Ukraine’s army chief, Gen. Oleksandr Syrski, put a number on this year’s fighting: 600 square kilometers, about 232 square miles, taken back from Russia since January. He gave no locations for the gains. He did say the heaviest combat was in the southeast, around Oleksandrivka and Huliaipole.
Within days, several retired U.S. generals and a former U.S. intelligence director told CBS News that Kyiv now holds the upper hand. Retired Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, who once ran the Defense Intelligence Agency, framed it in operational terms. Ukraine, he wrote in an email, is defeating Russian operational objectives, setting up follow-on operations and keeping its freedom of action. Two other generals shared his view and said Ukrainian forces were outmaneuvering Russian ones at the front.
Reach beyond the front line
Experts point first to drones. Ukraine began building up short-range First Person View (FPV) drones in 2023, and they now account for more than 90% of Russian casualties, according to Ukraine’s president. Long-range drones and cruise missiles came into effective use from 2024, and the latest targets include military bases in St. Petersburg, over 600 miles from Ukraine’s borders.
The weak spot was the middle distance. Hitting targets reliably 30 to 60 miles away had been hard to do, and a front-line research unit of the Khartiia Brigade named extending drone range past 30 miles its “top priority.”
Analyst Rob Lee, a former U.S. Marine Corps infantry officer based in Ukraine, said that problem is now mostly solved. Last year Ukraine could not do it, he told CBS News. “They’re doing that very often, basically every day now.”
The strikes land on command posts, ammunition warehouses and vehicles. In a war where each side is trying to outlast the other’s resources, that matters, Lee said, because it will “degrade what gets to the front line” over time.
Not everyone agrees
Ashley and Lee both warned against treating operational gains as a guaranteed strategic win. Ashley called the situation “reversible and fragile at best,” depending on how far Putin is willing to escalate. Lee said things had improved for Ukraine but he did not expect a breakthrough.
Retired Gen. Joseph Ralston, formerly NATO’s supreme allied commander in Europe, went further and said no side is winning. In his view Russia cannot take all it wants without nuclear weapons, and Ukraine cannot retake what it has lost.
Ashley and Lee still read recent trends as favoring Ukraine. Ashley added that both sides still believe they can win, so a ceasefire is not close. “But time is not necessarily on Putin’s side,” he said.
