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A Four-Year Failure of Imagination

By Christian Caryl, a columnist at Foreign Policy

Ukraine has no conventional navy, but it has sunk a large number of Russian warships and pushed most of what’s left of the Black Sea fleet far away from its home port in Crimea. Ukrainian drones have destroyed Russian strategic bombers nearly 3,000 miles from the battlefields of the Donbas. Kyiv has used 3D printing to make drone parts in decentralized facilities across the country—one factor that helped them to produce nearly 3 million drones last year. Russia’s use of fiber-optic guidance systems for its own drones has left landscapes around eastern Ukraine draped in filaments like the silk of a million spiders.

This is a very short list of some of the astonishing developments since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine four years ago next week. The biggest surprise, of course, is the simple fact that the Ukrainians are holding and resisting—even though they remain significantly outnumbered and out-resourced by the Russians—after the most intense European combat since World War II. The war has now gone on longer than the Soviet Union’s fight against Nazi Germany, a particularly embarrassing comparison for Russian President Vladimir Putin, always so eager to place himself in the illustrious lineage of Russian military commanders.

But Putin is not the only one guilty of epic miscalculation. This war has defied an uncountable number of forecasts. The initial consensus among Western military experts envisioned a quick Ukrainian defeat—and for good reason. Then as now, the numbers on paper all favored the Russians. The Ukrainians, after all, had failed to inflict serious damage on the Russian troops and their proxies who invaded Crimea and the Donbas in 2014. A few observers braved the consensus and foresaw that Kyiv would put up stiff resistance to a weaker-than-expected Russia, but it is hard to think of anyone who sketched out the wildly improbable particulars that followed. No one foretold the breakneck pace of battlefield innovation, the off-the-charts Russian casualty rate, or the many ways in which the conflict has transformed global politics. Given U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to power, some might have anticipated Washington’s new recalcitrance or the push for European rearmament. But who anticipated the startling news of North Korean soldiers dying to fight Russia’s war or Kyiv’s military intelligence helping to kill Russian mercenaries in Mali?

One might argue that war, that most volatile of human activities, has always defied easy prediction. At the start of the Civil War, most well-informed Americans assumed that it would be over in a few months. In the summer of 1914, European leaders on all sides declared that the burgeoning conflict would be over by Christmas. In the 1960s, U.S. President Lyndon Johnson believed he could guide the Vietnam War to a successful conclusion with the help of management consultants and computer geeks. One of his successors, George W. Bush, was convinced that defeating Saddam Hussein’s regime would conclude the fighting in Iraq. In many other realms of everyday life, the consequences of myopia are limited. In war, they can be devastating beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

Yet the gap between prediction and reality has been especially stark in the case of the Russia-Ukraine war. Perhaps this has to do with the insane pace of modern technological change, the speed of information sharing, or the specific power of Ukraine’s will to self-determination. Whatever the reason, we should take the record of our own shortsightedness in Ukraine as a salutary warning. The potential for fresh conflicts is growing around the world: in Iran, in South Asia, on the Korean Peninsula, and around Taiwan. Do we really understand all of the contingencies that each of these possible wars might unleash?

To make this observation is not to counsel some particular reform of policy mechanisms, intelligence analysis, or military strategy. Wars will not stop, obviously, just because we cannot anticipate how they will unfurl. The planners will go on making plans, and the politicians will continue to work up policies even when they have little idea what such policies will entail. But surely it cannot hurt to acknowledge the limits of our foresight. Indeed, it is often precisely the developments we failed to anticipate that turn out to be the most significant. The U.S. government inquiry into the 9/11 terrorist attacks rightly chided decision-makers and security experts for their incapacity to think beyond precedent when it concluded that “[t]he most important failure was one of imagination.” Ukraine has taught the Russians a harsh lesson about such failures. As the United States prepares for the wars of the future, its planners would be well-advised to consider the dangers of arrogance.

