With its long beaches of sand and pebbles, its health spas and guesthouses, the small town of Tuapse on Russia’s Black Sea was once a popular Soviet holiday resort.

Today, it’s an ecological disaster zone. Sticky black rain falls in a constant ooze. Mountainous clouds of black smoke blot out the sky. The air itself is toxic.

Volunteers are coming from hundreds of miles around to help with the clean-up – not only trying to clear sludge off the coastline and rescue the seabirds but bringing chemical shampoos to save Tuapse’s dogs and cats that are coated in thick, gunky oil.

Since April 16, the local refinery has been hit by four major Ukrainian drone strikes. Each time, the infrastructure has burned for days on end. The town’s port has been crippled and its streets rendered almost uninhabitable.

Russia’s so-called ‘special military operation’ to annexe Ukraine has become a domestic crisis. Despite crackdowns on protests, internet shutdowns and relentless television propaganda, it is no longer possible for the Kremlin to hide this reality from ordinary citizens. They are living with the evidence every day.

It is more than four years since President Vladimir Putin launched an invasion that he claimed would be over in a few weeks. Next month, the conflict will have dragged on for longer than World War I.

Like that war, this one has mostly been one long, bloody stalemate. But slowly, Ukraine has been turning the tables. For the first time, Putin has been hinting that an end is in sight. He told the few surviving veterans of the Great Patriotic War against Germany on Victory Day last Saturday that the fighting could soon be over. It sounds like he may be giving up hope of victory and needs a ceasefire.

In other words, Ukraine is now winning.

It is doing this on the front line but also deep inside Russia, using long-range strikes plotted and guided with the assistance of US intelligence and Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite network.

Two months ago, a crucial benchmark was set when Ukraine became able to launch more drone strikes than its own air defences were fending off. The balance was tipping. It can now regularly hit military targets such as ammunition depots and drone factories, and domestic infrastructure including power and water pumping stations, up to 1,200 miles from the border – bringing almost three-quarters of the Russian population within range.

The most effective strikes are aimed in a swathe about 50 to 200 miles inside Russia, creating a logistical nightmare as resources are forced backwards and supply lines are stretched.

Ukraine has spent over four years at full-scale war with Russia and, as a result, has transformed into a centre for military and drone innovation, rapidly developing front line technologies at a pace incomparable to the rest of the world. In the face of existential conflict, and championed by Ukraine’s new 35-year-old defence minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, their advancements in modern technological warfare are evident.

Ukrainian attacks on ports have reduced Russian oil production by as much as 400,000 barrels per day, according to Reuters. At the end of last month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gleefully reported that two ports – Novorossiysk on the Black Sea and Ust-Luga on the Baltic – have seen their capacity slashed by 38 per cent and 43 per cent respectively.

This damage is being done at the best time possible, as oil prices have soared to $106 (£78) a barrel and are expected to remain above $100 for the rest of the year, owing to the US war with Iran. Russia ought to be cashing in but, thanks to the relentless drone attacks, the Kremlin’s profits are being suppressed.

And thanks to the systematic targeting and disruption of Russian air defence systems, Ukraine is now able to fly long drone missions with high levels of success.

Last week, in the run-up to the Victory Day parade commemorating the sacrifices of World War II, Moscow came under attack on three successive nights, forcing Vnukovo and Domodedovo international airports to suspend operations. A luxury residential tower block was hit, less than six miles from Red Square. One week earlier, four Russian combat aircraft were destroyed on the ground at the Shagol airfield in the Urals, fully 1,000 miles from Ukraine.

An estimated 350,000 Russian troops have now been killed and up to a million more seriously wounded. The rate of attrition is only rising: Ukraine’s forces currently reckon to kill or maim 35,000 enemy soldiers every month and aim to increase that terrible toll to 50,000.

Payouts to Russian families whose sons, fathers and brothers are killed have been reduced. So have the signing-on bonuses for volunteers. The financial cost is unsustainable, as is the human cost – Russia cannot replace recruits fast enough to keep the ‘meat grinder’ fed.

For years, it has been obvious that these ragamuffin soldiers, many of them recruited from prison, are inadequately trained and equipped. Men have been sent into battle in ordinary cars instead of armoured vehicles, simple metal plates welded onto the vehicles as the crudest protection.

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev boasted that 80,000 troops were recruited in the first three months of 2026. But that falls well short of the estimated 105,000 killed or seriously wounded in the same period.

One solution for Putin might be to launch a mass mobilisation, as he did in September 2022 – effectively imposing conscription on sections of the population. But that caused widespread social unrest with protesters attacking recruitment officers and even setting themselves on fire. Thousands of young men fled the country to escape the draft.

This time, public reaction might be far more hostile – not least because the appalling conditions and death toll on the battlefront are now common knowledge.

