Four years of war against Ukraine: the end of many illusions but also a chance finally to move on to a different future

When Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, few would have predicted that four years on, Ukraine would still be resisting and Russia would have seized no more than 20% of Ukraine’s territory. This despite a massive invasion from both the north and the east, a devastating four-year-long bombardment of Ukraine’s cities and infrastructure and a full-scale mobilisation of nearly the entire Russian army, including reserves. Similar to the costly trench warfare of the First World War or the grinding hill battles of the Korean War, an army trying to advance has suffered thousands of soldiers killed and wounded for each bombed-out village occupied or each square kilometre of territory gained. Historians will long debate how much of the offensive’s failure is due to poor Russian tactics, military incompetence and inadequate planning; and how much is due to the high motivation of Ukraine’s armed forces, their rapid capacity to innovate and their access to the best Western military equipment. The war thus far has been a competition between two sides adapting rapidly to each other’s changing tactics and system upgrades. But neither has been able to hold on to a tactical advantage for long enough to convert that into a true strategic breakthrough and push on to victory. So although Russia has continued to advance slowly, the situation on the ground has been one of strategic stalemate. Both sides are increasingly frustrated and exhausted, but not yet sufficiently to abandon the fight and accept the bitter realities of defeat.  

Warfare is always a balance of strengths and weaknesses and of comparative advantages between two adversaries, and how those advantages are exploited for maximum impact (or not). In the absence of a single decisive battle (rare in modern industrial conflicts), wars ultimately reach a tipping point where one side can no longer avoid being overwhelmed by the superior forces of the other. Yet the remarkable thing about the war in Ukraine is that after four years of a relentless Russian invasion, this tipping point has not yet been reached. Ukraine may have lost territory, but Putin’s original war aim of subjugating all of the country and bringing it back into Russia’s fold is still far from being realised. Russian military bloggers calculate that at the current speed of the Russian advance, it will take Moscow 99 years to reach the Ukrainian-Polish border.  

The battlefield of tomorrow 

In four years of fighting, Ukraine has learned how to level the military planning field in the face of a much more powerful adversary. Being on the defensive, it has saved manpower, vital for a country that has only a quarter of the population of Russia. Its battlefield losses, while considerable, have been running at around 40% of those of Russia (400,000 versus a million). NATO calculates that Moscow lost 25,000 soldiers in December alone. Conserving precious soldiers is all the more important when we consider that many military-age Ukrainian men have fled the country, many conscripts have deserted and Zelensky’s government delayed far too long lowering the conscription age from 27 to 25. Not exactly the best way to enlarge the conscription pool. Yet despite the daily stresses that Ukrainian troops at the front line are under, their morale has not broken and they have found novel ways to hold the Russians in check.  

A lot has been said and written about drone warfare as remotely piloted aircraft have come into their own during the Ukraine war and indeed reshaped the modern battlefield. 80% of military casualties in Ukraine have been caused by drones rather than the more traditional shells, bullets and shrapnel. Ukraine’s ability to constantly upgrade its drone fleet to keep them effective against Russian jamming or intercepts has made Russian troops break up into small groups and stop using heavy weapons in forward positions. This means that Russia takes months to capture a small town or village, giving Kyiv time to rebuild its defensive lines and preventing Russia from punching a massive hole in the Ukrainian defences, which would allow the Russians to advance quickly into central Ukraine. Ukraine has also spearheaded the use of robots and tracked vehicles to protect its rear lines to bring in supplies to its troops and evacuate the wounded. Certainly, there have been foreign volunteers going to Ukraine to help the country’s war effort, especially in the early weeks and months of the war. But Ukraine has largely sustained its resistance from its own internal resources. In direct contrast, Moscow has been importing thousands of soldiers from North Korea and recruiting in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia with promises of sign-on bonuses of $5,000 and $2,500 monthly pay cheques. Ukrainian prisoner of war (POW) camps are full of captured soldiers from Ethiopia, Nigeria, Yemen, Cuba, Egypt and even Nepal, with 25,000 mercenaries recruited last year. Yet the military value of these untrained, inexperienced soldiers is close to zero.  

