IN UKRAINE, TIME COULD BE ON OUR SIDE

The US should not make it easier for Putin to attain his war aims. It is folly to expect that the US could arrange a peace deal on its own over the heads of the Ukrainians or even the Russians for that matter. US involvement is indirect, and all it can offer are arms for one side or political appeasement to the other. The US can influence outcomes, but it cannot decide them. Its cards are not strong enough to deliver a peace agreement without the consent of the warring parties. And that includes Ukraine.

Russian president Vladimir Putin leaves the stage following a 2025 joint press conference with President Trump in Alaska. (Official White House Photo by Daniel Torok)

The Russian war in Ukraine has reached a stalemate. Russian forces continue to make small territorial gains, mostly in the Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, and Donetsk regions. But Ukraine is now getting more Western support and is seriously striking deep into Russian territory. President Trump’s campaign to appease Vladimir Putin appears to have softened, which eases pressure on Ukraine. And despite their equivocations, Europeans have remained largely committed to Ukraine’s survival.

All of which suggests that we are likely in for a long war of attrition. 

If that is so, war in Ukraine remains a contest of wills. The question is which side will give in first, Russia or Ukraine? And what should the US do to adapt its strategy to this long-run scenario? Clearly, the jumping back and forth between appeasement and disengagement, which has been the practice in the recent past, has not worked. 

So which side has the edge in a long war? Most analysts assume Russia does, due to its larger population, energy resources, and compliant populations. Specifically, analysts often argue that Russia can sustain more war losses than Ukraine and that this gives it the decisive edge.

“Putin wants to show that NATO is a hollow force. He wants to test and ultimately cancel America’s and NATO’s promise to defend the Baltic States and Poland.”

Let’s look at the numbers. Russian war casualties are around 1 million with an estimated 250,000 killed. The killed rate as a percentage of population is around 0.17 percent, which is considerably lower than the 1.1 percent figure for World War I that broke the Russian Empire and resulted in the Russian Revolution. When the considerably higher rates of civilian and other Russian casualties in World War I are considered, the gap is even larger. From this analysis alone, current Russia is still a long way off from the level of war suffering of 1917 that brought down the Czarist empire. 

The picture changes, however, when we consider other factors. Ukraine by comparison has a smaller population, but its casualty rates are not as high as Russia’s. Roughly 0.12 to 0.26 percent of Ukraine’s population has been killed in the war so far. This does not include the civilian casualties, but the figure for Ukrainians soldiers as percentage of population killed (ca. 0.2%) is not greatly different from Russia’s (0.17%).

Admittedly this is a crude comparison. It does not include casualty (wounded and killed) rates or a comparison of the type of people who make up the casualties. Nor does it include the relative impact of the war on civilian populations and on the economy. These factors would still favor Russia.

But it is not correct to conclude that Russia’s larger population alone gives it a decisive edge. Russia’s larger casualty rates are easing the odds for Ukraine and depriving Russia of the population advantage. Moreover, as the war drags on, Russia will have to delve into elite urban populations that could adversely affect the popularity of the war. Russia is starting to run out of prisoners and poor recruits from the hinterlands. If Putin must turn to the sons of oligarchs and elites to fill his army’s ranks, the system of fear and dependent patronage he has created could turn against him.

Russia holds a slight edge for now in the waiting game, but time is not necessarily on Putin’s side. Yes, he has more people and a larger armed force than President Vladimir Zelensky has. But the war has devolved into battles and skirmishes involving drones and long-strike weapons, not tanks or large infantry formations that would tend to favor Russia. Russia’s larger army does not necessarily translate into a decisive factor in victory. In fact, if things go bad domestically for Putin, it could become a force used against him, as happened with Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group.

If Ukraine holds out longer than Putin’s political strategy of fighting a “cheap” war can sustain (by cheap I mean one that spares his elites and urban populations) then it is possible that time shifts in Ukraine’s favor.

The Putin Factor

Any hope of a short war, or of a peace settlement sometime soon, depends on whether Putin is willing to settle for a peace short of the complete occupation of Ukraine. There is nothing to suggest that this is what Putin has in mind. He has made it clear time and time again that he sees the complete control of Ukraine as necessary in his ultimate plan to restore the Russian Empire.

This means there are no territorial concessions short of the total surrender of Ukraine would convince him to stop the war. In addition to controlling Ukraine, Putin’s goal appears to be the re-establishment of Russia’s sphere of influence in Europe, especially Eastern Europe. This would also entail Russia as a major external voice in determining the affairs and fate of Europe as a whole. 

In Putin’s mind the United States is an obstacle to this strategic aim. Regardless of the back-and-forth on personal diplomacy between him and President Trump, Putin’s long-range aim, as it has been for Russia for decades, is to minimize US influence in Europe, and if possible, to push the US out entirely.

Putin is not likely to stop militarily intimidating Europe under any circumstance. If he gets part of Ukraine in some temporary peace settlement, he will take up the fight later at a time of his choosing. If he gets all of Ukraine, he will be even more emboldened. He has his eyes not only on the Baltic States but Poland and Eastern Europe as a whole. It is not so much that he wants to occupy them with military force, but to intimidate them and to create compliant states like Hungary or Slovakia. 

Above all, Putin wants to show that NATO is a hollow force. He wants to test and ultimately cancel America’s and NATO’s promise to defend the Baltic States and Poland. There already have been many instances of sabotage and low-intensity provocations to test NATO’s resolve. If Putin is appeased and pressure is eased on him, he would likely step up pressure against the Baltic States, especially Estonia with its large Russian-speaking population. The aim would be to force a showdown over whether European NATO allies and the US would honor their commitment to defend the Baltic States against Russia.

