I think the frontline as a whole is at a stalemate, some Russian gains in the Pisky area, some Ukrainian gains in the Izyum area. The inevitable surrender of Russian forces on the west bank of the Dnieper in the Kherson region will be a bigger deal as this will take many thousands (perhaps 20,000? happy to be corrected) of Russian troops out of the picture.
More generally, the longer this drags out as a stalemate, the more it advantages Ukraine. The Ukrainian people know they are fighting a war of survival, and have shown they are willing to make great sacrifices. It is a simple calculation for them. Russia on the other hand will struggle to justify making greater and greater sacrifices to sustain the war - which it is still pretending is a 'special military operation', the reason for which changes week to week (is it about NATO? is it about Nazis? is it about Jews? Is it about western decadence? Is it about restoring the Russian Empire to what it was under Peter the Great? Is it about fighting for Christianity, as some allege? Conversely, Is it about Islam, as Kadyrov alleges? Is it nostalgia for bolshevism? Who knows?