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Performative Negotiations to Humor Trump

By Angela Stent, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former U.S. national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia

More than a year into U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, the Russia-Ukraine war is no closer to a resolution than when he promised to end it within 24 hours of his inauguration. Russian President Vladimir Putin still believes that time is on his side and he can defeat Ukraine, making Russia’s participation in U.S.-led negotiations entirely performative. Putin understands that Trump’s foremost desire is to reset U.S.-Russian relations and negotiate rafts of profitable deals with Moscow—and that this will continue to drive Trump to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to make one-sided concessions. Performative negotiations are a way for Putin to humor Trump and prevent him from taking any more punitive actions against Russia.

Trump admires Putin and likes the idea of making deals with him—but he is wary of Zelensky, whom he likely associates with his first impeachment in 2020. Whereas the Biden administration supported Ukraine after the full-scale Russian invasion in 2022, the Trump administration’s stance has been neutral at best, with Trump often blaming Ukraine for allegedly starting the war. Financial and military assistance to Ukraine has virtually dried up, though intelligence support remains. U.S. efforts to end the war have developed on two tracks—a bilateral U.S.-Russia track aimed at improving relations and sealing business deals, as well as a trilateral U.S.-Russia-Ukraine track. Europe has largely been excluded from both, even though it now supplies most of the financial and military assistance, including purchasing U.S. weapons on Kyiv’s behalf.

Instead of sending experienced U.S. diplomats who understand Russia and Putin into the negotiations, Trump has dispatched his personal friend and fellow real-estate billionaire Steve Witkoff. He has been to Russia six times in his special envoy role but has yet to visit Ukraine. As a former KGB case officer, Putin knows how to flatter and manipulate his U.S. interlocutors. He seems to have persuaded Witkoff of his own, unique view of the history of Ukraine. Witkoff also seems to believe that the core contention is over real estate—that all Ukraine has to do is to cede parts of the Donbas region that Russia has been trying to conquer since 2014. Putin, however, has made it altogether clear in his writings and speeches that his goal all along has been to subjugate Ukraine and install a Russia-aligned regime, because he does not believe that Ukraine has a right to exist as an independent country. To Putin, the Donbas territorial question is incidental to this but a good way to keep Trump and Witkoff busy.

In November, a 28-point U.S.-Russian “peace plan” was leaked to Axios. It contained Russia’s maximum demands: Ukraine cedes the part of the Donbas it controls, reduces the size of its military, and agrees never to join NATO, among other provisions. After push-back from Ukraine and its European supporters, a new, 20-point peace plan has emerged, including European security guarantees for Ukraine backed up by the United States. Three rounds of trilateral talks—with the United States represented by Witkoff, Jared Kushner, and other Trump appointees, while Russia and Ukraine are represented by intelligence, defense, and other professionals—have taken place. So far, these talks have led to a prisoner exchange, but there is no agreement on a settlement or even a ceasefire. The Russians continue to talk as if the only plan on offer is the bilateral U.S.-Russian one. They also insist that there is an “Anchorage formula,” allegedly agreed to by Trump and Putin at their summit in Alaska in August 2025, which incorporates Russia’s maximal demands to effectively extinguish Ukrainian sovereignty.

So far, we see little sign that the Trump administration is willing to apply any pressure on Putin. Since the start of negotiations, Putin has intensified the bombardment of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and other civilian targets. This brutal war will only stop when he no longer believes he can win. And that would require the United States, along with Europe, to ratchet up direct and indirect sanctions on Russia’s energy sector and intensify the pursuit of its shadow tanker fleet, depriving the Kremlin of the needed revenues to continue the war. A sanctions bill with overwhelming bipartisan support has been languishing in the U.S. Senate for months, awaiting Trump’s permission to hold a vote. Unless we see these and other changes in Washington, the war could continue for the foreseeable future.

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Why Ukrainians Don’t Believe in Lasting Peace

By Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former Ukrainian defense minister

Russia’s war against Ukraine has consistently defied expectations. Ukraine did not quickly fall in 2022, nor did it achieve the decisive breakthrough that many predicted in 2023. Today, a new expectation is taking hold: The war is ripe for a negotiated settlement.

