To hear multiple Western and some Ukrainian commentators say it, the Russian-Ukrainian war has reached a turning point in the past month or so, and it favors Kyiv. As early as April 1, 2026, Kateryna Odarchenko of the Atlantic Council saw “growing signs along the front lines of Russia’s invasion that the tide may finally be turning in Ukraine’s favor.” On May 28, and in bolder language, Christopher Miller and Max Seddon reported in the Financial Times (FT) how “Ukraine is turning the tables” on Russia in the war. Then Michael Froman noted “a turning point in Ukraine” in his June 6, 2026, commentary for CFR while Nick Paton Walsh of CNN described Ukraine's drone assaults on an oil facility close to the Kremlin as “a likely turning point in Russia's war on Ukraine.” Most recently, on June 26, Peter Frankopan warned in Foreign Policy (FP) that “the tide turns against Putin.” Having repeatedly come across such ‘turning’ claims (see nine more in this footnote¹) when monitoring media outlets, analytical web sites, and other open sources for analyses of the Russia-Ukraine war, I could not help asking whether that war—which has already lasted longer than WWI—has, indeed, reached a  turning point in favor of Ukraine.

To answer that question, let me first define turning point. A cursory search of the English language translations of writings by some of the foundational theorists and historians of war, such as Thucydides, Polybius, Sun Tzu, and Carl von Clausewitz, have revealed no ready definitions. Clausewitz did refer to the “turning point” (Wendenpunkt) once or twicein the German original of his “On War” volume,² but I could not find an explicit definition of what that point was in his writings. Having found no ready-to-use definitions of a war’s turning point in writings of the aforementioned scholars, I turned to dictionaries, and have amalgamated entries from the Cambridge Dictionary, the Collins English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries, and Reverso English Dictionary into the following definition: Turning point in a war is a specific moment or a short period when a situation changes in an important, impactful way, shifting the overall direction or balance of fighting in what could mark the beginning of a decisive new phase of the hostilities.

Read more.