The state of the war: 2025 or bust?
Trump’s deal: big, narrow or none at all?
Some three years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the fate of that beleaguered country remains in the balance. It is difficult to overstate the pivotal consequences that the outcome of the largest armed conflict in Europe since the Second World War will have. The physical future, political freedom and economic well-being of Ukraine’s population is at stake, as is the existence, sovereignty and integrity of the Ukrainian state. At the European level, the outcome will either blunt or sharpen Russia’s pursuit of its broader aim to reverse the strategic effects of the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 and to recreate a latter-day Russian empire by limiting the sovereignty of the states lying east of the Oder–Neisse line. This was the clear objective in the draft treaties that Russia proffered to the United States and NATO in December 2021, in the run-up to the February 2022 invasion. A Russian victory against Ukraine would entail massive increases in the burden borne by NATO’s current members to preclude the fulfilment of the objectives laid out in those treaties. Notwithstanding the costs of the war, Russia’s armed forces are larger than they were at its onset, and battle-tested in a way that NATO’s armies are not.At the global level, a territorially diminished Ukraine would likely put an end to successful post-Second World War efforts to counter the unilateral annexation of territory in Europe recognised as belonging lawfully to a separate state. Before 2014, Russia had recognised the borders of Ukraine as delineated in their bilateral accords, notably the Russo-Ukrainian treaty of 28 January 2003, in line with the international order established by the victorious powers in the Second World War, including the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. Russia’s unlawful annexation of Crimea in 2014 laid the groundwork for the order’s unravelling, but had gone unrecognised by all but Russia itself and ten outlier states that did not include China. Today, Russia includes in its constitutional territory close to a fifth of Ukraine, including some land it does not control.Conversely, Russia’s inability to bring the war in Ukraine to a conclusion on its terms would likely forestall further adventures against its European neighbours and limit its ability to project its forces and influence further abroad. Moscow’s paralysis during the overthrow of its long-standing partners in Syria is at least in part explained by the more pressing needs of its Ukraine operations. More broadly, strategic competition between the United States and China would necessarily be affected. Given the broad-based American consensus on the strategic primacy of the Indo-Pacific theatre and the relationship with China, the fate of Ukraine can hardly be a matter of indifference to whoever is in power in Washington. Whereas a victorious Russia would set a standard of strategic performance that China could be tempted to emulate against Taiwan, Moscow’s inability to prevail against Kyiv could lead China to exercise strategic caution. If Russia wins, the strategic challenge posed by China becomes all the greater, even leaving aside the plain fact that Russia and China are closely linked in a strategic partnership.To these prima facie stakes may be added the imponderables of all great wars, which could include potential knock-on effects such as nuclear proliferation in Iran or South Korea and unknown unknowns such as the fall of the Syrian regime. Such prospects hover over this examination of the current state of the war itself, the uncertain prospects of any deal promoted by US President Donald Trump to end the bloodshed, the no less uncertain future of the United States as a defence guarantor in Europe, and European options in this challenging set of circumstances.At first blush, the war has not afforded the Kremlin great satisfaction, as it has failed to break Ukraine on the battlefield. Since the war began, Russia has reportedly suffered as many as 700,000 casualties, including up to 200,000 killed in action, and extraordinary losses of materiel, including about 3,000 intercepted cruise missiles and more main battle tanks than the total number fielded by NATO’s 32 members. Russian authorities have absorbed these losses without overwhelming difficulty thanks to generous recruitment incentives, foreign mercenaries, abundant legacy materiel in storage and healthy revenue flows for purchasing foreign kit and components. Nevertheless, Russia has precious little to show for the price it has paid. Since December 2022, it has conquered only 3,000 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory, an area similar in size to Luxembourg. Since summer 2023, Russia has lost its ability to prevent the flow of waterborne merchandise, including critical grain exports to much of Africa and the Middle East, to and from Ukraine through the Black Sea and the Danube Delta. Although Russia has dealt harsh blows to Ukraine’s infrastructure, its electricity supply remains sufficient to power Ukrainian society and industry.Ukraine has also eliminated a third of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, with