Asklemmy

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.

From what I've heard, Ukraine is very slowly taking back strategic locations. At the moment, they're better equipped than the invaders, but that could change if Russia secures a weapons deal with China or NK. Ukraine also has a wide support (monetary, humanitarian, and military) from western nations. Ukraine has the advantage in the quality of their warfare, Russia in the quantity of meat sacks they can throw at the front.

In my opinion, even if Russia somehow occupies all of Ukraine (which I find unlikely), they will be a pariah nation for many decades. A significant part of their economy is energy export (fossil and nuclear) and the EU is already trying to separate itself from that energy dependence.

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.

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.

Frankly, we don't really know yet because we can't predict what either side will do, or what concerns/problems are boiling away under the surface.

What's important about real world events is that they are not like a board or video game. In a video game it doesn't matter if you flawlessly KO your opponent or win by the tiniest sliver of health, a win is a win.

In the real world though the resources and lives poured into conflicts like these can very well be used for something more productive. At any moment russia could swallow their pride and pull out, but they could also fight to the last man to never admit defeat.

Additionally the methods of victory differ between Ukraine and her allies (the west).

The US and Europe want a swift victory to garner support from voters. So they push Ukraine to do risky offensives and maneuvers.

Ukraine on the other hand wants to play its cards very carefully. Right now they recognize for every Ukrainian casualty, there are multiple Russian casualties. They want to maintain that postive ratio and do not want risky or loss heavy offensives. You can see this mindset at work in Bahkmut. The west wanted Ukraine to pull out of Bahkmut immediately but Ukraine recognized the extremely favorable casualty ratios, with many Russian casualties for each Ukrainian which is why they held on so stubbornly. It wasn't to hold Bahkmut, it was to grind down the Russian force.

My thumbs are dying so I'll direct you to a very accurate and detailed source of info on the conflict. Check out William spaniel on YouTube, he is an author and has many videos on the conflict, outlining the goals and problems on each side.