Ukraine has also had success in taking the war to Russia. Some spectacular assassinations of Russian generals on the streets of Moscow and special commando sabotage operations against Russian airbases and war production plants have underlined Russia’s vulnerability. Kyiv’s anti-ship missiles and marine drones have sunk Russian warships and damaged shadow fleet tankers and cargo vessels in the Black Sea and as far afield as the eastern Mediterranean. Kyiv has also mounted highly effective attacks on Russia’s oil and gas production and storage infrastructure, striking refineries, port loading facilities and pipelines, including as far afield as the Caspian Sea. These attacks have, according to the Ukrainian government, reduced the availability of fuel to the Russian consumer by as much as 20% and impeded military supply chains into the Donbas region. Russia has been obliged to cut back on its oil exports, which make up the bulk of its income for financing its war against Ukraine. Yet oil and gas infrastructure can be quickly repaired so this Ukrainian pressure must be constantly maintained if lasting damage is to be inflicted on the Russian economy and stop Putin’s ability to continue his offensive.  

Also in Kyiv’s favour is that the international coalition assisting Ukraine has held together throughout the four years of war. The NATO allies have provided over $100bn of weapons, spare parts and ammunition to Ukraine as well as essential services such as intelligence for targeting and Starlink internet connectivity. Thousands of Ukrainian troops were trained in Europe (90,000 by the EU alone). This has not always been a happy process. Allies have often given what they had to spare in their stocks rather than what Ukraine needed most. Kyiv ended up with over two hundred different types of weapons, vastly complicating its training needs and supply chains for spare parts and maintenance. The US and Europeans hesitated for months, even years, to give Ukraine weapons such as long-range artillery, tanks, fighter jets and medium-range missiles that might have made all the difference to halting the Russian offensive had Ukraine been able to use them earlier. And of course, the US under the Trump administration shifted the burden of supporting Ukraine to Europe, with US weapons supplied to Ukraine via European buyers on a strictly commercial basis.  

Indeed, the funding arrangements to provide military support to Ukraine are coming under increasing strain. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the NATO allies donated €36bn in military aid to Kyiv in 2025. This was down 14% from the €41.1bn in 2024. The level of aid last year was lower than in the first year of the war, back in 2022. However, within this overall amount, the share paid by European countries increased by 67%. This means that without this extra effort, the impact of the US cuts would be even more damaging. The core problem here for Europe is that 95% of the military aid is now coming from the Nordic countries and Western Europe. Although Southern Europe makes up 19% of the total European GDP, its contribution of military aid is only 3%. Compare this to the Nordic countries which made up 8% of total European GDP but provided 33% of all the European military aid last year. This regional imbalance is also reflected in Europe’s overall defence spending and rearmament effort.  The financial straitjacket has been obvious in specific military aid programmes. For instance, the Czech initiative to buy 155mm artillery shells for Kyiv. It delivered 1.8mn shells in 2025, 43% of all ammunition and received donations supplied to Ukraine, totalling $4.8bn. Yet so far in 2026, only $1.4bn has been committed despite the fact that ammunition worth around $16bn is currently available on international markets.  

Notwithstanding inadequate burden-sharing and this difficult financial environment, NATO has progressively organised the transfer of Western weapons to Ukraine by setting up the NATO Security Assistance and Training Ukraine facility in Wiesbaden, working off a Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL). A Ukraine Defence Contact Group has brought the transatlantic partners together with the Ukrainian Defence Minister to better align supplies and timing with Ukraine’s priority needs. But better organisation and coordination are of little use if the weapons do not flow. The problem for Ukraine is that Europe is running out of weapons stocks, particularly in the area of air defence systems and ammunition. Kyiv wants US supplies because it operates largely US weapons systems and believes that US defence contractors can produce and deliver faster than their European counterparts. Many European countries, by contrast, are reluctant to see their additional defence budgets be spent in the US, leading to fierce debates in the EU about what the minimum European content should be in weapons procured with common EU funds like SAFE. Or how large or small a portion of those funds or new budgetary support packages can be spent on US military hardware. The Netherlands has proposed a figure of 15%. Thus, the short-term needs of Ukraine run up against the longer-term path towards European strategic autonomy, even if ultimately a stronger and more integrated European armaments industry will be needed to sustain the Ukrainian army for the foreseeable future.  

