Asklemmy

Considering this is a war of attrition, "winning" such as it is doesn't look like conscripting every man, woman and child that can hold a gun to get blown up in trenches. They should have just negotiated a year ago.

Seems Russia is slowly grinding out Ukraine and if Russia decides to give up at any point or Ukraine negotiates then russia will probably have gained territory.

I tend to think as well that the situation in Ukraine is currently a stalemate. The fact is that, while Russia is losing weapons, Ukraine is gaining them. There's also a different quality of life for Western weapons compared to the Russian ones because, well, that's something that the West actually cared for back in the Cold War days. USSR and its satellites only cared about meeting the 5-year quota, or whatever they cared for in order to show the West they were more industrialized and whatnot. Western weapons are also more accurate and tends to integrate more hi-tech inside, so that you can use them for one-strike-one-kill instead of carpet bombing large swaths of land until nothing moves there. This is why, e.g. you have Grad systems with around 42 projectiles or so, all usually being fired in chain, while on HIMARS you only have a maximum of 6 projectiles, which are usually fired individually.

All this now proves vital for Ukraine, as it has to fight a country with a larger manpower, a larger (pre-war at least) stock of vehicles and a larger stock of ammunition. Ukraine, however, did not manage to become a powerful force on the counter-offensive. It does a great job at hardening Russian attacks, causing incredible amounts of damage for every inch of land lost, but the required weaponry for a successful breakthrough has been in short supply. Besides that, what Ukraine initially planned to do was to do a combined arms attack. And you cannot do this without a good amount of air support - which Ukraine was and is currently lacking.

IMO, it remains to be seen what will happen when Ukraine will finally start to operate F-16 jets (among other equipment it started to build in-house like drones), but as of now, on the equipment and fighting side, Ukraine is currently winning. On the loss side, while Russia loses more people and equipment than Ukraine, I'm afraid the numbers are proportionally the same for both sides. This is why I see it as heading to a stalemate in the foreseeable future. But Russia can no longer win what it initially planned, it is constantly changing the objectives in order to show the world that it achieved something, and Ukraine simply cannot lose. Russia's only advantage right now is being on the offensive itself.

I'm not qualified to speak on this. It is however my opinion that in war, nobody wins, but military suppliers make bank.

To answer "who's winning" can vary based on what "winning" is looks like, or what the goals were. As others have pointed out those goals have changed over time.

For a play by play recap I listen to Denys Davydov... He seems upfront about both Ukranian and Russian victories in his analysis based on various video, image and map reports, even if he supports the Ukraine side.

The war is largely in a stalemate at the moment. Odds are, if this continues for years longer, Russia will eventually win just by virtue of having more people to send to die for the country, but if it comes to that, Russia will suffer far moreso than they already are, both due to increased strikes within Russia and just loosing the majority of their working population.

Well Russia holds a good amount of Ukrainian land. The fighting is essentially a stalemate. Russia may have "won" that land.

No one may win any more sizable land moves. For future fighting we'll have to see. Ukraine relies on Western support because Russia is a bigger economy and bigger population. We'll have to see how Western support continues and how the Russian economy proceeds with sanctions.