the remaining vessels having to shelter eastward. The large naval base in Sevastopol, Crimea, once a first-class strategic asset, has been turned into a military liability. Ukraine has also managed to bring the war onto Russian soil, hitting with more than symbolic effect air bases, arms plants and oil facilities from Kaliningrad to Murmansk, from the outskirts of Moscow to Tatarstan. In August 2024, its ground forces seized more than 1,300 square kilometres of the Russian region of Kursk, including an important gas-pipeline hub at Sudzha; as of January 2025, Ukrainian forces facing both Russian and North Korean forces still held part of this area.Ukraine achieved these successes despite belated deliveries of certain platforms such as F-16 fighter aircraft, the United States’ ongoing refusal to transfer air-launched deep-strike weapons such as the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), and, until the last weeks of the Biden administration, the US prohibition against Ukraine’s use of US-made weapons beyond the Russian front line. The fact remains that Ukraine has received some $100 billion in Western military aid, of which $40bn has come from Europe, representing about one-sixth of NATO’s military procurement spending.Yet, since last summer, Ukrainian political and military officials have been stating that the war would end in 2025. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s ‘victory plan’, announced in the autumn, ostensibly suggests that Ukraine’s intent is to build morale as opposed to imparting ‘all is lost’ desperation. Private conversations, however, have a distinctly sombre tone. ‘We have lost the war’ was not the sentence I expected to hear during a late September visit to Kyiv from a very senior official, and it did not express a view unique to that official.There is substantial concern at the tactical and operational levels. The Russian meat grinder works very slowly, but it goes in only one direction – forward – which means a Russian breakthrough is always a salient possibility. Ukraine has faced grave difficulty in establishing a mobilisation system that provides front-line troops efficiently and, from the standpoint of the prospective recruits and their families, equitably. Desertions are common, demoralisation is widespread, and soldiers in their forties are the rule rather than the exception. Although Ukrainian losses on the battlefield – reportedly about 43,000 killed in action – are considerably lower than Russia’s, they are much harder to bear in a country with a population less than a third as large. The United States has urged Ukraine to set the recruitment age at 18 years of age rather than the current 25. The American calculation is understandable, but, especially coming from a country which dropped the draft in 1973, an invitation to shed young blood more liberally is unlikely to win support. Youthful amputees make a grim sight in the streets of Kyiv. To many Ukrainians, the United States’ conscription recommendation, coupled with its restrictions on deep strikes against Russian forces, reflected a lack of empathy.From a strategic perspective, the parlous state of the electricity infrastructure, with only nuclear-power plants escaping direct strikes, is perhaps the most momentous concern. A colder than usual winter and the inadequate kill ratio of anti-ballistic-missile systems against Iskander-Ms and North Korean Hwasongs could produce economic breakdown and unprecedented hardship for civilians living in Soviet-era high-rises with no central heating, water or sanitation, quelling the ‘Blitz Spirit’ that has heretofore prevailed. What is clear is that Western aid remains essential, and that to allow Ukraine to stay in the fight it must include increased materiel (notably Patriot missile batteries) of greater variety (adding JASSMs, for instance) with less stringent constraints on its use. In spring 2024, Ukraine suffered a crippling ammunition shortage when the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives refused for several months to authorise the funds requested by the Biden administration.Ukraine is unlikely to be able to cope on the battlefield if the Trump administration similarly cuts off new requests for aid. The same goes for France and Germany. The United States’ continuation of looser restrictions on the use of American long-range missiles behind Russian lines will also be critical to maintaining Ukraine’s war-fighting viability, as will its allowing allies to lift similar restrictions on Ukraine’s use of air-launched cruise missiles such as the French–British Storm Shadow/SCALP. Provided Ukraine’s Western partners maintain existing arms and munitions flows and keep conditions for their use permissive, the military situation in Ukraine may be more manageable than feared, especially if additional missile defences are provided expeditiously and generously, and perform well during the dreaded energy offensive. What decisions Washington and the European capitals will make on these issues, of course, remains uncertain.Nearly 18 months before the US presidential election, Trump stated that as president he would settle the Ukrainian war ‘within 24 hours’. Although more recently he has ceased to mention that time