Finally, and as the military packages from the Europeans become smaller and more spaced out, Ukraine has learned to rely more on its own domestic weapons production. According to Zelensky, the country now produces over 50% of the weapons that it uses. From just a few thousand drones a year in 2022, Ukrainian companies now produce two million. They have also partnered with European companies on joint ventures and co-production projects, with innovation and technology transfer flowing in both directions. Eleven European countries now procure weapons in Ukraine from local defence companies and Ukraine’s domestic weapons production has increased by a factor of 35 since the start of the war. The data that Ukraine has gathered from its drone use and its exploitation of artificial intelligence (AI) has helped the NATO allies to improve their own drone and counter-drone technologies. Ukraine has also worked to diversify its component supply chains. The Financial Times recently reported that both Ukraine and Russia source microprocessors and drone components from the same Chinese company.  

Caught between destruction and resilience 

Yet these successes cannot outweigh the reality that after four years of war, Ukraine is in a precarious situation. City dwellers huddle in dark apartments with no electricity or heating in winter temperatures that have hit -20°C and rarely risen above 10°C. Russia has ruthlessly attacked every winter Ukrainian energy grids and sub-stations, even threatening nuclear power plants. Half a million residents of Kyiv have temporarily fled the capital. The government also has a growing financing deficit on the civil administration and weapons purchases fronts. Zelensky has spoken of a $27bn hole in the military procurement budget. Ukraine needs $140mn every day to keep its war effort going and, in just one night in January, used $70mn worth of air defence missiles to shoot down incoming Russian drones and missiles.  

All-out war is indeed an expensive business. Zelensky was hoping that the EU would come to the rescue by agreeing to use the frozen Russian Central Bank assets at Euroclear and other banking institutions throughout the bloc. The total amounts in excess of €200bn would have sustained Ukraine for at least three years, but despite multiple legal analyses and several EU Council meetings, no consensus could be reached due to the concerns of Belgium and others regarding legal liability for confiscating sovereign funds. Instead, some EU member states (but not all) agreed to raise a new loan of €90bn for Kyiv. However, this will barely cover 12 months of the country’s needs. With more populist governments coming to power in central and eastern Europe and Ukraine fatigue only spreading as the war enters its fourth year, getting the Europeans to maintain their current level of effort will be as difficult as getting them to step up and do more.  

At this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Zelensky was especially tough with the Europeans, accusing them of inaction, referring to “Groundhog Day” and saying that nothing had changed in a year. He called for more European sanctions on Russia, more decisive action against the Russian shadow fleet and the establishment of an international tribunal to prosecute Russia for the crime of aggression. He praised the US for seizing a Russian-flagged shadow fleet tanker off the coast of Iceland, but didn’t mention that, while he was on his way to Davos, France seized a shadow fleet tanker in the Mediterranean. Zelensky was right to point out that the European debate on Ukraine often concerns its future rather than its present. Discussing future peacekeeping forces in Ukraine or economic recovery plans or Ukraine’s path towards EU membership is a convenient diversion from the urgency of finding additional air defence missiles or electricity generators today. But Zelensky was also right in saying that what happens in the present determines the future. Yet ultimately, the most intractable problem for Ukraine is that while it is willing to make concessions to secure a lasting peace, Russia is not. Putin has refused to move away from his maximalist positions, seeking a Ukrainian capitulation. After four years of war, that remains the single most important fact about the conflict.  

On the Russian side, the picture has been a mixed one too. Russia has retained its advantages in manpower and its better system for military call-ups and mobilisation. It has put its industry on a war footing for the mass production of missiles, drones, shells and ammunition, whereas Ukraine relies on small, specialised private companies – certainly innovative, but not able to produce on the same scale. Despite the plucky Ukrainian counterattacks, Ukraine has not been able (or sought) to impose on the Russian population anything like the destruction that Moscow has rained down on Ukraine’s cities and housing. After all, it is up against a nuclear-armed state. Russia has not had to evacuate millions of its citizens and relocate them in the way that Kyiv has been forced to do. Moscow also has enjoyed the consistent support of China, which has provided the Russian defence companies with ample arms components and drones to be adapted for military use. In full control of his government and population (having snuffed out any token resistance, however insignificant), Putin has the latitude to continue his “special military operation” in Ukraine for as long as he wishes. He believes that time and the battlefield momentum are on his side and that, like a battering ram against a door, if he keeps banging away, sooner or later the Ukrainian army will collapse. Putin is unfortunately no longer paying the political and diplomatic price for his aggression against Ukraine. He was feted by Trump in Alaska, plays host to international gatherings in Moscow and Sochi and was recently invited to join the US President’s Board of Peace.  