At first glance, this logic appears sound. Russia is bogged down and paying an enormous price: It has incurred more than 1.2 million casualties and military spending consumes roughly half of its public budget. Ukraine, meanwhile, faces immense human and economic strain and cannot yet liberate its territory. The war is widely viewed as a stalemate, and both sides seem to have incentives to stop fighting.

But like other expectations before it, this one rests on a misunderstanding of the war’s underlying dynamics.

The central issue is not just the balance on the battlefield. Rather, it is the nature of the Russian regime and the war’s rapidly changing character. Today, the war is not merely a tool of Russian policy; it has become foundational to the regime itself. The Russian economy has been restructured around wartime production, and the regime’s political legitimacy increasingly depends on its ability to deliver the war’s publicly stated goals. A strong, independent Ukraine is incompatible with Russia’s long-term strategy. A Ukraine that is rebuilding, integrating into the European Union, and closely aligned with NATO—regardless of formal membership—would become a central pillar of European security. For Moscow, this outcome is unacceptable. Ending the war without achieving its strategic objectives would directly threaten Putin’s regime.

This is why Ukrainians do not believe that painful concessions will achieve lasting peace. It is not that they think a better deal might be available; it is that they do not believe any deal will be durable. There are no realistic indications that the Kremlin is remotely willing to abandon its goal of subjugating Ukraine, nor is there any trust that Russia would uphold its commitments.

This skepticism is grounded in Moscow’s repeated violations of agreements since 2014. Ukrainians believe that any concessions made today would not end the war, they would simply reset it on terms more favorable to Russia. Concessions would allow Russia to regroup and attack again.

In response, Ukraine’s Western partners have been discussing security guarantees to back a settlement. But these so-called guarantees may not address the core risks of renewed Russian aggression for three reasons.

First, many of the arrangements being discussed resemble the nonbinding commitments of NATO’s Articles 4 and 5, which emphasize consultations and future decisions. But the kind of war Russia is fighting leaves little time for deliberation. A rapid escalation, combined with information manipulation and blame shifting, could delay decision-making long enough for Russia to stay on the initiative.

Second, the proposed guarantees lack credible operationalization. No European country has expressed a willingness to engage in a full-scale kinetic conflict with Russia on Ukrainian territory in the event of renewed aggression. Without such commitment, assurances remain vague. Effective guarantees require a clear and automatic link between a triggering event and immediate military action by the guarantors. That link does not exist.

Third, there is a deeper problem: Western militaries are not fully prepared for the kind of war now being fought in Ukraine. Thus their guarantees may not impress Moscow enough to deter it or be effective in the event of escalation.

Success on the battlefield depends not only on skill and doctrine, but also on access to large quantities of weapons and ammunition and the ability to adapt quickly. The center of gravity has shifted toward industrial capacity and technological scale, particularly in unmanned systems.

Russia already operates within this reality. It is expanding production of drones and missiles while reorganizing its economy for sustained conflict. Its continued strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure aim to put pressure on civilians and degrade Ukraine’s ability to produce and sustain military capabilities.

Europe, by contrast, has yet to mobilize its industrial base for this type of warfare. Although European militaries have advantages in areas such as conventional air power, their doctrines and production systems are not yet aligned with the requirements of a high-intensity, industrialized, unmanned conflict.

In the context of this evolving war, any European security guarantees would remain constrained by outdated doctrines, limited industrial capacity, and insufficient scale.

The answer may not come through negotiations. All available indicators suggest that Russia is not preparing for deescalation. Russia is preparing for the continuation—and potential escalation—of the war.

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Europe’s Front Line Is Preparing for War

By Keir Giles, the author of Who Will Defend Europe? An Awakened Russia and a Sleeping Continent

Since 2022, Russia’s war, covert operations in Europe, and demands for a larger sphere of influence have focused attention on a possible Russian attack on a NATO member. If Europe is better prepared for this contingency today, it is primarily due to the efforts of a small band of front-line states urgently improving their own defenses, rather than the European hinterland seeking to catch up. If anything, the gap between Western Europe and those states that take defense seriously has grown even wider.

Finland, for example, is an unlikely candidate for attack. It has never given cause to doubt its readiness for defense. Its armed forces and society are singularly focused on readiness to face the country’s primary threat.