frame, Trump has continued to voice his ambition of stopping the war, prompting much speculation about what Trump’s deal could look like. Although he refused last December to confirm or deny that he had spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin on the topic since the US presidential election, the issue is very much alive. Trump’s advance appointment on 28 November of retired three-star general Keith Kellogg as special envoy for Russia and Ukraine is significant, particularly given his expressed views on what a deal could include or set aside. According to Kellogg, it could involve a ceasefire monitored by an international force, possibly European; the postponement of the issue of Ukraine’s NATO membership; and de facto but not de jure territorial concessions by Ukraine. Military assistance to Ukraine could be suspended or bolstered depending on the respective attitudes of Ukraine and Russia towards negotiations.Several basic questions arise. Firstly, will Trump seek a quick deal at the risk of making himself look like a loser? Precedents such as the failed nuclear talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and the successful Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab states suggest that he tends not to rush things and that, if he considers a gambit to be failing, he will stop talking. This could mean that a deal will not materialise in 2025.Secondly, will he make this a largely bilateral process with Putin, consulting President Zelenskyy only selectively, since Ukraine would be both the subject and the object of the discussion? And will Trump bring in the European allies given that their interests and military assets would be part of any deal? Precedents, notably involving the wars in the former Yugoslavia, suggest that the US, as prime mover and self-conscious superpower, would prefer to keep interactions bilateral. American diplomat Richard Holbrooke dealt with Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic one on one in the run-up to the Kosovo war in 1999, not always making the European allies happy. Earlier, in Bosnia, even as the US ostensibly worked in a ‘quad’ format with France, Germany and the United Kingdom to conclude the Dayton Accords in 1995–96, Holbrooke did most of the arm-twisting, bringing in key allies only when he considered it useful. It seems safe to assume that Trump would guard his prerogative at least as jealously.Thirdly, will Putin be interested in a substantive, good-faith process or will he be playing for the gallery? At the time of writing, he has offered no clear indication that he would be ready to discuss much beyond the colour of the ink in which Ukraine’s surrender were signed. Russia’s stated demands are still ‘denazification’ (imposed regime change in Kyiv), demilitarisation (with Russian forces as the ultimate guarantor of an agreement in which Ukraine would retain only residual forces) and neutralisation (the prohibition against membership in military alliances such as NATO or in the European Union’s defence arrangements). The risk for Trump would be that he would end up looking like a fool, which he would not relish.Fourthly, would the alliance-sceptical Trump accept a role for European NATO troops in Ukraine to secure an armistice or otherwise implement a deal? It is unlikely that Europeans would accept the risk of a bigger and more dangerous reprise of their misbegotten missions in Bosnia under a United Nations flag, during which Western blue helmets were seized as hostages along the line of contact. The Bosnia experience ultimately showed that only soldiers operating under a forceful NATO mandate with US support can do the job credibly. Yet such a condition could be a deal breaker for Putin, who might see ‘NATO in Ukraine’ as tantamount to ‘Ukraine in NATO’, which he has said he would not accept.Fifthly, and no less crucially, would the American president and his Russian counterpart focus just on ending the war in Ukraine, termed the ‘narrow deal’, or succumb to the temptation to go into full Molotov–Ribbentrop mode and attempt to craft a ‘big deal’ in which the European security order and the strategic role of China would come into play? Putin’s pan-European ambitions are well known, the aforementioned ‘security treaties’ of December 2021 being a recent and detailed template, and he would greatly value securing Trump’s support for this agenda. From the US perspective, a key quid pro quo would be the weakening of the China–Russia strategic partnership. But no official signs have emerged that Moscow or Washington is currently contemplating such a course of action. Europeans would likely view it as immensely dangerous. Furthermore, Putin may hope that he can get what he wants in Europe without having to engage in a Europe-for-China trade. An alternative version of a big deal would have Russia drop its arms transfers with Iran and North Korea and limit its dual-technology trade with China while the US lifted some of its sanctions.Mark Twain would surely opine that the Washington Treaty’s Article 5 on mutual allied assistance means much more than it says. The article’s language, which leaves the nature of that assistance at the discretion of each member state, is limp in comparison to, say, the