In a Tight Spot, Ukraine Resolves to Fight On

Ukraine is in a difficult spot, but Ukrainians say they are determined to fight on.

On one hand, Russia retains two important advantages that suggest it is on a winning trajectory. One is that, in this war of attrition, it has greater reserves of people and resources. Another is that Moscow has battlefield momentum as its summer offensive continues. Though Ukrainian commanders downplay the campaign’s success, Russia is making small but steady gains, doing a lot of damage in the process. Russian-made drones are pummelling Ukrainian supply lines and pinning Ukrainian troops in front-line positions.

Moscow has also employed new tactics in air raids on Ukrainian cities far behind the front. If a year ago Russia would send dozens of Iranian-designed Shahed drones per day, now it is able to deploy hundreds of them thanks to ramped-up domestic production. The Russian-made Shahed flies higher and faster, with greater manoeuvrability. Arriving in waves and carrying more powerful warheads than before, the Shaheds are overwhelming Ukrainian air defences and causing greater destruction. Frequently, mass drone strikes are followed by ballistic and cruise missile salvoes, which can do even more damage. Mixed industrial and residential neighbourhoods in Ukrainian cities mean that civilians are often in harm’s way.

Yet having the upper hand is different from being on the verge of victory, particularly while Ukraine has international backers and asymmetric capabilities that can keep the pace of Russian progress slow and make the war very costly.

One reason Ukraine retains hope is that while Russia has enjoyed its long-term advantages since the start of the full-scale war, they have not translated into rapid progress. Russia’s superior numbers permit a slow but steady expansion into Ukrainian territory; in June, Russian forces took 556 sq km, the biggest monthly gain in the year to date. Yet the dominance of drones on both sides of the front means that neither party can assemble sufficient forces for a significant breach that would turn the tables. Russia has long since abandoned the mass assaults that characterised the beginning of the full-scale invasion, instead sending in small squads of soldiers to probe Ukrainian lines until they meet resistance. Nevertheless, some estimates place Russian casualties at 1 million since February 2022. 

Knowing that a rising casualty count alone has failed to turn Russia around, Kyiv is using additional means to try to convince Russia that the costs of victory are insurmountably high. These include the use of long-range drones to help wear down its adversary by bringing the war closer to ordinary Russians. The small numbers of Ukrainian drones that reach the Russian capital do little damage, but they frequently force the authorities to close city airports for hours at a time and shut down mobile internet service as a precaution. Since the beginning of May, more than 1,000 flights had to be cancelled at Moscow airports. On 28 July, pro-Ukrainian hackers carried out a massive cyberattack on the Russian airline Aeroflot. Kyiv is also looking for opportunities to destroy key infrastructure, partly to demonstrate its capacity to do even more. In June, Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb succeeded in hitting planes in Russia’s strategic bomber fleet – which had been relocated to make it less vulnerable to Ukrainian attack – as far away as Siberia. Ukraine also strikes military and industrial sites across Russia on a regular basis. Trying to put the situation in the best possible light, a senior Ukrainian security official told Crisis Group, “We can still change this trajectory; we’re doing what we can. We’re still jumping higher than our heads”.

A shortage of air defences is one of Ukraine’s biggest challenges. Even before the U.S. temporarily suspended arms shipments in early July, air defence weaponry was in scarce supply, drained by Russian air raids on Ukrainian cities. The frequent and severe nocturnal attacks are directly affecting morale among the civilian population. Many Ukrainians view the drone attacks as a form of psychological warfare meant to wear them out. As a former government minister told Crisis Group, Ukrainians over and over again face the choice of risking death by sleeping through the night to stay sane – or descending into air raid shelters each time and going crazy from stress and insomnia.

The problem was exacerbated during the July suspension of previously committed U.S. arms deliveries. Citing concerns that the U.S. was running short of weapons, the Pentagon paused shipments – until President Donald Trump, seemingly unaware of the cutoff, ordered the resumption of deliveries amid relentless Russian aerial attacks. Ukraine most of all values the U.S.-made Patriot missile defence system, which is crucial because of its unique capacity to shoot down ballistic missiles. In July, Germany committed to transferring two more Patriot systems to Ukraine in the near term, with other European partners coming up with an additional three. While Ukrainians welcome the prospect of a boost to their air defences, they worry about how soon the promised aid will come, whether it will be enough and how much damage their cities will suffer while they wait.

