Vladimir Putin broke his own record this week by launching his most aggressive strikes against Ukraine yet.

An astonishing 948 drones attacked Ukraine in a 24-hour period, killing at least six people across the country.

The barbaric attacks even reached the western city of Lviv, often viewed as one of the safest places in the beleaguered nation.

Moscow is evidently keen to remind Kyiv that, even four years after the invasion, nowhere is off limits.

But focusing solely on Russia’s spring offensive misses the bigger picture.

Despite baseless claims from Donald Trump about Ukraine’s decline, those close to the war believe Russia is actually losing.

Putin has not been able to keep up with his war of attrition, according to his rival Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The Ukrainian president wrote on X on Thursday: “In historical terms, the Russians are losing, one hundred percent.

“Right now, they are suffering a terrifying number of casualties – 30,000 to 35,000 people a month.

“Russia cannot keep up with mobilisation, contract recruitment, and certainly cannot keep up with training its troops.”

Dossier Center, a non-profit founded by the Russian opposition leader Mikhail Khodorkovsky, reported this week that the odds of surviving the war as a Russian soldier on the frontline in Ukraine are close to zero.

Dr Simon Bennett, the director of the civil safety and security unit at University of Leicester, told HuffPost UK that eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region had become “a meat grinder for both sides” – but especially for Russia.

Putin’s military exceeded one million casualties last June, with Ukraine’s general staff now predicting Russia has lost 1,280,960 troops throughout the war.

However, Bennett noted that Russian casualties will not affect the ranks as much as Ukrainian losses.

He said: “The Ukrainians have fewer troops than the Russians and there is a strong incentive to carefully husband available resources.

“So, the Russians will always lose more troops than the Ukrainians.”

Keir Giles – associate fellow of Chatham House’s Russia and Eurasia Programme – also said the poor performance on the frontline was not why Putin was losing.

“The frontline is of no greater importance now than it has been at any point during this war,” he told HuffPost UK.

“It’s more about the politics, the geo-strategy, the economics – whether the US is willing to put sufficient pressure on Ukraine to surrender to Russia.”

Trump has been trying to force Ukraine to bend to Russia’s maximalist war goals and hand over more territory in the name of peace.

But territorial concessions and security guarantees have remained major sticking points.

Ukraine has so far resisted calls to give up more land, even though 2025 was the deadliest period for Ukrainian civilians since the initial months of the full-scale invasion.

According to some reports, Putin was thinking about finally compromising as his economy struggled to stay afloat while funding the war.

But last month’s Israel-US strikes on Iran ended up giving Russia a surprise boost.

When Tehran moved to block the Strait of Hormuz oil shipping lane, the US president decided to ease oil sanctions on Russia to help the global markets – meaning Moscow’s enthusiasm for negotiations waned.

Bennett told HuffPost UK that the money flooding into Russia as a result has allowed Putin “to turbocharge an already highly efficient war economy.”

The Economist’s defence editor Shashank Joshi pointed out this means Russians feel as though they have a “little bit of economic wind in their sails again”.

The Iran war means the US is re-routing munitions earmarked for Ukraine to the Middle East, too, reducing Kyiv’s ability to strike back.

Even so, this unexpected “lifeline” is not enough to push Russia to win the war.

As Giles noted, this boost only means Putin is not “losing as fast as he was before”.

Kyiv is also not completely oblivious to this change in Putin’s fortunes.

It continues to hold its own by targeting Russian oil refineries in the hope of putting a dent in Putin’s war machine.

Giles said: “I’m sure Ukraine is hoping that Trump does not notice this is happening or care because, if he does, he will certainly look for ways of limiting the damage to Russia.”

Even so, the impact of these attacks on Putin and the Kremlin will not be “immediate”, according to Giles.

He warned Ukraine needs to be a “much more comprehensive programme” to effectively cut off Russia’s income – meaning Putin will continue to line his pockets amid the chaos in the Middle East.

One senior Labour MP told HuffPost UK they privately suspected the conflict in Iran would last three months while the Ukraine war would rumble on for another three years.

But, according to some, optimism that Putin might realistically ever be able to give up may be misplaced.

As Zelenskyy told Reuters news agency, the “Russians have whipped up pro-war sentiment internally to such an extent that if we don’t stop Putin now, war will continue”.

He added: “He will pick some small country. He needs it.

“He’s boosted the war economy and radicalised the Russians.

“Today, 20–25% young people in Russia want to destroy Ukraine and Europe; they want to restore Soviet influence and revive the idea of destroying Nato. This will not just vanish.”

