Nataliya Gumenyuk
Since entering office in January, President Donald Trump has pressed for a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine, largely on Russian terms. “You don’t have the cards right now,” Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in their infamous February Oval Office meeting—suggesting that Ukraine could resist a Russian takeover only with continued American military backing or Russia’s voluntary restraint.
And yet, despite flagging U.S. support, Ukrainian forces continue to hold the Russians off, and their resilience points to Kyiv’s growing autonomy from the United States. In fact, the conflict’s front line, which extends for about 1,900 miles and features intense combat along 700 of them, has not moved much since Trump took office in January. What’s keeping Ukraine in the fight is not Russian mercy, or even solely American arms: It’s innovation.
In just three years, Ukraine’s military has evolved from defending itself with leftover Soviet weapons to pioneering a new kind of warfare. In 2022, observers described combat in Ukraine as 20th-century-style trench warfare, dependent on tanks. Ukrainian soldiers had little choice but to fire whatever old shells they could find. The nature of the battlefield had changed by 2023 once the United States and other Western allies began supplying Ukraine with advanced weapons systems, including HIMARS rocket launchers and ATACMS long-range missiles. Recently, however, the U.S. president has thrown the future of American military aid to Ukraine into question. Last month, he even suggested that the U.S. might hesitate to sell Ukraine Patriot missile systems.
Fortunately for Ukraine, American weapons are not the only factor that has rebalanced the battlefield in the past three years. Starting in 2024, Ukrainian-made drones definitively changed the way both sides waged war. For Ukraine, the adjustment was not just tactical, but a broader, doctrinal evolution in how its military fights.
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