On the battlefield, a key challenge remains the inability of the Ukrainian military to mobilise and train enough soldiers to plug growing gaps on the front. Recruiters have had trouble meeting quotas since the wave of patriotic fervour in the early days of the all-out invasion died down. Stories abound of young men being plucked off the streets and sent to training camps. Casualties, desertion and creative accounting mean that some units are fielding just a fraction of the troops they have on paper. As a result, there are spots along the front that are so thinly defended that the first contact advancing Russian troops make is not with Ukrainian infantry but with the operators of forward Ukrainian drone units. 

Without the infusion of fresh troops, Ukraine can hardly contemplate operational, not to mention strategic, initiatives to regain lost ground. Holding the line and wearing down the Russians has become the Ukrainian military’s overriding imperative. Given the lack of personnel, there is a growing hope among Ukrainians that technology will be able to replace people. Ukraine has made great strides in drone technology, and in 2024 it formed a separate branch of the military to focus on uncrewed air, land and sea vehicles. But Russia is also rapidly adapting to the high-tech battlefield, for example putting fibre-optic cable drones to devastating use against Ukrainian drone units and logistics. Thanks to thread-like fibre-optic cables that make radio communications superfluous, these drones are not susceptible to jamming as traditional drones are.

Other challenges for Ukraine’s military have nothing to do with technology but reflect a need for changes in mindset and organisation. Problems include an inflexible command culture, a legacy of the Soviet era, and a longstanding lack of transparency in arms procurement. A senior Ukrainian officer told Crisis Group that while conducting a recent inspection, he found that a unit’s entire drone supply had been delivered defective. He suspected that a corrupt scheme was involved, as repairing the drones was costlier than buying new ones. 

First, there is material support, though it is assistance committed by former President Joe Biden and not new aid. The Biden administration funnelled military aid to Ukraine in two ways: by donating existing U.S. stocks and by placing and paying for orders with U.S. arms producers on Ukraine’s behalf. While at least some of the weapons in the delivery pipeline are likely to continue flowing, it is not clear that everything originally promised to Kyiv remains destined for Ukraine. Nor is it clear exactly when the supplies the Trump administration still intends to deliver will run out, as many promised systems are in different stages of contracting and production. Informed observers believe the pipeline should last into 2026.

Trump, meanwhile, has made clear that under his administration the U.S. will no longer be a donor of arms to Ukraine but that he is willing to sell weapons for Kyiv’s use if other countries foot the bill. Here, some U.S. weapons, such as the Patriot air defence system, are more important than others. Other armaments, such as artillery shells, are in far less demand than at the start of the war thanks to the appearance of new producers and the increasingly important role that drones play on the battlefield. 

Over the course of the war, Kyiv has depended on Washington for much more than just arms. The U.S. provides intelligence that Ukraine uses on the battlefield, and after a brief suspension following President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s disastrous Oval Office meeting in February, that element of cooperation has resumed.

Finally, diplomatic support is also important. The U.S. is the one country that the Kremlin sees as an equal counterpart to facilitate a negotiated settlement. Though the Trump administration at first perplexed both Ukrainians and European allies by positioning itself more as a mediator than an advocate for Ukraine, it has generally played a useful role in bringing the parties back to the table. The fact that Ukraine and Russia held a round of technical talks in Istanbul in late July suggests that both sides want at least to demonstrate good-will to the White House.