Yet all is not well inside the Kremlin. The Russian economy is now finally showing the effects of the international sanctions. Oil and gas revenues are down sharply. Receipts into Russia’s federal budget are expected to be 46% lower in January 2026 vis-à-vis January 2025. Oil and gas revenues have fallen by $5.4bn to their lowest levels since August 2020. The US and Europe have been getting tougher on the Russian shadow fleet with more intercepts, even if prosecuting the owners and crews has proven problematic. Last year, 410 shadow fleet vessels worldwide were abandoned by their owners with 6,200 seafarers stranded on board the vessels, according to the International Maritime Organisation. Inflation is rising, putting pressure on the price of basic goods and depressing living standards. Belatedly, Trump has also imposed banking sanctions against Russia, and the new US push for a peace agreement, with trilateral talks starting in Abu Dhabi, is making it harder for Putin simply to ignore Trump or fob him off with the usual fake protestations about desiring peace.  

Hiring foreign mercenaries at four times the cost of a Russian conscript may be a good way of avoiding an unpopular general mobilisation but, as said previously, it does not improve military effectiveness on the battlefield. As Russian losses mount up, and despite the Kremlin’s best efforts to hide the reality of the war from the Russian population, civil unrest and anti-government demonstrations could well break out, as they did in the Soviet Union in the final years of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.  

Where do we go from here?  

Clearly there must be two overriding objectives for Europe in 2026. To help Ukraine get the best peace deal that it can, working with the US wherever and whenever possible. A deal that preserves the country as a sovereign, independent state tied to the West and the EU, that has the resources and infrastructure to build a viable economy. This must also include a security structure that effectively deters Moscow from any further aggression. It was the failure to build that security system after Ukraine became independent in 1991 (despite numerous partnership schemes and joint military exercises) that explains Russia’s incursions into Crimea and Donetsk/Luhansk in 2014 and full-scale invasion in 2022.  

None of us will want to be writing articles on the fifth year of the Ukraine war in 12 months. If Trump is right about one thing, it is that the killing must stop. The UN reported that last year was the worst in Ukraine since 2022 for civilian casualties with 2,514 Ukrainians killed and 12,142 wounded. This figure was 31% higher than in 2024 and 70% higher than in 2023. Ukrainians are exhausted, if not yet broken, and the more destruction they suffer, the longer and harder it will be to rebuild the country later on. If, speaking realistically, Ukraine is not in a position to win back its lost territory for the foreseeable future and lacks partners willing to send troops to Ukraine to fight Russia alongside the Ukrainian army, then a painful compromise peace will have to be negotiated.  

Trilateral talks overseen by the US negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have started in Abu Dhabi. Yet Russia’s demands for parts of the Donbas that it has not conquered yet and firm opposition to international forces being deployed in Ukraine continue to be showstoppers. Instead of compromising, Moscow has even put extra demands on the table, such as wanting $5bn of its assets frozen in the US to be used for the reconstruction of illegally occupied Russian territories. Although Zelensky and US officials like to say that 90% of the peace plan has been agreed, these are still important differences. Moscow also continues to reject a ceasefire before a comprehensive peace agreement has been reached, knowing that resolving all the many complex issues needed to make a peace sustainable could take years. So, this is the moment for Trump to come off the fence and insist on an immediate ceasefire along the current line of contact, followed by both sides pulling back to create a demilitarised buffer zone between them, to be monitored by the US. If Putin refuses, Trump should resume major arms transfers to Ukraine, including Tomahawk cruise missiles. Moreover, he should announce new sanctions on Russian banks and financial systems, including cryptocurrencies, and use the US Navy and Coast Guard to completely shut down shadow fleet operations. In imposing secondary sanctions on India and China for trading in Russian oil, the US has already given an idea of the leverage it can exert if it really has the political will to do so. It goes without saying that no Russian sovereignty over any occupied Ukrainian territory should ever be recognised.  