EU Lisbon Treaty’s Article 42.7. Indeed, Article 5 was watered down to facilitate the Washington Treaty’s passage through the US Senate. Historically, however, it has proven to be a muscular deterrent. No adversary – most notably, not the Soviet Union in the throes of the Berlin crises in the early 1960s – has ever seriously attempted to test Article 5. No non-NATO country has deliberately undertaken armed hostilities on NATO territory. Adversaries and allies alike have generally interpreted the provision as fully committing the United States to the defence of Europe. Under this understanding, Ukraine’s membership in NATO would ensure its security against Russian attack, which is precisely what motivates the Kremlin’s opposition to it. It also explains Finland’s dash into NATO, followed by Sweden’s, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine raised a salient threat. The dynamic was akin to Otto von Bismarck’s Torschlusspanik: the fear of being locked out.In itself, the outcome of the war in Ukraine – whatever it turns out to be – doesn’t implicate Article 5’s credibility. Ukraine isn’t in NATO and the precedent of the forceful annexation of Crimea in 2014 did not lead Russia to test Article 5, even if some analysts had already begun to wonder whether NATO would be able and willing to defend Narva, NATO’s outpost 102 km down the road from St Petersburg. But Trump’s long-standing rejection of set-piece alliances in general and his animosity towards NATO in particular raise doubts about the actual strength of America’s defence guarantee. In February 2024, he stated that the Russians ‘could do whatever the hell they want’ to a NATO country that hadn’t paid its fair share. This Trumpian sally wasn’t a frontal assault on Article 5, which remained unnamed, but it shifted the US commitment from treaty obligation to financial deal, if not outright protection racket. Coming on top of America’s conceptual revision, the West’s inability to secure a satisfactory outcome in Ukraine could change Russia’s own assessment of what Article 5 now really means. Trends in European and transatlantic relations are not likely to forestall such a development.A Russian leader believing that his armed forces would have prevailed in Texas-sized Ukraine may be difficult to deter from going after smaller and less robust targets. For example, seizing Lithuania in order to establish continuity between continental Russia and the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad would be militarily doable even if a German Bundeswehr brigade were in the process of being deployed in the area. To test the waters, Putin could first go after Moldova, one-fifth of whose territory and population have been under Russian military tutelage and political pressure since the fall of the Soviet Union. Assorted parts could be hived off, with Gagauzia and Transnistria as consolation of sorts for a post-war Ukraine dispensation short of conquest. Then a politically wobbly Romania, a sizeable EU and NATO member, would have to decide whether to choose the path of resistance or go down Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s road for Hungary. Russia could proffer the transfer of a defeated Ukraine’s Carpathian district to Hungary, in which case Budapest might not find it convenient to invoke Article 5. The room for mischief is substantial, and much of it could be undertaken through influence and grey-zone operations. It would take only a few ill-advised words from Trump on NATO to set a geopolitical bonfire.Against these constraints and uncertainties, Europe will find it difficult to cope with even the best case, in which Ukraine would continue to hold off Russia’s forces and gain a secure peace without subjugation and NATO would endure as a credible transatlantic military alliance with US input at current levels. It would require at the very least Europe’s continued transfer of arms, ammunition and other military assistance at existing levels, at a cost of some €20bn a year or about 15% of overall European defence-equipment expenditure. This is now achieved through defence expenditures of 2% of GDP, currently the European NATO average, with 23 out of 31 non-US NATO members meeting or exceeding that target in 2024. Reaching that level, however, has not been easy. Germany, Europe’s largest single provider of military assistance to Ukraine but traditionally one of its laggards in terms of overall defence spending, had to pass a €100bn supplemental budget to hit 2%. Furthermore, the current level of effort is insufficient to replenish now-depleted stockpiles, in particular 155-millimetre artillery shells, for which EU funding is proving necessary.The best-case assumption also does not allow for what NATO views as a prudent hedge against other potential Russian military challenges, falling one-third short of required conventional NATO capabilities in Europe. And, as Ukraine’s ‘ammunition famine’ of early 2024 made brutally clear, European efforts cannot offset a cut-off of American support to Ukraine in either financial or industrial terms. US military assistance since the full-scale invasion began has totalled some $60bn versus €40bn from Europe. Closing the gap would require 7% of overall European defence spending. This unhappy assessment is not meant as an indictment of Europe’s performance. