During the past few months, the war in Ukraine has remained relatively static on the battlefield. Russia’s offensive operations in the Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, have slowed. Its minimal gains have been offset by sizable losses in manpower and equipment. On the political front, however, much of the war’s underlying logic has been flipped on its head since the February 28th meeting at the White House between Donald Trump, J. D. Vance, and Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky. What was meant to be a signing ceremony for a rare-earth-minerals deal devolved into a shouting match, with Trump telling Zelensky, “You don’t have the cards,” and declaring, “You’re either going to make a deal or we’re out,” and “If we’re out, you’ll fight it out. I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.”
Zelensky was kicked out of the White House, and Trump said that he could only return when he agreed to submit to a U.S.-dictated peace plan—effectively a ceasefire that contains no mechanisms for Ukraine’s long-term security. “Everyone was shocked,” a political source in Kyiv told me. But, a week later, the source added, “the shock has worn off. Any remaining illusions were shattered. Now we understand who we’re dealing with.”
With Trump, “deal” is indeed the operative word—even if the one his Administration envisions regarding the war in Ukraine is a rather lopsided one. In the wake of the calamitous White House meeting, Vance confirmed that the bilateral deal on rare-earth minerals is the only one on the table; there will be no additional agreement on security guarantees, exactly the component that Zelensky and other Ukrainian officials have long suggested must be part of any durable settlement. Last week, the U.S. froze military aid and other defense coöperation with Ukraine. Trump’s national-security adviser, Mike Waltz, said that the policy would remain in place until Ukraine set a date to enter into peace talks with Russia. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy to Ukraine, compared the cutoff to “hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose.” He added, “Got their attention.”
Ukraine is now being pressed from two sides at the same time: by Russia and by the United States. (Last month, at the United Nations, the U.S. joined with Russia to vote against a nonbinding resolution condemning Russia’s invasion.) Putin is in no rush to negotiate—he believes Russian forces can outlast Ukraine’s, and that the West will run out of patience before Russia does—but, of all possible settlements, what’s currently being proposed by Trump is undeniably attractive: the front line effectively freezes, Russia’s territorial gains are de facto recognized, Ukraine remains outside of NATO, and the Kremlin is forced to concede nothing of consequence. Meanwhile, the U.S. presumably normalizes relations with Putin and lifts sanctions.
For Ukraine, that’s the bad news. “I wouldn’t say people are panicked,” Oleksandr Merezhko, the head of the parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee, said. “Rather, they’re disappointed. We feel as if we’ve been stabbed in the back by someone we thought of as our ally and partner.” A source in Moscow’s foreign-policy establishment told me that the spat between Trump and Zelensky had ruptured relations more dramatically than many imagined. “We expected a certain pivot,” the source told me. “But this turned out more abrupt and radical than anyone predicted. Few saw such a dramatic schism.”
The slightly reassuring news for Ukraine is that the shutoff of U.S. arms shipments is not as disastrous as it would have been in the war’s early days. “In some key ways, the battlefield has evolved in Ukraine’s favor,” Mykola Bielieskov, a military analyst in Kyiv, said.
This is largely because of a recent surge in drone warfare. At earlier moments in the war, Ukraine was outgunned, especially in terms of artillery ammunition, and being slowly ground down by Russian forces. These days, drones—primarily so-called first-person-view drones, controlled by an operator wearing a headset—have come to account for seventy per cent of casualties on the front. Crucially for Ukraine, more than ninety per cent of drones deployed in the field are produced domestically by an array of state and private manufacturers. As a result, the Trump Administration’s order will likely have limited effects on Ukraine’s supply of the war’s primary frontline weapon.
Mines, which are used to slow Russian small-group assaults, are also increasingly manufactured inside Ukraine. As for artillery munitions, which still play a role, Ukraine won’t see its stocks run completely bare. For starters, it has developed its own production lines for 155-millimetre shells, the workhorse of NATO artillery systems. Since the start of the war, the U.S. has sent three million 155-millimetre shells to Ukraine; this year, Europe plans to provide a million and a half more.
The bigger problem for Ukraine will be replacing U.S.-supplied long-range weapons. Ukraine’s stocks of ATACMS, capable of hitting targets at a range of almost two hundred miles, are already low. With the aid shutoff, the number of rockets for HIMARS systems, which have a sixty-mile range, will also dwindle. Both are used to strike munitions depots, command and control nodes, airfields and other bases; neither Ukraine nor Europe produces comparable weapons systems at scale. “These weapons have shaped how Russian forces have to operate in the rear,” Michael Kofman, a noted analyst of the war at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said. “Without them, they will regain significant freedom of action in organizing their logistics.”
The most significant effect will likely be on Ukraine’s air defenses. The U.S. Patriot system is uniquely capable of shooting down Russia’s advanced long-range missiles. Only the United States produces the system’s interceptor missiles, and Ukraine could begin to run out in the coming months. This will allow Russia to increase missile attacks on Ukrainian military targets. And Ukraine’s largest cities will also become more exposed to Russian missile barrages. “So Trump has decided to punish the residents of Kyiv, or Kharkiv and Odesa, Dnipro,” the Kyiv political source said. “More of them will die.”
Lastly, the effects on intelligence sharing are harder to predict. U.S. spy satellites and signals intelligence have helped Ukraine locate targets for long-range strikes. More crucially, the U.S. has also provided assistance in what’s known as weaponeering, the technical know-how to program and calibrate a weapon to inflict maximum damage. Ukraine has yet to oversee these points of the firing chain on its own and its success, or failure, in doing so will only emerge in the coming weeks.
A Ukrainian military officer also raised the question of Starlink, a satellite-based communications system developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX. Starlink is employed widely by the Ukrainian military, but its services in Ukraine are paid for by the Pentagon. “If Starlink goes down, that means we effectively lose command and control inside the armed forces,” the officer told me. That is a very big problem. “Everything is replaceable,” the officer said. “It’s just a question of how quickly.” The next phase of the war, and possibly its resolution, will be determined by what happens first: Will Ukraine develop alternative arms supplies before Russia reconstitutes its forces and begins a spring or summer offensive?
If the situation at the front significantly degrades, Zelensky will feel more pressure at home to enter into talks about ending the war, even if that means a disadvantageous ceasefire. Late last year, for the first time since the invasion, a majority of Ukrainians told pollsters that they favored negotiations, rather than fighting until the country emerged victorious. “For Ukraine, the present situation is not yet dire, but the war has largely been on a negative trajectory,” Kofman said. “Over time, without U.S. support, problems for the Ukrainian military will stack, making its position all the more difficult.”
During the first three years of the war, Europe looked to Washington to lead, both in terms of military and political responses. There are indications, however, that Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. support—not only from the war in Ukraine but security in Europe, more broadly—may finally stir European leaders to action.
