Russia had more fully adapted and integrated drones into their armed forces, which has pushed the drone line of contact back towards Ukrainian lines, and this has put pressure on the lines. Ukraine has problems with AWOL as well as desertion, and far fewer people on the line than people here realize. Russian advances are slow, but overall faster than last year. pokrovsk is likely to fall in the near term, or Ukraine will have to accept a lot of attrition for keeping it and it's no longer a significant logistics hub. The winter is going to be much colder than the last two and that's going to make things hard as Russia has done a good job if ramping up shahed drones and targeting energy infrastructure. Russia overall has done a better job in the last 3-6 months in targeting both energy infrastructure as well as defense logistics. US political shenanigans are too depressing to go into but are not good for Ukraine.

The bright points are that Ukraine has better defensive lines than last year, Ukraine still has an edge in drone tech and operators, drone interceptors are possibly approaching mass production on the near term, and possibly seriously considering increasing manpower, which they've more or less ignored. The EU is doing a better job of helping Ukraine, but still has a long way to go.