Next are the security guarantees to be given to Ukraine. At a recent summit in Paris, leaders participating in the Coalition of the Willing finalised their planning for a multinational reassurance force to monitor a peace agreement and to help train and equip the Ukrainian army as it reconstitutes after the war. The big breakthrough here is that the US has committed to participate in these security guarantees in a binding agreement, which some US officials have compared to NATO’s Article 5 collective defence clause. A US backstop will certainly reassure the Europeans as much as Ukraine and encourage them to contribute to the force. Yet it is clear that 15,000 troops in Ukraine, mainly French and British, are hardly a panacea. We are already seeing the caveats that bedevilled NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission in Afghanistan. The troops will be in the west rather than the east of Ukraine. They will not have a combat role and potential European contributors like Germany have already suggested that the government is not yet committed to any particular form of deployment. The US-Ukraine document on security guarantees was meant to be signed in Davos but got caught up in the turmoil over Greenland. Zelensky would have liked to have it in his pocket before his negotiators met their Russian counterparts in Abu Dhabi, but the Greenland dispute has derailed the momentum that was built up in recent weeks after productive US-Ukraine-Europe talks in Geneva, Berlin, Paris and Mar-a-Lago.  

Yet the shortcomings of the European reassurance force – with many major European allies refusing to join it – inevitably spotlight how a Ukrainian standing army of around 700,000 can defend the country alone against Russia in the future. Experts put the price tag on this at around $35bn per annum in training, stockpiling and weapons deliveries, with a further $15bn of investment initially to ramp up and modernise Ukraine’s armaments factories. Some of the latter money can be recouped by moving European production to Ukraine (for instance drones, artillery shells and ammunition) and putting the onus on joint ventures and private sector investment.  

The NATO Summit in Ankara in July needs to produce a consolidated and long-term plan for how Ukraine’s defence needs can be met based on a structure and strategy for the armed forces to be agreed between NATO and Kyiv. As European armaments production is progressively ramped up in the wake of common EU investment programmes such as Security Action for Europe (SAFE) and the European Defence Investment Fund, not to speak of the many bilateral joint ventures that countries such as Norway, UK, Denmark and Germany have formed with Ukrainian start-ups and specialised defence companies, arming Ukraine from within bulk European multinational procurement contracts should become easier.  

In third place, and recalling Zelensky’s remark about the urgency of the immediate, Kyiv needs help to fend off a likely Russian spring offensive out of the Donbas. Feeling pressure from Trump to conclude a peace deal bearing down on him, Putin may well try a last throw of the dice to punch a big hole in Ukraine’s defences and impose the peace through capitulation that he so desires. The winter will soon be behind us and the European partners of Ukraine need to help it to shore up its lines and fortifications in Donetsk and around Kramatorsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kharkiv and Sumy in the north. Ukraine will need more long-range artillery, multiple launch rocket batteries, land mines and plentiful ammunition stocks. Crucial choke points and logistics and transport hubs whose capture would give Moscow a strategic advantage must be better protected. Ukraine must be able to prevent encirclement by Russian forces and prepare new defensive lines for tactical withdrawals without significant troop losses or capture. So, a military assessment of the state of Ukrainian defences with recommendations for quick win upgrades should be as much a priority for the Coalition of the Willing Chiefs of Defence as preparing for a reassurance force. Again, the present determines the future.  

Finally, the allies can work together on curtailing the shadow fleet and preventing Russia from exporting its oil by sea. When the US boarded the Russian-flagged tanker, the Marinera, it had the help of the UK navy and air force. Prior to the operation, the US deployed extra aircraft to its bases in the UK. The role of France in the Mediterranean has already been mentioned. The US has also seized tankers connected to the Russian oil trade off the coast of Venezuela.  