The Ukrainian president also theorised that Putin will have to either risk upset within Russian society, or he will “make a few steps into one of the Baltic states and set down his right or left foot there”.

Giles suggested Zelenskyy was bang on the money, telling HuffPost UK: “Russians have been told for more than a decade that the war is on.

“The assumption that many young Russians have grown up with is that they’re already in conflict.

“The entirety of the Russian economy has been turned into a war machine, and to turn it back would be massively disruptive.”

Asked to put a timeframe on when the war might end, Giles offered a rather bleak answer: “It will continue for as long as Russia exists.”

Russia has blamed “British specialists” for helping Ukraine execute a deadly missile strike on a munitions factory.

Kyiv said it had struck one of Russia’s “most important military factories” on Tuesday, known as the Kremniy El plant, using British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles.

The site is the second-largest microelectronics manufacturer in Russia.

According to Russian authorities, at least seven civilians were killed and 42 injured in what it called a “terrorist missile attack”.

The Kremlin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters: “It is obvious that the launch of these missiles was impossible without British specialists.

“We are aware of this, we know it well, and we naturally take it into account.

“In order to prevent such barbaric actions by the Kyiv regime from continuing, the special military operation is being conducted.”

Russia’s foreign ministry also claimed the attack was premeditated.

It said: “Western states bear full responsibility for the consequences of this strike, which resulted in civilian casualties.

“Britain has gone beyond the norms of international law and is ready… to take the conflict to a fundamentally new level.”

But Ukrainians rejected that analysis, saying the strike targeted the facility itself not civilian infrastructure.

A UK official also told Ukrainian outlet, the Kyiv Independent, that Britain’s support for Kyiv reflects the country’s “clear right of self-defence against Russia’s illegal attacks”.

“We are clear that the equipment provided by the UK is intended for the defence of Ukraine. Ukraine has the right of self-defence,” the official said.

They also made it clear they do not “comment on operational details” when asked about Russia’s claim of direct UK involvement in that operation.

The UK has been sending missiles to Ukraine since May 2023 for use against Russia-occupied territories.

The criticism from Russia comes as Vladimir Putin continues to fight his war of attrition over Ukrainian land.

He already holds a fifth of the neighbouring European country but continues to push for more territory, even as the US attempts to negotiate new peace deals – efforts torpedoed by Putin’s refusal to compromise on his maximalist war aims.

Russia has consistently criticised the UK and other Ukrainian allies throughout the four-year war, even falsely blaming Britain for starting the war.

It’s worth remembering there is an international arrest warrant out for Putin himself for the alleged abduction of Ukrainian children.

Vladimir Putin’s “hidden hand” may be helping Iran respond to its ongoing war against Donald Trump and Israel, according to the UK’s defence secretary.

John Healey was speaking from the UK’s military headquarters in London hours after drones hit a base used by western forces in Iraq.

He said British officers told him drone pilots from Iran and Iranian proxies were adopting tactics “from the Russians”, and telling them how to fly them.

Iran has been supplying Russia with Shahed drones – long-range weapons Moscow has regularly deployed against Ukraine – for years.

The chief of joint operations, Lt Gen Nick Perry, told the defence secretary that it looked like Russia had advised its allies to fly the drones at a much lower height, making them more effective when hitting targets.

That had “proven problematic” according to Perry, because the drones were rapidly becoming Iran’s most effective weapon in its fight against the US and Israel.

Healey said: “I think no one will be surprised to believe that Putin’s hidden hand is behind some of the Iranian tactics and potentially, potentially some of their capabilities as well.”

He added: “The one world leader that is benefitting from sky-high oil prices at the moment is Putin because it helps him with a fresh supply of funds for his brutal war in Ukraine.”

A UK counter-drone team shot down two of the drones targeting a base in Erbil last night. No British casualties have been reported.

Meanwhile, Trump announced on Monday that he would “take sanctions off” some countries until the Strait of Hormuz is up and ready again.

While he did not specify which countries he was referring to, Trump’s declaration came shortly after he had a lengthy chat with the Russian autocrat – who has been trapped under heavy trade sanctions ever since invading Ukraine in 2022.

Tehran has effectively closed the strait of Hormuz, which carries a fifth of the world’s oil supply, by targeting ships on waterway.

Healey discussed the closure of the strait with the E5 of European defence ministers, and warned there were “clearer and clearer” reports that Iran was trying to mine the waterway.