Top photo credit: Jose HERNANDEZ Camera 51/Shutterstock
Ukraine's Dilemma
February 24, 2026
This article is part of a special series recognizing the four-year anniversary of the Ukraine War.
As the full-scale war enters its fifth year, Ukraine finds itself in an impossible position: keep fighting or accept defeat.
For a year, they have managed to hold their own in peace talks in which Kyiv is being asked to cede valuable defensive positions and territory in the Donbas in return for questionable security assurances from Moscow. (Russia has made it clear that it will never allow Western troops to enter Ukraine to monitor a future peace deal.) They will, as President Volodymyr Zelensky has said, fight on if necessary. But how long can Ukraine keep it up?
The balance of forces
The basic arithmetic behind the conflict is straightforward. The Russian population is four times larger than that of Ukraine. The Russian economy is 10 times larger, and the Russians were preparing for war for years. So in the long term, the odds are stacked in Russia’s favor.
However, the economy of the European Union is 10 times that of Russia, and that of the U.S. is 15 times larger. So as long as Ukraine’s Western partners keep it supplied with money and weapons, Ukraine has a fighting chance of staving off the Russian assault. But despite an 80% increase in defense spending in Europe since 2021, Russia is still producing four times as much ammunition as NATO and the U.S. has curtailed much of its aid beyond what was pledged during the last administration.
Russia has over 5,000 nuclear weapons, and has repeatedly threatened to use them if it decides there is an "existential" threat to its security. That means the Western powers have been unwilling to commit their own troops to the conflict. Russia meanwhile, has brought in 14,000 soldiers from North Korea and also recruited mercenaries from Nepal to South Africa, with more than 1,000 coming from Kenya.
Staying in the game
Ukraine can take heart from the fact that it defied the odds and has survived four years of war against a much larger, better armed and more ruthless adversary. It prevented the Russians from taking Odesa and occupying the north coast of the Black Sea. It sank one third of the Russian Black Sea fleet, including its flagship, the cruiser Moskva. In fall 2022 Ukraine recaptured half the territory taken by the Russians in the initial assault.
In August 2024 Ukraine launched a surprise incursion into the Russian Federation, seizing territory in Kursk province for several months (before being expelled). It has repeatedly struck air bases, arms factories, and oil refineries deep inside Russian territory.
Technology has been a factor in leveling the playing field, to a degree. Ukraine’s deployment of anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles helped to blunt the initial Russian assault, and their early and effective use of drones for surveillance and strikes was key to their pushback of Russian forces in fall 2022. After a slow start Russia has also developed effective drone forces, and always had strong electronic warfare capacity.
Access to U.S. satellite surveillance and communication systems such as Starlink has been a decisive advantage for the Ukrainians. These new technologies have shifted the advantage back towards the defending forces, which means that Russia is now having to pay dearly for its incremental territorial gains in Donbas. Russia has captured less than 1.5% of Ukrainian territory since 2024, at a steep cost. As Michael Kofman likes to put it, Putin’s political goals have consistently exceeded Russia’s military capabilities.
A war of attrition
Apart from the dead and injured soldiers and the shattered economy, Russia’s relentless assault on the energy infrastructure of Ukraine has inflicted prolonged pain and suffering on the civilian population of Ukraine. This campaign has reached a crescendo over the first two months of 2026, leaving millions of Ukrainians without power and heat as temperatures fell below freezing. One is reminded of the saying of Tsar Nicholas I, that his two best generals were General January and General February.
The mood, by all accounts, is grim. Veteran CNN reporter Clarissa Ward talks about Ukrainian society as “broken,” “at breaking point,” and “desperate for an end.” On the other hand, Ukrainians don't want to believe all the sacrifices of the past four years were in vain. Ukrainian novelist Andrei Kurkov agrees that the mood is bleak, but notes that the Ukrainian people have shown incredible resilience. Ukrainian democracy is under severe strain having endured under martial law since the onset of the war. The country has seen a series of corruption scandals which led to resignations of some of the top officials in Zelensky’s administration.