At a time when NATO is going to draw up plans for joint US/Canadian/European action to reinforce the defence of Greenland, maritime forces will be paramount given their range and flexibility in covering such a huge coastline. So why not extend NATO’s maritime remit also to joint intelligence-driven operations against the shadow fleet? The alliance has a number of integrated maritime commands, such as MARCOM in the UK, STRIKFORLANT in Lisbon and the Joint Forces Commands in Norfolk, Virginia and Naples, which can do the necessary planning and coordination of national task forces. The allies would need to decide on a common legal basis for a NATO-led operation, but gaps have narrowed as more allies have impounded shadow fleet vessels on account of their role in sabotage activities against undersea cables and their lack of proper registration, insurance and use of false flags.  

Major wars have long-term repercussions far beyond the battlefield or the fate of the belligerents most directly involved. The reshaping of the global order that wars engender make some nations more secure and others less so, some richer and others poorer; some become more powerful and influential while others are demoted to second-class status. Alliances and partnerships are also tested and either demonstrate their value or reveal their hollowness. Nothing afterwards is ever the same. Wars are the ultimate reality check on who is in command of his destiny and who is dependent on the charity or benevolence of neighbours. In this respect, the war in Ukraine has fractured the foundations of European security and left Europeans feeling alone, insecure and no longer trusting in the rules and norms that made their future once appear safe and predictable.  

The US has wavered and even seemed indifferent to the outcome of Putin’s aggression, despite this being the greatest challenge to the security of its NATO allies. The new Pentagon National Defence Strategy proposes the transfer of the bulk of US military capabilities to the Western Hemisphere and leaves Ukraine and the deterrence of Russia to the Europeans as the US further limits its military presence on the European continent. The Atlanticist Joe Biden wavered constantly in approving the transfer of US weapons to Ukraine and did not take the bold preventative measures that could have deterred Putin from launching his so-called “special military operation” in February 2022. Biden’s over-cautious approach cost Ukraine valuable time and territory. Trump, to his credit, has made a sincere effort to achieve a peace but has continued to see Zelensky as the bigger obstacle to that goal. Hardly surprising when the US President decouples peace from any notion of justice, accountability and restitution or any intellectual reflection on the type of future European security structure that can sustain the peace over the long run.  

After four years of war, we know that the US no longer values what we value. If we are perceived as weak and divided, our American ally can and will treat us with the same disdain that we normally expect from our more traditional adversaries. Trump’s tariff impositions and recent claims on Greenland (European territory) have rammed the message home to anyone who needed reminding.  

Yet Europeans have not covered themselves in glory either. National interests and egoisms have got in the way of a unified European strategy that could have made a difference. Hungary has prioritised Russian oil and gas over assisting Kyiv and constantly obstructed EU sanctions packages against Russia or progress in Kyiv’s path towards EU membership. Belgium has preferred to keep Russian assets in its own banks and vigorously opposed any Commission proposal to use those assets as collateral to cover soft loans to Ukraine. The Polish government has supported its farmers in blocking Ukrainian agricultural produce at the border. Germany prefers long-term missile development with Ukraine to handing over its long-range Taurus cruise missiles in the here and now. Spain and Italy stay quiet when it comes to deploying even modest troop numbers to support a peace agreement. The EU has been clearly divided between a northern tier of Scandinavian and Baltic countries (to which we must add the UK and Norway), making real financial and military efforts to assist Ukraine, while the southern tier and some in Central Europe keep their heads down and hope that the whole problem will somehow magically disappear. They employ the specious argument that the delivery of arms only fuels the war and that by standing aside, they are nobly serving the cause of peace and occupying the moral high ground.  

But after four years of war, one thing is more obvious than ever. Europe must come together and build a powerful Defence Union to uphold its security, but also to prevent the bullying and coercion that come from dependence on foreign militaries, supply chains and technologies. Otherwise, it will gradually disappear as a political project, integrating its economies and protecting democracy and individual rights and freedoms.  

Mark Carney warned not only his Canadian compatriots but his European partners too of that eventuality in his address in Davos. One would have thought that the bitter lessons of four years of Putin’s aggression against Ukraine would have quashed all the old Atlanticist counterarguments and would provide all the momentum needed to push that European Defence Union decisively forward. If it doesn’t, one will have to wonder what will.  

The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.