There's a lot of guessing about those ammo depot strikes and their effects. I'm not seeing a direct impact on Russian operations so far; those already slowed down considerably two weeks ago, after the Ukrainians launched their relief attack in the back of the Russian counteroffensive at Kursk, and moved a brigade up from Vuhledar to stop the advance onto Pokrovsk, at the expense of weakening defenses in the former area. Realistically, it may cause a temporary dip in supplies; but even if the most hopeful estimates of several 10,000 tons of ammunition blowing up (allegedly when trains were loading at two of the three sites) are true, national production will probably have made up for it by next spring. So at best we may have a particularly quiet mud season later this year, and not much in the way of the usual slow-burn Russian winter offensive.

Like similar strikes at strategic targets deep inside Russia - the strategic bomber base at Engels in late 2022, Moscow and the Kremlin itself in 2023, various oil refineries and those nuclear early warning radars more recently - I suspect the intended and actual effect is mostly political, to show it can be done despite the increasingly hollow-sounding Russian bluster about blowing up the world if anyone fights back against them (you should read some of the hardcore fanboys on German-language pro-Russian propaganda sites, they're really pissed off at Putin for not having nuked their Western useful idiot asses two years ago already like they were promised). While the train thing points to a considerable intelligence contribution if true, it's probably not a coincidence it happened on the eve of Zelenskyy's US trip where he'll communicate his alleged "victory plan" to assembled current, ex- and/or hopeful future presidents Biden, Harris and Trump.

Supposedly that still entails clearance for deep precision strikes into Russia with Western-supplied weapons, which remains fraught with American concerns in particular. And of course "victory" at this point essentially means the war ending with Ukraine surviving as a sovereign country and minimally no further territorial losses, ideally with some regained in a trade of occupied areas. Which might not be a square mile for a square mile but rather a variation of "okay, let's both withdraw behind pre-2022 lines, give or take". I don't think that by now many in Ukraine believe it realistic, or even sensible, to get back Crimea and the parts of the Donbas which have effectively been under Russian occupation since 2014. Though given that Putin's demands are still the entirety of the four districts officially annexed, but never fully controlled, by Russia in 2022, just both sides withdrawing behind late 2023 lines would constitute a victory for Ukraine.

I think there's some chance for negotiations, maybe an armistice, if not a finished settlement next year. After the Ukrainian offensive into Kursk, Putin was all like "that's it, negotiations are off the table", but has since quietly returned to "we were always ready to talk on the basis of Kiev accepting reality". Let's see what Zelenskyy's US trip yields; some (really all) of the parties involved are always good for forgetting everything they said yesterday, and adopting the opposite position with utter conviction.