A July 2025 Gallup poll found 69% of Ukrainians favored “a negotiated end” whereas 24% wanted to “fight until victory.” Those numbers have changed since 2022, when the figures were 22% and 73% respectively. Nevertheless, a December 2025 survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology reported 75% oppose ceding the remainder of Donbas as part of a peace deal.
The end game
Over the past year, since Trump’s return to the White House, attention has focused on Trump’s efforts to end the war, which many suggest would force Zelensky to accept a land-for-peace deal. Trump said on January 14, “I think he (Putin) is ready to make a deal. I think Ukraine is less ready to make a deal."
Zelensky, with the support of the Europeans, has maintained he is willing to negotiate in good faith, while insisting that he is unwilling to give up more territory, and wants security guarantees in place as part of any peace. Polling indicates that the Ukrainian public supports these positions. In recent weeks attention has shifted towards demands that Ukraine hold elections, ostensibly for democracy, but with the real goal of removing Zelensky from power. In January 2026 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said “proposals for a settlement aiming to keep the Nazi regime in [what remains of] Ukraine are absolutely unacceptable."
This is consistent with Russia’s long-term approach to managing Ukraine: looking for compliant pro-Russian leaders such as Viktor Yanukovych, president from 2010-2014. The problem is that the devastating impact of the war has eradicated the middle ground in Ukrainian politics. It is hard to imagine any future Ukrainian president being willing to seek some modus vivendi with Moscow and the restoration of cultural and economic ties. Too much blood has been spilled.
U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff’s peace plan reportedly included a clause giving Ukraine 100 days to hold elections. Zelensky was reportedly planning spring elections and a referendum on a peace plan under pressure by the Trump administration. Those reports were roundly dismissed by Zelensky, however, who said there will only be elections when a ceasefire and security guarantees are in place. Experts say it would be impossible to hold elections while the country is still under martial law.
In the meantime, the Ukrainian government needs a total of €137 billion for this year and the next to keep the war effort going and its government operating. In December, the European Council agreed to lend €90 billion to Ukraine over the next two years, but the decision so far has been blocked by Hungary because Ukraine had failed to repair the damaged Druzhba pipeline bringing oil from Russia.
But the main constraint on Ukraine’s war effort is shortage of manpower. Its prewar population of 36 million has shrunk to 32 million due to emigration. There are no official casualty numbers but outside estimates have pegged the wounded at upwards of 600,0000 and killed at upwards of 140,000. Meanwhile an estimated two million Ukrainians have avoided military service, 200,000 soldiers were absent without official leave, and enforcement of the conscription regime has grown increasingly brutal. Ukraine may well run out of fighters before Russia does.
Ukrainians are losing so much — a true, fair negotiated peace will ensure they don't lose more. Four years into the war neither side has won, and both have all the incentive right now to stick with negotiations to end it.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2019. (Asatur Yesayants/Shutterstock)
Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2019.
What does Putin really want?
February 23, 2026
This article is part of our special series recognizing the four-year anniversary of the Ukraine War
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is entering its fifth year. We know from history that warring states are capable of enduring far longer than anyone imagined possible, despite unrecoverable losses in men and materiel, national treasure and morale, or international prestige.
And as battles over piles of rubble grind on, the war’s causes, so front of mind at the outset, may recede from public consciousness. Arguments over causes and origins seem less important than the need to prevail or survive, to pull something worthwhile from ruin.
After four years of nearly ceaseless combat, Russia has not conquered all of the Donbas. Minuscule territorial gains have come at such a cost that losses now exceed recruitment. Neither side has achieved a military breakthrough, and neither appears on the brink of military or political collapse.
Moreover, important questions that emerged in the early months of this endless war of attrition remain difficult to answer. Thus, the two sides aren’t mired only at the front lines in eastern Ukraine. There’s been little substantial movement around the obstacles to a durable peace.
I asked several experts to comment on how Russia’s autocrat defines victory — what are Putin’s aims? Also, whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy should drop his opposition to ceding national territory, what Ukraine might receive in return for such a concession, and the consequences for the “rules-based order.”
