to take part in demonstrations, rose to 25% in April – its highest level since the war began.
But there is another factor also playing into this shift in the war – geopolitics and diplomacy.
Some analysts say that the Trump administration’s dubious “peace-making” efforts marked the start of this.
In effect, Donald Trump’s efforts, they say, amounted to de facto pressure on Ukraine to acquiesce to a bad deal that would have allowed Russia to keep the territories it had unlawfully seized.
The fact that Zelenskyy baulked at this cast Ukraine adrift from much US support, but in turn might just have played to Kyiv’s longer-term advantage, say observers.
For not only did such moves consolidate support from European allies, but they set Ukraine into a “go it-alone” mindset from which it has benefitted.
All of this has led some to interpret the Trump administration’s handling of relations with Ukraine as a gross strategic and diplomatic miscalculation.
That said, efforts to maintain US support have not dried up completely. That much was evident last week when 18 Republicans defied their leaders to join Democrats in support of a bill that runs counter to Trump’s agenda.
In a House vote, they approved new aid for Ukraine and moves to impose a fresh round of sanctions targeting the industries fuelling Russia’s war economy.
The bill now heads to the Senate, where, admittedly, Trump’s opposition has stopped similar attempts at new penalties on Russia and its allies.
And even if it were to clear both chambers, it would likely be vetoed by the president, who has repeatedly baulked at legislation that seeks to constrain his ability to negotiate on foreign policy matters.
Still, backers of the measure said the vote last Thursday sent a strong bipartisan message to the president that significant support remains in Congress for Ukraine.
SO, where does this leave the war and the prospects for a ceasefire and peace? Viewed from a battlefield perspective, some senior Ukrainian military chiefs are convinced that this is indeed a pivotal moment.
Speaking to Reuters, Andriy Biletsky, a senior Ukrainian commander, said recently that “the next six to nine months are a turning point”.
Biletsky, who commands Ukraine’s revered Third Army Corps, told the news 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 maintains.
All of this of course flies in the face of what for so long has been the prevailing narrative of Ukraine’s inevitable defeat.
It was a narrative too that the Trump administration itself tirelessly pushed, with the US leader insisting that Zelenskyy and Ukraine don’t “have any cards” and in any case, Russia always wins its wars.
What is clear right now though is that the strategic and geopolitical landscape of this war has changed. According to George Barros, the longtime Russia analyst at ISW, this is the moment outside countries should seize on Ukraine’s current advantages and help it exploit the gains which he warns are 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,” Barros recently told US political website The Hill.
“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,” Barros added.
As it stands, Ukrainian resilience, it would seem, has given it a rare modicum of leverage right now. Whether with its allies it can fully harness that to its ultimate advantage remains to be seen, and anyway, Putin, under pressure as he is like never before, will doubtless see it differently.