In the latest twist on Washington’s role, a frustrated Trump administration now appears to be trying to press Moscow into a deal that will involve a ceasefire. But what new pressure will be applied, and what difference it will make, remains in question. After repeatedly expressing unhappiness with continuing Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities, Trump first gave the Kremlin until September and then until early August to make a peace deal or face stiff secondary sanctions on buyers of Russian oil, primarily China and India. At the end of July, the U.S. president took a step in this direction in announcing a 25 per cent tariff on India plus an unspecified additional penalty for financing Russia’s war effort – leading New Delhi to respond that the “targeting of India is unjustified and unreasonable”. Trump has also engaged in an online shouting match with former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, telling him to “watch his words” and announcing that the U.S. was repositioning nuclear submarines after Medvedev alluded to the risk of nuclear war in a Telegram post.

But Trump could switch to a different diplomatic register very quickly. Prior to setting the August deadline and his online sparring with Medvedev, the president appeared committed to maintaining flexibility about how far he goes in using U.S. economic leverage. Apparently under pressure from the White House, the Senate put a hold on a bill that would impose harsh secondary sanctions on countries buying Russian oil.

In the short term, a group of European countries, led by Germany, have agreed to pay the U.S. for urgently needed Patriot systems. Over the medium and long term, however, a large part of the answer lies in how fast European countries backing Ukraine will be able to ramp up their own defence production. To help cut costs and speed up the process, Ukraine’s burgeoning defence industry wants to expand new models of cooperation that involve European money flowing to Ukrainian arms makers. Denmark is at the forefront, having procured more than 500 million euros worth of Ukrainian weapons for the Ukrainian armed forces in 2024. While production costs are significantly lower in Ukraine, there are the dangers of Russia targeting defence plants, issues with quality control and risks of corruption.

The most important limiting factor, of course, is money. To replace U.S. contributions to Ukraine’s budget and military, Kyiv’s European backers would have to come up with tens of billions of dollars in additional funding. Following NATO member states’ decision in June to raise their defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP – and count contributions to Ukraine’s military toward that goal – there is hope in Kyiv that some European countries will spend more on defence cooperation with Ukraine. Polling data in many European Union and NATO member states in Europe show support for both Ukraine and more defence spending. But as defence budgets increase (and the new U.S. tariffs start to bite), tensions may well rise in European societies over the optimal balance between guns and butter.

Ukrainians also want to see external financing of their defences matched with a stronger effort to starve Russia of cash for its war machine. Ukrainian experts and officials complain that Western countries could do more to enforce existing sanctions, cut off the Kremlin from oil revenue and close loopholes for technology transfers to Russia. The EU has sought to harmonise sanctions enforcement among its 27 member states and lowered its price cap on Russian oil exports. But there are still reports of Western technology finding its way into Russian arms.

It is always possible that President Trump’s deadline will bear fruit, leading the parties to reach some sort of ceasefire deal in early August. That outcome is highly improbable, however, given the positions of the parties and their continued will to fight. The best realistic scenario for Ukraine, therefore, is that the end of the summer fighting season finds Kyiv – relying mostly on its drone arsenal – having prevented Moscow from being able to claim a victory that significantly changes the battlefield map.

Further down the road, Kyiv’s best-case scenario would find Russian President Vladimir Putin reconsidering a ceasefire after determining the futility of breaking down Ukraine’s defences amid new aid packages financed by Europeans; stiffening sanctions; and pressure from a U.S. administration still interested in brokering a peace settlement. There is a widespread sense among Ukrainians that any ceasefire will be temporary, as few believe that a durable peace is possible as long as Putin is in power. But a ceasefire is not surrender. It would give Kyiv an opportunity to regroup – just as it would for Moscow. The Ukrainian assumption is that a freeze in the fighting, which could open the possibility of more favourable conditions in the future, is better than the dire status quo. Even if the only reason Moscow agrees is that it makes the same calculation, that is an improvement over both sides figuring that their best bet is to keep fighting.

