With his ground offensive stopped cold by Ukraine’s impregnable “drone wall,” and with Ukraine also cutting supply lines to occupied Crimea with its advanced drone technology, punishing airstrikes are Putin’s only viable military option.

In public, Putin insists the war that was supposed to last a week, but is now in its fifth year, is going according to plan.

“Our troops are holding a strategic advantage, confidently moving forward, and no shelling or drone strikes are going to change this situation now,” Putin said at a Kremlin meeting of Russian officials overseeing occupied territories in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region. “There are advances in all directions. The enemy cannot contain this onslaught.”

Putin’s bravado may be a result of his commanders not telling him how bad things are going on the battlefield, where Russia continues to suffer horrific casualties and is losing small chunks of territory to Ukrainians, according to the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War. 

“Ukrainian forces appear to have achieved a tactical drone overmatch on the battlefield and are intensifying a middle-range strike campaign,” the ISW says. “Ukrainian first-person view (FPV) drones outnumber Russian FPV drones on the battlefield by a ratio of 1.5 to one, and that this advantage is growing.”

A turning tide?

Putin can’t ignore the increasing reach of Ukraine’s long-range drones. And the declining effectiveness of Russia’s once-vaunted air defenses to intercept them.

Everyone can see it. 

Ukraine’s response to Putin’s strike on the 1,000-year-old monastery, a UNESCO World Heritage site, was to hit one of Russia’s biggest refineries just outside Moscow, which provides 30% of the Russian capital’s fuel supply. 

At the same time, Ukraine has been pursuing a strategy of pounding the overland supply routes to Crimea with new-generation drones with the range to reach the so-called “land bridge” to Crimea. It has turned into a “highway of death” lined with the burned-out hulks of destroyed transport trucks.

This month, Ukraine successfully bombed two bridges, further isolating Crimea. And prompting the Russian military to order the remaining elements of its Black Sea Fleet headquarters in Sevastopol to relocate across the Kerch bridge to the mainland.

The 12-mile bridge, erected by Russia after it illegally annexed Crimea in 2014, is now the only safe way out, but three attacks by Ukraine have left the bridge unsafe for heavy traffic or rail transport.

“In the near future, Crimea will turn into an island,” Ukraine’s Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in an interview posted on Facebook and X. “Ukraine’s window of opportunity is open right now. Supply lines are being cut,” he said. “A living hell is starting there.”

Retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, former commander of the U.S. Army Europe, was an early advocate for capturing Crimea as a way to force Russia to concede defeat. He believes Crimea will fall if Ukraine can maintain the pressure. 

“It will become very, very difficult for Russia to sustain the war, and even to protect Crimea or retain control of Crimea,” Hodges said. “I think Crimea will not fall as a result of a D-Day-type invasion, but as a result of the integration of all types of manned and unmanned systems, special operations, and long-range precision strikes.”

While the war remains a stalemate, Ukraine seems to have the wind at its back for the first time since early 2022, and its campaign of targeting refineries and other oil infrastructure has taken the war home, not just to Crimea. But to Muscovites, who have filled social media with videos griping about long gas lines and fuel shortages.

“Ukraine is not losing, but Russia is not winning,” is how Anne Applebaum, author of the 2024 bestseller Autocracy, Inc, describes the momentum shift in an article in the Atlantic.

“Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Russian propaganda, one way or another, has dominated most of our conversation about the war with the assumption that Russia was bigger and stronger and had more people and would therefore inevitably win,” Applebaum said in a recent Facebook post. “This spring it’s become clear that that’s not true — that wars nowadays are often asymmetric, that smaller countries can and do defeat larger countries —and that Ukraine with its decentralized grassroots civil society-based defense industry has some advantages that the Russians don’t.”

Trump moves away from pro-Russia outlook

The vibe change was palpable at this month’s Group of Seven summit in the French Alps, where President Donald Trump met with Zelensky, who briefed him on Ukraine’s recent progress on the battlefield. 

“We had a very good meeting,” Trump said, and for once didn’t seem to blame Ukraine for the lack of a peace deal. “Look, Russia should make a deal. Russia has lost tremendous amounts of people, and so has Ukraine.”

Trump’s fellow G7 leaders convinced him to sign on to a statement that recognized “a new momentum” on the battlefield. And pledged to “support and accelerate this new momentum,” with more long-range capabilities and interceptor missiles, including something Zelensky was begging for — not just more Patriot missiles from the U.S., but a license to build the missiles in Ukraine.

“President Trump, just like all the G7 members, agreed that Russia has shown no serious willingness to engage in peace negotiations. We all agreed to increase our support for Ukraine,” said French President Emmanuel Macron. “This represents real change compared to the last few months.”

“We, the Germans, the U.K., the French, all are of the view that the tide has turned in this war. It is a matter of time,” Canadian Prime MinisterMark Carney told CNN. “Putin is going to lose this war, and from now until the point where he realizes that, or accepts that, it is absolutely senseless slaughter.”

There are also signs Putin may be losing his grip on power.

“Putin is starting to get very nervous about Russian society and perhaps elites,” says Fiona Hill, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and former adviser in the first Trump administration. “It’s certainly the case now that his choices are shrinking.”

“It’s not a tipping point at this point, but we can see the picture has become darker from Putin’s perspective.”

In an essay in the Economist, a former senior official in the Russian government, who chose to remain anonymous to avoid retribution from Putin, writes, “For the first time since the conflict began, Russians are starting to imagine a future without him.”

With the war intruding on daily life, and with almost everyone touched by the death or maiming of someone they know, even Russian elites, who were largely shielded from the war in the early years, are feeling betrayed.

“The war in Ukraine was meant to be a special military operation conducted by selected groups who received financial incentives for their trouble, while the rest of society carried on as normal,” the former official writes. “This model crumbled as the war grew in length and scale. It has led to higher inflation and taxes, neglected infrastructure, increased censorship, endless prohibitions.”

Putin, the anonymous official argues, is trapped in a “situation which in chess is known as a Zugzwang — when every move worsens the position.”

To remain in power, “His instinctive response may be to intensify repression. He may start another war. But these actions would only make things worse.”

Zelensky has made it clear he wants a ceasefire before his people have to suffer through another cold winter deprived of heat by Putin’s merciless air attacks.

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“I think there is a window for negotiations, because each month Russia will be losing more and more troops. Now they can’t occupy more territory in a month than we liberate,” Zelensky said in a post on X. “Therefore, I think that we need to find a diplomatic way — to sit down and talk — before next winter.”

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