Nicolai Petro, political scientist at the University of Rhode Island and Senior Washington Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy
Putin’s peace terms have been consistent since the outbreak of the war. They are: 1) a neutral and non-nuclear Ukraine that is not part of any military alliance; 2) a demilitarized Ukraine; 3) a denazified Ukraine. Russian control over Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia is non-negotiable for Russia, though this need not be formally recognized by Ukraine, so long as it withdraws its troops from these regions.
Each side — Ukraine, Russia, America, and Europe — will try to spin the final agreement to their own domestic political advantage. For Russia, complete victory would be achieving all three objectives. Anything short of that will be spun as a partial (but still worthwhile) victory by Russia, and as a defeat of Russia by the West.
In any negotiation worthy of the name, acceptable terms are decided by the interlocutors. The involvement of third parties only complicates direct negotiations. Also, since territorial exchanges after wars are commonplace, I see no consequences for international law or any “rules-based order.” Any territorial changes are simply made part of the new order.
Sergey Radchenko, historian at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of “To Run The World.”
There are two issues here that lead to dramatically different interpretations of what Putin is after. One is that Putin is basically interested in the Donbas, and if the Ukrainians abandon the territory, then the war will end in some sort of a ceasefire. But there’s another interpretation. That is, Putin wants not just the territory but political control of Ukraine itself. In this sense, until he actually reaches that point, he will not end the war.
Or you might think about this from Putin’s perspective. He has a fixation with territory because he sees control over Ukraine as part of Russia’s self-image as a great empire. He’s trying to restore Russian greatness. This is where there is no agreement as to what Putin’s goals are.
Ukrainians have put too much faith in a promise of Western security guarantees. The West has not been willing to put boots on the ground to fight the Russians. And to imagine it’ll be willing to do that in the future is folly. I don’t see the United States guaranteeing anything at all, although Trump has been talking about NATO Article 5-style guarantees. I find it hard to believe it would be credible.
So, what can actually guarantee Ukraine’s security? The answer is Ukraine’s own military. In the Istanbul talks back in 2022, the sticking point was what kind of army would Ukraine be allowed to have post-conflict. The Russians have been trying to restrict it because they know that is the real guarantee of Ukraine’s security.
Dr. Sumantra Maitra, Senior Fellow, Center for Renewing America
Vladimir Putin miscalculated Ukrainian resolve when he started the conflict, but now that he is in, he wants two things. One, to keep Ukraine out of NATO. That aim is a permanent aim of Russian grand strategy, to have a buffer between NATO and Russia. For that cause, he is willing to continue the conflict, as he enjoys superiority in numbers, and he knows that NATO won't directly join the war against Russia. His second aim is to have a grand bargain with the U.S. and have a disunited European continent. He is willing not to escalate the conflict to devastating proportions, because he wants to keep a negotiation option open.
The Russian way of war didn't quite serve the aims of Putin, as the Russian army is not capable of good combined arms ops against Ukraine, and the Russian economy is clashing against the overwhelming might of European countries and the US. That being said, he can continue his little random gains as he has superior numbers, and Ukrainians suffer from desertions and low manpower. If this continues, we might end up in a World War One scenario of rapid Ukrainian lines collapsing.
Ukraine should at least consider the current boundaries as the international line of demarcation. Both sides should decide on a day of cessation of fighting, and then pull troops back five miles essentially creating a demarcation zone similar to the Korean War. Then negotiations can continue. The American side should threaten to walk away if that doesn't happen.
The rules-based order was never orderly, nor rules based, and we are now back in a world of imperialism, spheres, conquests, and great powers. That is a result of structural realities, such as multipolarity, relative power gap between powers, tech advancement and offense dominated battlespace, and surplus elites having no jobs, fueling populism.
Nikolas Gvosdev, Senior fellow for national security at the Foreign Policy Research Institute
Ever since the 2004 Orange Revolution, Putin has been consistent in what he "wants" from Ukraine: a government in Kyiv that is receptive to Russian interests. These include a Ukraine that does not deploy NATO infrastructure or personnel on its territory, does not compromise Russia's power projection capabilities into the Black Sea and the larger Mediterranean area, that does not obstruct Russia's ability to reach larger global markets, and most importantly, a Ukraine that does not put up barriers to separate itself from a larger Russian world space.