Ukrainians also increasingly see the best-case outcome involving a healthy element of self-reliance. As recently as February, President Zelenskyy was still talking about Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO and the need for security guarantees from the U.S. – but that has changed. Trump’s humiliation of Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, as well as the U.S. president’s resistance to aiding Ukraine and willingness to engage with Putin, came as a shock. Even as Trump expresses frustration with Putin, and Zelenskyy tries to salvage what he can from the relationship, many Ukrainians have stopped viewing the U.S. as a benefactor and ally. Moreover, the Trump administration’s flat-out rejection of Ukrainian NATO membership has caused foreign policy thinkers in Kyiv to reassess their country’s future role in European security. It is dawning on Ukrainians that NATO membership may be worth less than originally thought given the Trump administration’s own ambivalence toward the alliance. Much more important may be closer defence cooperation with individual NATO members that view a strong Ukraine as a critical component of their broader defence strategy and therefore invest in a Ukrainian force that can deter future Russian aggression. 

Ukrainians understand that the path to a ceasefire and beyond is narrow and full of pitfalls. In Kyiv, analysts say the withdrawal of unequivocal U.S. support for Ukraine has strengthened Putin’s determination to fight on. Though the Kremlin also faces significant challenges in forcing an end to the fighting on its terms, the trajectory of the war, as discussed above, favours Russia. While Kyiv now believes that it can continue to fight, it is certainly possible to imagine how that might change.

If Ukraine keeps struggling to fill its depleted ranks, not only will Russia’s grinding advance continue unabated, but Moscow’s attacks on cities near the front, such as Kharkiv or Sumy, could make life unbearable for residents and force mass evacuations. Tactical victories in the embattled Donetsk region and the expansion of the conflict into more Ukrainian regions could create the image of an unstoppable Russian juggernaut. Should Kyiv determine in the face of such an onslaught that it cannot outlast Russian pressure, it might be forced to seek peace on Russia’s terms, namely by submitting to Moscow’s will. While the specifics would need to be worked out, in broad strokes those would probably include the surrender to Russia of nearly 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory (Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia); changes to Ukraine’s constitution regarding its neutrality and the status of the Russian language; limits to the size of the Ukrainian army; and a halt to international efforts to investigate alleged Russian war crimes.

Polls show that a majority of Ukrainians do not see peace on Russia’s terms to be an option. Indeed, most observers agree that capitulation would likely lead to the collapse of Zelenskyy’s government. It would also send a new wave of refugees fleeing westward with millions of people fearing protracted Russian occupation. As politicians blame one another, many Ukrainians might say – as increasing numbers already do – that the country’s backers did not do enough to help. Some argue that if Ukraine is forced into surrender, the battle-hardened Ukrainian army might be coopted by Russia to fight NATO and EU members. 

Zelenskyy’s position appears secure, but recent events demonstrate how conditional his support is. A poll published in June showed that 65 per cent of Ukrainians trust Zelenskyy, down eleven points from the month before (though still a high number when compared to Western leaders favourability ratings with their electorates). Nonetheless, most of the president’s political opponents agree that holding a presidential election before there is peace would make Ukraine vulnerable to Kremlin interference.

That said, Zelenskyy seriously tested Ukrainians’ confidence when he pushed through hastily crafted legislation stripping anti-corruption bodies of their independence in July. The move prompted a massive domestic and international backlash, with the country seeing its largest protests since the beginning of the full-scale invasion and vocal Ukraine backers in the EU and U.S. assailing the changes. Realising that both his domestic legitimacy and desperately needed foreign financial aid was on the line, Zelenskyy backtracked and reversed the legislation.

The public outcry over Zelenskyy’s attempt to control anti-corruption agencies revealed growing frustration with the entrenchment of his power. Critics saw a cabinet reshuffle in mid-July as a cosmetic manoeuvre that merely strengthened the clout of the president’s influential chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, who critics say wields unchecked power behind the scenes. Speculation is rife about what was behind the initial legislation, with much of it suggesting that investigators had come too close to Zelenskyy’s inner circle. In any case, the president demonstrated a worrying detachment from public sentiment.

For now, Zelenskyy may have staunched domestic anger, helped by Ukraine’s struggle to ward off an external invader. But Ukrainians are making a direct connection between what they are fighting for at home and at the front. At a demonstration against the restrictive legislation, a young woman in Kyiv held up a cardboard sign saying: “My brother didn’t die for this future”.