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Europe has raised its military spending by substantially more than the US or any other major power during that period. It has provided 40% of the West’s military aid to Ukraine, in addition to furnishing most of its non-military funding. There is no burden-sharing scandal here. It is also worth noting that some NATO countries – for instance, Poland at 4.1% and Estonia at 3.4% – devote a similar or larger share of their GDP to their defence efforts than the United States, a superpower with global interests and ambitions that spends 3.4% of GDP on defence.The best-case cost may increase further if a capable European peace-enforcement force is to be deployed in Ukraine as part of a post-war dispensation. Such a force, supported by US enablers, would comprise multiple battle-ready brigades. NATO forces deployed in much smaller European theatres in Bosnia and Kosovo included, respectively, 50,000 troops and 39,000 troops from NATO countries. In Ukraine, a country many times larger, the line of contact would extend some 1,000 km, necessitating a force strength far bigger than those deployed in the Balkans, even accounting for the contribution of the large battle-hardened Ukrainian army.In this light, the best case, including the upgrading of NATO’s forward-deployed forces, would be difficult to sustain at less than 3% of GDP overall. But this is less than what the main West European countries mustered near the end of the Cold War. It would entail a defence-spending increase of some $125bn from the current aggregate of $380bn. Justifiably, the notion that 3% is the new 2% is firmly part of the conversation in the run-up to NATO’s summit in The Hague in June 2025. This no-penalty goal could have the desirable effect of moderating Trump’s anti-NATO predispositions, enabling him to claim full credit even though Putin would be the actual agent of change. It may be realisable even if European publics would chafe at the added burden. The citizens of Europe, notably in Germany, continue to recognise the importance of avoiding a defeat at Russia’s hands and the resultant tsunami of refugees. One factor that could reverse European public opinion on support for Ukraine, however, is the perception that the bulk of European defence-spending increases was greasing the wheels and lining the pockets of the US defence industry. The European Commission’s so-called Draghi Report asserted that two-thirds of new European defence orders went to US firms. Research by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) debunked this claim, finding that the figure was closer to 30%.The fact remains that the non-renewal of US aid to Ukraine would more than double the war’s bill for the Europeans. Furthermore, the United States’ refusal to backstop a European peace-enforcement deployment would make the latter a hard if not impossible sell in both political and practical terms, requiring as it would a number and quality of brigades above and beyond Europe’s ‘Balkans levels’. If Trump reiterated his invitation to the Russians to do ‘whatever the hell they want’ elsewhere, devoid of any realistic burden-sharing considerations, he could destroy the transatlantic pact and set the scene for a new Russian neo-imperial adventure. This would be the worst case, and it does not seem out of the question. As with an actual underworld protection racket, here the extorted party has no guarantee that protection will be forthcoming at any price. Initially content with NATO Europe meeting the 2% of GDP target, Trump has moved the bar to 3% and, according to recent accounts, is now aiming for 5%, far above the United States’ own defence spending of 3.4% of GDP. The protector insists on more quid than quo, as it were, and his appetite has no apparent limit. Trump has openly threatened Denmark, a close NATO ally, with punitive tariffs and refused to rule out the use of force if that country continues to oppose the United States’ annexation of Greenland. Accusations of US extortion and blackmail will henceforth poison the transatlantic debate and inform European policy decisions for better or for worse.
If the US drops out of the picture, the Europeans will have to make up for the henceforth unavailable US capabilities. An IISS study had assessed the extra cost at between $100bn and $350bn – depending on the scenario – before the Russia–Ukraine war demonstrated Russia’s war-fighting proclivities and capabilities, and demonstrated the degree to which the arms- and ammunition-consumption rate in modern war had been underestimated. It is entirely unclear that Europe would have the strategic focus and unity of purpose necessary to meet such challenges, which would likely include incurring defence costs far exceeding 3% of GDP. But whatever Europe’s specific strategic decisions, it is safe to conclude that the US would face China without the goodwill and cooperation of an EU that remains the world’s largest trading bloc, and presumably without the trust of Indo-Pacific partners now also fearing abandonment.This article appears in the February–March 2025 issue of Survival: Global Politics and Strategy