Michael Carpenter
When U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, many in Washington expected a rapid settlement to the war in Ukraine. On the campaign trail, Trump had boasted he could end the conflict in 24 hours. Although few analysts believed that specific promise, many speculated about the possible terms and timeline of an impending deal. The investment bank JPMorgan Chase, for example, claimed an agreement could be reached by June.
Yet as the weeks pass and diplomacy stagnates, it is becoming clear that no such resolution is imminent. As Ukraine’s former Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba noted in Foreign Affairs in late May, neither Russia nor Ukraine “has much of an incentive to stop the fighting.” Ukraine refuses to surrender its sovereignty; Russia will not accept anything less than Ukrainian capitulation.
This conclusion, however, does not mean all is lost. Russia is much weaker economically than many analysts realize, and hard-hitting sanctions and export controls can still cripple its war economy. Ukraine is fighting smartly and could turn the tide on the battlefield with more high-end drones, air defense systems, long-range missiles, and munitions. With a change of strategy, Ukraine can still win the war in the near term—if both Europe and the United States decide to give it the assistance it needs.
THE DOSE MAKES THE POISON
Much of the premature optimism about a settlement earlier this year sprang from the prevailing belief that Ukraine was losing and would soon be forced to negotiate out of desperation. Trump stoked this narrative by asserting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had “no cards” left to play. U.S. Vice President JD Vance took it a step further, declaring that Ukraine—and its foreign backers—never had any “pathway to victory.” Citing Russia’s superiority in manpower and weapons, Vance argued that if the United States kept up its security assistance, it would only postpone Ukraine’s inevitable defeat.
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