It is important to realize how Putin relates the fate of the war to his own survival. He is a dictator whose entire regime depends on some kind of success in the war. If he achieves his dream of complete victory, so much the better for him. But even fighting the war short of victory appeals to Putin. War to him is a mobilizing force and a distraction from domestic problems and even threats. We should not expect Putin to make any meaningful concessions to anyone, not even Donald Trump, if it would make him look weak at home. In his mind, a weakly negotiated peace would be tantamount to surrender, which could unleash a dangerous backlash at home against his dictatorial rule. 

The Way Forward

If a long war no longer decisively favors Russia, and yet Russia is not willing to negotiate an acceptable peace, what is the best way forward for the US? 

First and foremost, we must realize that a strategic victory of any kind for Russia in Europe would be a huge defeat for America. It could turn future Hungarys or Slovakias in Europe against the US and boost the fortunes of anti-American and pro-Russian parties like the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and Le Pen nationalists in France. A neutralized Europe could not only appease Moscow and lean in its favor but drift increasingly into China’s orbit. Europe should be on America’s side and not neutral in the great geopolitical battles of the next fifty years. 

The US should not make it easier for Putin to attain his war aims. If he wants a long war, and the Ukrainians are willing to fight for their country, we should not make it easier for him to win. It is folly to expect that the US could arrange a peace deal on its own over the heads of the Ukrainians or even the Russians for that matter. US involvement is indirect, and all it can offer are arms for one side or political appeasement to the other. The US can influence outcomes, but it cannot decide them. Its cards are not strong enough to deliver a peace agreement without the consent of the warring parties. And that includes Ukraine.

The war will end when Putin decides to end it. That would mean one of two things. It could mean he has achieved his military objective of controlling Ukraine; or it could mean that the war has gone on for so long and taken such a toll on Russia that the Russians themselves rebel against the high cost of continuing, and that as a result, Putin either must withdraw from Ukraine or offer some settlement the Ukrainians would accept. 

This has happened before, and not only in World War I. It also happened after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which helped set the stage for the collapse of the USSR. Russian dictatorships have a history of lasting for decades but then suddenly and catastrophically collapsing. Putin knows this better than anyone. He has made his regime resilient through energy exports, patronage, and fear, but there is always an instability in such regimes.

There are, in fact, already signs that Russians are tiring of the war. Opinion polling inside Russia is tricky, but there is credible evidence that most Russians admit that the war has negatively affected their lives and that a small majority want peace negotiations. Ukrainian strikes on energy infrastructure have taken a serious toll, and the Russian economy is in bad shape. Russian newspapers report an emerging fuel crisis, high unemployment, and thousands of companies on the verge of bankruptcy. 

Now is not the time to make things easier for Putin. He is not about to offer the US some grand bargain in return for American investments. He is not interested in investments or deals. He is interested in power.

Above all, the US should be patient. Instead of rewarding Putin’s aggression, the US should be raising the price. Instead of pretending we can deliver peace in a war that he started and controls, we should ensure that the price of the war falls directly on the one who started it—Vladimir Putin. We should hunker down for the long war that he apparently is willing to wage, and to help Ukraine as best we can to survive while he bleeds his war effort dry. 

The US should supply Ukraine not only with military equipment and arms to survive but to bring the war more to Putin’s doorstep. This would mean more deep-strike weapons. It should also mean much harsher sanctions that target his energy exports and Russia’s ability to engage in commerce with the world. There are far too many loopholes in the sanctions regimes, and these allow Putin to finance the war while sparing his oligarchs and elite supporters the pain of it.

The US should avoid a mistake made by the Biden administration. They were terrified of military escalation, which Putin used to his advantage repeatedly. It kept the US from providing deep strike weapons, and it gave Putin enormous diplomatic leverage. Nothing short of US troops coming to the aid of Ukraine could seriously trigger an unpredictable backlash of escalation from the Russians. Since that is not in the cards, we should not let our fears of escalation deter us from providing more serious military support to Ukraine. 

Put simply, a Ukrainian victory would be an American victory. Only when Putin’s imperial dreams fail will Europe be safe from Putin’s designs and threats. And only then would the Russian threat of pushing America out of Europe come to an end. 

Conclusion

President Trump appears to have tired of his schemes to flatter Putin into peace. He has not only consented to more sanctions but has resumed military aid to Ukraine. He has, for now at least, stopped seeking high profile photo-opportunity summits with Putin that produced nothing.

This is promising. Trump will likely never fully adopt an outright anti-Russian policy, but even a moderately tough pressure campaign against Russia could give Ukraine more time to prevail in the war of wills between him and Putin. Trump has people around him who desperately want a peace deal with Russia, and they will not stop pushing a one-sided agreement favoring Russia. But there are also factions within the administration, not to mention in Congress, that oppose selling out Ukraine. At the end of the day,  it is not possible to impose a peace agreement without Ukraine’s consent. 

There are also three major wild cards that could affect this dynamic. One is that, because of rising internal corruption or some other political crisis, Ukraine implodes, weakening it to the point where it must surrender all or parts of Ukrainian territory. Another is that Europe could take a rightward turn that may create pro-Russian governments in European capitals. A third is that Trump could return to his quest to win the Nobel Peace Prize by appeasing Putin. 

Whatever happens, the US is better off keeping its powder dry and showing strategic patience. The only realistic option for ending the war is to convince Putin that the cost of fighting it is greater than that of stopping. This means the war could be long—possibly very long. 

The United States should be patient; time may prove to be on its side.