The ratio of dead to wounded has risen as Ukraine honed its drone technology, developing first-person view (FPV) devices that can be controlled remotely by users with headsets, like a lethal video game. Each drone is laden with explosives, hunting down soldiers individually. Quiet and precise, they often hit their targets before they are even seen.

More drones are then dispatched to kill the medical evacuation squads sent to recover the wounded. As a result, the injured are often left to die in agony, sometimes for days.

The latest Ukrainian drones use AI to pick out targets and evade anti-aircraft fire. Instead of being guided by radio signals, which can be jammed, the new generation flies by gossamer-thin fibre-optic cable, spooling for miles.

About 90 per cent of drone kills occur within a mile of the front line, turning this narrow strip into a death zone.

To make targets as small as possible and minimise losses, Russian convoys often now consist of a maximum of two lorries. It has become impossible for the invaders to assemble in any numbers.

Equally disastrous for Putin are the geographic reverses. Since last November, Red Army advances have been progressively slowing, despite their tactics developed to create the illusion of steady progress. Small Russian units are sent to almost certain death, making stabs into sectors they do not control and clinging on grimly in dugouts and foxholes until they are picked off by the drones.

These brief and meaningless gains are then reported back to Moscow as breakthroughs.

But even this system has delivered diminishing returns throughout 2026. Now, for the first time since August 2024, when Ukraine launched an audacious but ultimately unsuccessful counter-incursion into Russia, the defenders are driving their enemy back and forcing them to give up land.

At the beginning of May, Ukraine won back a total of 45 square miles of territory at areas along the battle front, both in the southern Zaporizhzhia province and in the Sumy region north of Kharkiv. For now, there is no prospect of the Ukrainians being able to retake the territories occupied by Russia on any major scale. However, while Russia claims these are mere ‘tactical retreats,’ they have been fought to a near standstill.

Whether Putin fully understands this is another question. He is said to spend three-quarters of every day studying maps, analysing reports and demanding answers from aides. But telling a dictator what he does not want to hear is a dangerous business. Those generals who have survived this long in his inner circle have done so by learning to manipulate the truth.

Throughout the war, the safest tactic for most has been hawkish belligerence – urging the President to keep attacking, in the belief that Ukraine must buckle. Some are now realising that this could backfire: if Russian losses become overwhelming, Putin will look for people to blame.

Both he and the generals need a face-saving exit strategy. One possibility could be to declare victory despite failing to meet any of the main objectives of the war.

Putin has always insisted that all of the Donbas, in Eastern Ukraine, must be ceded to Russia. But the price to be paid for the remaining 10 per cent of it might be revolution at home.

Zelensky will never concede that the Donbas has become Russian territory. However, Ukraine might agree to a compromise whereby Russia is permitted to occupy and administer the territory it currently holds, providing that cast-iron safeguards are put in place to prevent a fresh outbreak of war.

Neither side will trust the other for decades to come. Until recently, both assumed that a ceasefire would favour their enemy, by affording time to regroup.

It may be, though, that Putin is losing his appetite for military expansion. If so, that would be the biggest victory possible, both for Ukraine and the whole of Europe.

Russia’s military, once believed to wield almost limitless power, has been exposed as moribund, under-equipped and riddled with corruption.

Putin’s ultimate objective, whatever he claims in his interminable televised speeches, is not to restore Russia’s historical borders. It is to remain in power. If toppled, he faces prosecution for war crimes and the plunder of his own country. After 26 years of rampant kleptocracy, he may be the wealthiest man on the planet, but all his stolen riches will count for nothing if he is ousted in a coup.

As Ukraine becomes more dominant on the battlefield and more effective in destroying targets inside Russia, Putin’s grip on power is weakened.

His internet clampdowns have failed to prevent up to half the adult population from working out ways to access foreign news websites, using VPN software to disguise their location.

Millions also tune in to the BBC World Service, which has seen its Russian audience rise steeply. People are still cautious about speaking out but they increasingly know what is happening. They understand, when they hear of heroic gains and military successes in Ukraine, that they are being lied to.

For Ukrainians, winning the war no longer means driving the aggressors back across the border. They have achieved an extraordinary feat in surviving for so long, proving to the world that their courage and ingenuity is second to none.

But they are weary – weary of the nightly air raids and missile attacks, of the constant need to rely on the support of their allies, of the fighting and the dying. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians who have fled abroad are desperate to go home.

For them, victory will be a deal that promises a plausible peace. Who will broker it, and how it will be policed, is far from clear.

One thing is certain – Ukraine will emerge with much higher hopes than Russia, of rebuilding a stable, sovereign and democratic country.

Mark Galeotti is Honorary Professor at the University College London school of Slavonic and East European Studies, and the author of 30 books, including a military history of Russia.