A senior Ukrainian commander says Kyiv has roughly a six-month window to wrest the battlefield initiative from Russia and improve its position in future peace talks, calling the coming period a potential "turning point” in the more than four-year war.

Russian forces have made slow, grinding advances since launching their full-scale invasion in February 2022, but those gains have eased this year as Ukrainian troops step up pressure across multiple fronts in an effort to push them back.

Brig. Gen. Andriy Biletsky, commander of Ukraine’s Third Army Corps, told Reuters he believes Russia’s military is increasingly exhausted and no longer capable of achieving major breakthroughs.

He argued that if Ukrainian forces can sustain momentum over the coming months, they could seize the initiative along the front line and force Moscow to scale back its ambitions in the remaining parts of the Donetsk region still outside its control.

"I believe the next six to nine months are a turning point,” Biletsky said at an undisclosed underground location in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region.

"More precisely, I think the next six are the most critical,” he said.

The question of control over Donetsk has been a sticking point in U.S.-backed peace talks that have stalled, with Russia demanding the entire region and Ukraine refusing to withdraw from territory that Moscow’s forces have been unable to capture.

"We need to define those directions where we can improve our positions, take some strategic points, and then speak with the Russians from a position of strength, not weakness, about a truly stable truce,” said Biletsky, a right-wing political figure who founded the Azov Battalion and now commands tens of thousands of troops.

"From a military point of view, this is realistic.”

Russia’s Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Russian President Vladimir Putin has vowed victory in Ukraine and said this month he believes the war is nearing its end.

Critical months ahead

Russia’s advances have been complicated by a decision by billionaire Elon Musk to restrict Moscow’s access to his Starlink satellite internet service. Kyiv has meanwhile stepped up medium-range drone strikes on Russian air defenses and logistics, helping more long-range attacks reach oil and military facilities inside Russia.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said last week that Ukraine had retaken nearly 600 square kilometers (230 square miles) of territory in 2026. Reuters could not independently verify the figure. Moscow currently controls almost one-fifth of Ukrainian territory.

Assessing the military situation, John Helin of the Finland-based Black Bird conflict analysis group echoed Biletsky, saying fatigue is becoming a growing problem for Russian forces, while Ukraine’s war effort is constrained by manpower shortages.

"It does seem like, four or five months into this year, it’s much more likely that the Russians will get exhausted before the Ukrainian problems come to a breaking point,” he told Reuters.

On Monday, the U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War said Kyiv’s forces were now "actively challenging the positional character of the war” and could soon be capable of launching limited mechanized assaults.

Fortress belt

Russian troops are pressing into eastern Ukraine’s so-called Fortress Belt, where fighting is taking place inside the strategic city of Kostiantynivka at its southern edge.

The chain of heavily fortified cities anchors Ukraine’s defenses. Capturing it would allow Russia to threaten the rest of Donbas.

Biletsky, whose forces hold more than one-tenth of the front line, said his troops are firmly holding the flank around Sloviansk, the belt’s northern anchor, and forcing Russian units into costly frontal assaults.

He said those attacks have helped drain Russian forces and led to heavy losses among field commanders, in what he described as a degradation of Moscow’s military professionalism.

"The lack of personnel no longer allows them to advance the way they did, for example, a year ago,” he said.

Biletsky said it is too early to draw firm conclusions from Ukraine’s recent gains, but argued Kyiv could capitalize on them by continuing mid-range strikes and advancing cautiously.

He also said Moscow is "radically losing” battlefield communications because of Musk’s restrictions on Starlink.

At the same time, he described both sides as roughly equal in evolving battlefield technology, with Ukraine leading in unmanned ground vehicles and heavy bomber drones, and Russia ahead in fiber-optic drones that cannot be jammed.

Biletsky said his corps is at the forefront of efforts to modernize Ukraine’s military, integrating new technologies and revising training methods.

He said his units are deploying kamikaze drones and armed ground robots to replace a portion of infantry roles, aiming for 30% substitution by 2027.

He added that the next phase of warfare will allow commanders to conduct more complex combined operations while conserving manpower.

"It will happen this year, and I think we’ll show how our corps is a vivid example of it,” he said.