UPDATE! War Between Ukraine And Russia Comes To A Standstill

The war in Ukraine has come to a standstill in the eastern region as casualties mount, with winter bringing the hope of a diplomatic solution between Russia and Ukraine, experts said.

It has been six months since Russian mortars exploded throughout Ukraine, in what Russian President Vladimir Putin expected to be an uncomplicated takeover of Ukraine.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine has made any significant gains in recent weeks, and prospects of a clear winner emerging have dwindled out, according to defense experts.

“Ukraine doesn’t have to win. All they have to do is keep Russia from winning,” Lawrence Korb, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and former assistant secretary of defense, said.

“It’s safe to say that there’s a military stalemate and that neither side has a clear path to a decisive military victory,” Dan Caldwell, vice president of foreign policy for Stand Together, added.

Ukraine celebrated 31 years of independence from the former USSR Wednesday. To commemorate, Russia struck a train depot in the Donbas region, killing at least 25 people and wounding up to 50 more, following warnings that Russia may ramp up attacks on civilians.

“We clenched our fists fighting for our fate. Every new day is a new reason not to give up, because, having gone through so much, we have no right not to reach the end,” Zelenskyy said in an address on Ukraine’s national day.

“We used to say: peace. Now we say: victory,” he added.

Experts agreed that the war would peak with a negotiated settlement between the two sides. Winter could potentially bring brutal fighting conditions that force both sides to renew attempts at diplomacy, although neither Putin nor Zelenskyy appears interested in negotiations at the moment.

However, Putin has not given up on his determination to capture all of Ukraine, the Pentagon assessed in a briefing Wednesday.

Likewise, Zelenskyy maintains his determination to reunite all 24 regions of Ukraine, including Russian-occupied Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions under Russia’s attested control, in his Wednesday address.