Despite suffering staggering losses, Putin still thinks he can outwait Ukraine, now that it’s lost the support of the United States, and with Trump publicly considering leaving the NATO alliance.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has informed Zelensky that there will be no security guarantees from the U.S. unless he agrees to end the war. And told him the only offer on the table is Putin’s ultimatum demanding Ukraine hand over the rest of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, which beleaguered Russian forces have been unable to capture in more than four years of trying.

And Trump, who in a paroxysm of election-year hubris promised back in 2024 to end the war in a day, now largely blames his failure on Zelensky, who in the president’s view selfishly refuses to surrender. Despite, in Trump’s words, “not having the cards.”

Trump accuses Zelensky of letting his hate of Putin get in the way of peace, not to mention his aspirational Nobel Peace Prize.

But a funny thing has been happening in the last few months: Slowly, but in measurable ways, the tide of battle is turning.

“I think that what is remarkable is that Russia no longer has the upper hand,” former U.S. Central Commander retired Gen. David Petraeus told CBS News in an interview in Kyiv, where he was addressing a security forum.

Despite still being outmanned and outgunned by Russia — a country with an economy 10 or 12 times the size of Ukraine’s — “The Ukrainian forces right now are stopping the Russians cold on the front lines,” according to Petraeus.

“Yes, there are still glide bombs, there are still drones every night,” Petraeus said, “But on the front lines, which is all important, the Russians have actually achieved less than the Ukrainians have in the last two weeks.”

Credit not just Ukrainian determination and grit, but also its amazing ability to adapt tactics and technology on the fly to stay one step ahead of the Russians.

“It’s really a tribute to the extraordinary innovation that has characterized what’s going on in Ukraine,” said Petraeus, a former CIA spymaster. “When they’ve realized that they cannot again outnumber or outgun the Russians, what they’ve done is outsmart them.”

Using both ground and aerial drones, the Ukrainian military has turned much of its heavily defended eastern front — dubbed its “Fortress Belt” — into a 10-mile-wide killing field in which thousands of Russians perish every week.

“The Ukrainians have really figured it out. They now have a ‘drone wall.’ Anyone who tries to penetrate it dies. Simple as that,” Bill Browder, a financier and well-known anti-Putin activist, said in a recent interview. 

“He’s losing 1,000 to 1,500 men a day in Ukraine,” Browder said. Meanwhile, “the Russians are making zero progress. In fact, in some parts of the front, Ukraine is pushing them back.”

In February, Ukrainian gains exceeded Russian gains for the first time since 2023.

And while Putin seems inured to the horrific battlefield carnage that is destroying and demoralizing his army, Ukraine has been working hard to kill his troops faster than he can replace them.

“Russian losses this March have reached their highest level since the start of the war: our drone strikes alone resulted in 33,988 Russian servicemembers killed or seriously wounded, while artillery and other strikes eliminated another 1,363 Russian occupiers,” Zelensky posted on X in April. “That means more than 35,000 Russian losses in just one month.”

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry claimed that for the past four months, Russian losses “have exceeded their replenishment rates.”

“We are on track to our strategic goal: 50,000+ per month,” Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov posted on X, along with videos of Russians desperately failing to outrun the quadcopter drones relentlessly stalking them.

“The Russian military is experiencing manpower challenges and is unable to recruit enough contract soldiers to replace its frontline losses,” the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War said in a recent assessment, citing figures from a Ukrainian group that reported Russia recruited an average of 940 contract soldiers a day in the first three months of 2026, short of its goal of 1,100 to1,150 soldiers a day. 

Ukraine is far ahead of the U.S. in drone production and technology, producing some 4 million drones a year in small, nondescript factories and workshops scattered across the country. The goal is to increase production to 7 million annually.

It has become a “cheap, fast, and efficient” way to level the battlefield, Oleksandr Kamyshin, architect of Ukraine’s drone program, told CBS in a recent 60 Minutes segment.

“You would be surprised, but the cost of killing every Russian is less than $1,000 now. That’s why they send so many people to die on the front line,” said Kamyshin. “They don’t count them. They don’t value them.”

But it’s not just on the front lines — where Ukraine enjoys the advantage of being on defense — where advances in drone technology are changing the dynamics of the war. 

“Ukraine’s expanding long-range strike campaign against Russian oil infrastructure is exploiting overstretched Russian air defenses and significantly damaging Russian oil export capabilities,” the Institute for the Study of War assesses.

“We are witnessing a pivotal moment in Russia’s war against Ukraine this spring,” Kateryna Lisunova, a former VOA journalist, now working in Ukraine, posted on X, “Over the past few weeks, Ukraine has begun launching more aerial drone strikes on Russian territory than Russia is carrying out in Ukraine.”

An analysis by ABC News, which relied on numbers reported by Russia and Ukraine, found that Moscow claimed to have shot down 7,347 Iranian drones in March, while Ukraine’s defense ministry said Russia launched 6,462 drones and 138 missiles into Ukraine.

“Unlike the Kremlin, Kyiv is targeting Russian facilities related to the military-industrial complex, while Russia continues to strike civilians, churches, schools, and maternity hospitals,” Lisunova said in her post, which included videos of Russian oil facilities set ablaze by Ukrainian drone swarms.

With Ukraine more than holding its own, Zelensky is in a state of perpetual frustration over the fact that the U.S. keeps pushing him to be the one to compromise with Putin, when he has already made what he considers the biggest compromise: a willingness to freeze the battle lines where they are today.

“The problem with the Russians is that they love to talk about compromises but never make them. They only speak the language of ultimatums. They want us to withdraw from our territory, which is under our control,” Zelensky told the Associated Press. “But the reason for this demand lies in their huge losses. They think if we pull back, they won’t lose hundreds of thousands of people. While this is true, we can’t withdraw. This would carry major risks for us. Russia will gain stronger positions in Ukraine and will start preparing for further occupation.”

There is one person, Zelensky argues, who could influence Putin if only he wanted to.

“At the moment, the American side says it cannot change Russia’s ultimatum. I believe they can. I think President Trump has enough power to do it. He has shown this before. He has the ability to change this Russian narrative,” Zelensky told NBC.

WHO HAS BEEN KILLED SO FAR DURING THE IRAN WAR?

But in his heart, Zelensky knows that it is unlikely to ever happen, considering how dismissive Trump was of Ukraine’s intelligence that Putin was providing targeting information to Iran. And how cavalierly he spurned Zelensky’s offer of Ukraine’s state-of-the-art drone expertise to help protect U.S. troops. 

“The last person we need help from is Zelensky,” Trump scoffed, just one of many insults he routinely hurls at the victim of Putin’s perfidy. 

Jamie McIntyre (@jamiejmcintyre) is the Washington Examiner‘s senior writer on national security.