What has changed over the years are the tactics, from support for Viktor Yanukovych and backing political forces inside Ukraine, to seizing Crimea and attempting to impose a constitutional settlement on Ukraine, to resorting to large-scale armed conflict. Since 2022, Russian methods have changed, from attempting an effective coup d'etat, to trying to hive off southeastern Ukraine, to now engaging in a war of attrition in the hopes that Ukraine will accept a settlement in order to preserve the rest of the country. But he will define victory as meeting these overall conditions. Many rounds of negotiations have made it clear that Ukraine is not ready to acquiesce to this entire program.
The inconsistent enforcement of the "rules" has already exposed the hollowness of the concept. What I often hear from "Global South" interlocutors is that much of the rest of the world is already used to a divergence between de jure claims and de facto realities. One thing I've seen in the negotiating process is an effort to find a fig leaf to paper over the gap. At one point, there was a proposal for Ukraine to "sell" Crimea to Russia; now we have ideas about demilitarized, special-economic zones as a way to reconcile irreconcilable Russian and Ukrainian claims. In this regard, how India and Pakistan continue to manage the Kashmir challenge may provide useful guidance.
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Top image credit: A Ukrainian soldier prepares to launch a small drone. (seeasign/Shutterstock)
Ukraine marks biggest evolution in military tactics since WWII
February 23, 2026
This article is part of a special series recognizing the four-year anniversary of the Ukraine War
Over the past four years, the Ukraine War has done more to change military weapons and tactics than any other conflict since 1945. Israel’s victories in 1956, 1967 and 1973 were won by World War Two weapons and tactics. The lessons of guerrilla wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan had mostly already been taught by Spanish guerrillas and Russian partisans more than two centuries ago.
In other wars, like those of the U.S. against Iraq and Panama, the balance of forces was so one-sided that it was hard to draw lessons for full-scale war. Russia and Western-armed Ukraine, by contrast, have been peer competitors, with comparable weaponry, training and (surprisingly) numbers.
That said, the lessons of the first year of the war were mostly old ones. Through appallingly poor intelligence (possibly worsened by an unwillingness to tell Putin uncomfortable truths), the Russians wholly underestimated the strength and determination of Ukrainian resistance. This stemmed from old and new prejudices, including the belief that President Volodymyr Zelensky, whom the Russians regarded as an insignificant TV comedian, would flee or surrender in the face of the Russian assault.
The Russian general staff should have studied a cartoon of 1879 in the British magazine Punch, published after a British force equipped with modern rifles and artillery was wiped out at Isandlwana by a Zulu army armed with spears. It shows a Zulu warrior writing on a blackboard, “Despise not your enemy!” Moreover, when their original plan to seize Kyiv and decapitate or subjugate the Ukrainian government failed, the Russians had no viable Plan B.
Underestimating the Ukrainians led to another classic mistake. The Russians not only deployed far too few troops for the tasks at hand, but divided them between six different goals. As a result, only one of them was achieved: the conquest of a “land bridge” between Russia and Crimea. Thereafter, the Russian government’s unwillingness to deploy conscripts or spend huge sums on increasing the professional army meant that Russia lacked the troops even to hold some of the land it had already taken.
The first month of the war did however teach one striking lesson. A combination of Ukrainian hand-held anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles nullified the Russian combination of armor, attack helicopters and ground attack aircraft that had been at the heart of Soviet, Russian and U.S. planning for offensive action in “big wars.”
As the war progressed, it diverged further and further from the experience of the previous century. This has been above all because of the tremendous advantages that a combination of old and new weapons gives to the defense. Satellite intelligence allowed both the Russians and the Ukrainians (with U.S. help) to spot where the other side was concentrating troops for an attack, and thereby to concentrate troops in response. This helped the Russians to defeat the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the summer of 2023, and the Ukrainians to hold subsequent Russian advances to a crawl.
