Why Nobody Can End the War in Ukraine

Foreign Policy | Stephen M. Walt

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy remain locked in a high-stakes attrition war across the Ukrainian theater, where neither side can secure total victory or accept a negotiated settlement. U.S. political shifts, including diplomatic maneuvers surrounding Donald Trump, have heightened international pressure to broker an immediate ceasefire.

Deep structural misalignment between Kyiv's territorial integrity mandates and Moscow's existential security demands prevents any durable diplomatic compromise. Diplomatic efforts consistently fail. Battlefield dynamics reflect an operational stalemate marked by fortified defensive positions, heavy artillery exchanges, and long-range strike campaigns across eastern and southern Ukraine. Washington's fluctuating security assistance policy directly influences Ukrainian front-line sustainability while Kremlin strategists calculate that prolonged attrition will erode Western coalition cohesion. Consequently, the absence of enforceable security guarantees and mutual strategic distrust ensure that ongoing negotiations yield temporary pauses rather than a permanent peace framework.

Comment

The strategic stalemate along the Dnipro River highlights how modern attritional warfare in Ukraine has eclipsed Western decisive maneuver doctrine. Operational reliance on dense minefields, integrated sensors, and target-grid strike capabilities—exemplified by the Surovikin Line in Zaporizhzhia Oblast—creates an asymmetric advantage for fixed defence over offensive breakthrough. This tactical reality forces Ukrainian brigaded formations and Russian army groups to trade mass for survival across heavily contested contact lines. Neither force can assemble concentrated armoured thrusts without exposing rear echelons to immediate reconnaissance-strike complexes.

This defence-dominant dynamic operates through the rapid sensor-to-shooter pairing of Orlan-10 reconnaissance uncrewed aerial vehicles with 2S19 Msta-S self-propelled howitzers. Real-time data feeds directly into tactical fire direction nodes, reducing the targeting cycle for counter-battery and anti-armour barrages to under three minutes. Consequently, the high lethality of M31 GMLRS rockets and Lancet loitering munitions restricts military operations to localized, attrition-heavy trench warfare along the Donbas front.

Strategic Question for Discussion

Which factor presents a more insurmountable barrier to operational momentum along the Donbas front—the dense physical obstacle belts of the Surovikin Line or the rapid kill chains driven by Lancet loitering munitions and real-time drone reconnaissance, and what would it take to break that equilibrium?

The available evidence points toward real-time drone reconnaissance and sensor-integrated targeting as the primary driver of operational stagnation. While physical fortifications can eventually be breached through concentrated combat engineering, constant aerial surveillance renders large force aggregations immediately targetable by assets like the Lancet loitering munition. My assessment is that offensive maneuver will remain paralyzed until integrated short-range electronic warfare and air defence systems can reliably deny low-altitude airspace to enemy uncrewed platforms.

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