Is Ukraine turning the tide of war?

Ukraine is riding high on a string of recent battlefield successes, and few weapons symbolize the country’s renewed energy like the Sting drone. Cheap and domestically produced, the Sting stands just 17 inches tall and looks like a thermos with wings. Known as an “interceptor drone,” the Sting excels at knocking out larger Russian projectiles midair. Stings have accomplished more than 3,000 interceptions to date, according to a June update from its manufacturer.

Given that the Sting barely existed a year ago, and made its first-ever interception in May 2025, the Ukrainian weapon offers a potent metaphor for the scrappy, competitive spirit Ukraine has shown in more than four years of defense against a much larger enemy.

Ukrainian necessity has been the mother of invention—and military innovation—as Russia’s invasion drags on. A flurry of recent events suggest that Ukraine may be gaining the upper hand, challenging certain long-held presumptions of inevitable defeat.

The current moment affords a window of opportunity to Ukraine, said David Kirichenko, an associate research fellow at the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based research group.

“Ukraine has become very powerful, from a technological perspective,” Kirichenko said. “The Europeans, and especially the Americans, are seeing that Ukraine is building itself up [into] a position of strength.”

Reports throughout the month of June have demonstrated Ukraine’s apparent recovery of the battlefield initiative along a crescent-shaped front line stretching some 750 miles from the country’s east to its south-central coast on the Black Sea.

Shelby Magid, deputy director of the Eurasia Center at the Washington-based Atlantic Council think-tank, said a winning narrative could have significant implications for support from U.S. President Donald Trump.

“Trump likes winners,” she said. “Russia is showing they are not the winners. That’s leading to some good momentum [for Ukraine] overall.”

Recent Ukrainian gains have come in two forms: new weapons and new logistics. A June report from the U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations lauded Ukraine’s expanded use of drones, including Stings and other models. And Ukraine’s air defense is also hitting harder, from farther distances. Recent attacks have struck Russian sites up to 1,000 miles away.

Standard metrics of war effectiveness, like casualties and territorial control, are also rising in Ukraine’s favor. In April and May, Ukrainian forces regained more territory than Russia was able to seize in the same period, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group. Russia has lost three times as many soldiers between January and May 2026 than the same stretch in 2025, according to the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.

The Ukrainian defense ministry in late May announced a “Logistics Lockdown” program that will focus not on the front line, but on the “middle-strike” area of Russian-controlled Ukraine and in Russia itself. Ukraine’s military has defined the middle-strike range as between a dozen and about 200 miles from the line of contact.

“The enemy will no longer feel safe, even far from the front lines,” Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s defense minister, said in announcing the program.

A month in, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense claims Russia is now suffering nearly 180 casualties per square kilometer seized, versus fewer than 70 in fall 2025.

But Ukraine’s recent progress has not eliminated some of Russia’s advantages. Moscow maintains larger numbers of personnel and equipment by nearly every measure. According to the data aggregator Statista.com, Russia’s military stands at 1.3 million, versus Ukraine’s 900,000. Russia also has more than 12 times the number of aircraft, not counting drones. And Ukraine’s recent attacks on Black Sea positions are up against Russia’s outright naval advantage, which has a vessel ratio of more than 4 to 1 against Ukrainian ships.

Still, Ukrainian is using what it has for maximum effect. The country has focused some drone strikes on the southern Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea—which has endured Russian occupation since 2014. The strikes have left some war-related sites, like oil refineries, badly damaged. Russia’s oil exports help fund its war effort.

On June 21, Crimean authorities announced a full fuel-sales ban for all customers except government agencies. The new limits come as many Russian vacationers visit Crimea’s popular beaches and summertime resorts. Ukraine has knocked a third of all Russian oil refining out of operation, according to a mid-June report from consulting group Energy Intelligence. The same group said Russian refining runs stand at a two-decade low.

Ukraine has landed similar blows well beyond the battlefield. On June 18, its forces hit refining sites in Moscow, yet another reminder that Ukraine can threaten its enemy’s population centers.

On June 1, Ukrainian drones hit military and energy sites in the far-western Russian city of St. Petersburg. Ukraine timed the strikes to coincide with an annual economic forum led by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A similar disruption overshadowed Moscow’s annual military parade on May 9, celebrating Russia’s victory in World War II. The event transpired on a much-reduced scale, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy issued a decree, its wording heavy with sarcasm, to “permit” Putin’s parade to happen. The United States helped broker the assurance that Ukrainian drone threats wouldn’t hinder the parade.

But Russia has also continued strikes deep inside Ukraine. Overnight on June 14, Russia struck the 1,000-year-old Pechersk Lavra monastery in Kyiv, which sits between 200 and 350 miles from the front line. Repeated attacks this spring targeted Lviv, a western Ukrainian city near Poland. Russia’s attacks pose a broad, and growing, threat across Ukraine: A UN report found that May 2026 was the deadliest month in four years, with more than 270 Ukrainians killed, and almost 1,800 injured.

In diplomatic terms, Ukraine also may be poised for new gains, along with fresh attention from the United States. At the end of June’s meeting of the G7 group of countries in Évian-les-Bains, France, national leaders from the United States and Europe announced a 14-point framework for peace with Iran. A resolution of the Middle East conflict, analysts say, will free up diplomatic energy for ending the war in Ukraine. The G7 leaders, in a joint statement, called Ukraine’s recent battlefield progress a welcome sign of “new momentum.” At the same meeting, Trump said he would do “whatever I can” to assist Ukraine, and considered his Middle East work “in the rearview mirror.”

Though Ukraine is not a member of the G7, Zelenskyy attended the summit. He later thanked its leaders for their “strong ideas on how to force Russia into peace.” Zelenskyy and Trump spoke on the summit’s sidelines.

The G7 leaders also promised to carry out muscular diplomacy with Russia. “We commit to increase the pressure on the Russian war economy,” their joint statement said, including deeper sanctions on Russian oil and gas. “We consider this the right moment to proceed.”

As for what’s next, observers are keeping their eyes on the places and policies that Ukraine has turned into pain points for Russia.

Shelby Magid said she will be watching Crimea closely. Any discontent from there, as locals face threats from the air and shortages on the ground, may challenge Putin’s continued support among ordinary Russians.

“More rumblings in Moscow and St. Petersburg are something that Putin definitely will pay attention to,” Magid said.

David Kirichenko is keeping his eye on Russia’s precarious wartime economy. Continued Ukrainian resistance, mounting costs for Russia—and Putin’s broken promise of a quick win in Ukraine—all cast a shadow over Russia’s national outlook.

“How much of its economic future will it destroy, in continuing to fight in Ukraine?” Kirichenko asked.