This ability goes back to the development of reconnaissance aircraft in World War I; but unlike aircraft, satellites for the moment at least are safe from attack. Above all, as now generally recognized, it is drones that have transformed the battlefield. The vast deployment of drones by both sides has created a no man’s land more than 15 miles wide, in which any visible movement is very likely to be fatal for men, and certainly for machines. Even well-dug-in troops can be spotted and hunted down one by one.
Drones also make it impossible to clear the mines with which these zones are now choked and which are a huge barrier to movement. Whether done by men or machines, clearing mines takes time and is carried out in the open — and that is impossible with drones overhead.
Since the second half of the 19th century, increases in firepower have led to a progressive “thinning out” of infantry on the ground. Drones have increased this to a truly revolutionary extent. Not only have they made it impossible to accumulate the mass of men and machines for a decisive breakthrough; over the past two years, they have even forced the Russian army to split up its attacking forces into groups as small as two or three men.
This has had a critical effect on the willingness of troops to advance in the face of acute danger. King Frederick the Great was only stating an old military truth when he said that, to get soldiers to advance against fire, they had to be more afraid of their own non-commissioned officers than of the enemy. In a unit of three men, that is impossible. There is no senior NCO to frighten them, and no officer to inspire them. Unless they possess exceptionally high morale and determination, faced with heavy fire they will simply go to ground.
These military lessons will remain true even if, through sheer exhaustion or the withdrawal of Western support, the Ukrainian army eventually collapses. For it has already put up a fight that before the war military experts considered impossible, and that would in fact have been impossible without the military transformation that I have described.
These lessons would seem so obvious that they would be impossible for Western militaries to ignore; but one should never underestimate military conservatism. After all, soldiers spend the vast majority of their active careers not at war but exercising in peacetime, which essentially means pretending to fight themselves.
In the contemporary U.S. and Europe, adherence to existing weapons systems is colossally reinforced by the interest of the military industrial complex and its political allies in continuing to produce large, sophisticated and hugely expensive weapons platforms, as opposed to cheap drones and mines. In Europe, to this is added the (probably false) promise that spending on tanks and warplanes can rebuild national industries. In Germany, this misdirection of military spending is — fortunately — already leading to pushback from more objective analysts.
Even after commanding in the First World War, the British Field Marshal Haig could still state in 1926 that “Aeroplanes and tanks are only accessories to the men and the horse, and I feel sure that as time goes on you will find just as much use for the horse — the well-bred horse — as you have ever done in the past.” He had after all lived on friendly terms with horses for far longer than with tanks and aircraft. We can therefore confidently expect that for many years to come, our soldiers and military experts will continue to advocate the absolute necessity of the well-bred tank (and its human crew), all evidence to the contrary.
Of course, every development in weaponry favoring the defense is sooner or later met with new weapons restoring the power of the offense, and vice versa. Thus in World War One on the Western Front, bloody stalemate and the slaughter of the infantry led to the development of the tank and the bomber aircraft.
In our time, the next development seems certain to be the creation of attack robots, that — unlike men — can be made to go on attacking even when their comrades are being destroyed all around them (until, perhaps, they eventually utter the robotic equivalent of “Sod this for a game of soldiers” and turn on their human masters). Even when backed by AI, however, the development of such weapons is likely to take considerable time. In the meantime, drones will remain the lords of the battlefield.
The most immediately consequential lesson should be for China and the U.S. concerning a war over Taiwan. For perhaps the most striking development of all in the Ukraine War has been the way in which Ukraine — with no navy whatsoever — has been able to defeat the Russian Black Sea fleet with land-based missiles and airborne and seaborne drones.
On the one hand, this should show the Chinese that they would be taking an appalling risk by trying to launch an amphibious invasion of Taiwan in the face of strong resistance. On the other hand, it should show the U.S. that American warships operating close to China would be in mortal danger of destruction even if the Chinese navy were sunk or pinned within its own ports.
Even if nuclear war could be avoided, the result — as in Ukraine — would likely be a bloody stalemate. Let us hope therefore that the greatest lesson of the Ukraine War for states will be not to go to war in the first place.
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