Finland also shows how Europe’s front-line states have been developing the means to strike back. Recognizing that the ability to launch deep strikes into Russia is critical for deterring Moscow, Finland invested early in such weapons. Integration of long-range Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles into the Finnish Air Force was completed in 2018, long before the escalation of Russia’s war demonstrated beyond doubt how essential these capabilities are. Longer-range missiles are also on order.

Despite widespread Western portrayals as tiny and defenseless, the Baltic states are not passive. Estonia has invested heavily in deep-strike capabilities within the limits of its smaller budget. Like Finland, it aims to ensure that any challenge from Russia will not be limited to Estonian territory but have immediate consequences for Russia itself.

As a front-line state, Estonia maintains territorial defense forces ready at short notice, making its capacity for resistance far greater than Western war game scenarios might suggest. With a wartime strength of 43,000 soldiers and a deep pool of trained reservists, Estonia fields substantially more forces than its European NATO allies—including a British-led NATO forward force—could swiftly deploy.

In Latvia and Lithuania, the numbers and capabilities tell a similar story. Canada leads Latvia’s expanded NATO Multinational Brigade, while a German brigade anchors a NATO battlegroup that will be fully operational by 2027. With or without NATO contingents, both Baltic states are far from undefended, with mobilized forces ready at or before the outset of a crisis.

Poland emerged early as Europe’s rearmament leader, rapidly scaling up investment in equipment and manpower. It has NATO’s highest military spending as a share of GDP (roughly 4.5 percent in 2025) and the largest proportion devoted to weapons systems (about 54 percent), rather than salaries and other costs. The country fields NATO’s third largest army, with plans to expand further, backed by strong public commitment to defense rooted in a clear understanding of the threat.

Poland, too, recognizes that offensive capabilities are essential to deterrence and readiness. Discussions of the Suwalki corridor—a strip of land between Belarus and Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave—as a key NATO vulnerability habitually overlook that defending Kaliningrad itself presents a greater challenge for Russia. The exclave seems even more exposed now, with much of its garrison reportedly transferred to the front line in Ukraine.

The three Baltic states and Poland are investing heavily in border fortifications, drawing on lessons from Ukraine that Russian forces must be slowed at the start of any incursion. All four, plus Finland, have withdrawn from the Ottawa Treaty banning anti-personnel mines (which Russia never signed), gaining an additional tool to delay Russian movement.

Much European alarm over the Trump administration’s recalibration of U.S. security commitments focuses on capabilities provided by U.S. forces. But Europe does not need to replace them like for like. To assure its defense, it need not be the United States; it must only be strong and resilient enough, by whatever route, to convince Moscow that the escalation risks outweigh rewards.

Europe as a whole has not stepped up. Its security in the short and medium term will rely on coalitions of the willing and able. Given slow efforts in countries further west—and lingering doubt that major allies would fight Russia in a crisis—the continent’s defense will hinge on a subset of eastern and northern states that take the threat seriously. In a self-help world, these front-line states are far from helpless.

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Putin Sells a False Win to Trump

By George Barros, the Russia team lead at the Institute for the Study of War

Russian President Vladimir Putin has worked hard to convince the world that Ukraine’s defeat is inevitable when it is not. His biggest success has come not on the front line but in the battle of narratives. Since meeting with Putin in Alaska, Donald Trump has shifted from demanding an immediate ceasefire to pressuring Kyiv to hand over unoccupied territory to Moscow based on the false idea that Russia is bound to win. “They’re much bigger. They’re much stronger,” Trump has said, giving Russia the “upper hand” in Ukraine.

Putin’s narrative of inevitable Russian victory rests on false claims: Ukraine’s front line is on the verge of collapse; Russia will capture the territories it claims; Russia has the manpower and resources to sustain the war indefinitely; and Ukraine cannot defeat the Russian military. Invoking the Soviet Red Army’s crushing of the German Wehrmacht in World War II, the Kremlin wants us to think that today’s much smaller Russian military is an unstoppable steamroller destined to win.

This is more than propaganda. It is a system of cognitive warfare designed to shape Western leaders’ assumptions and push them toward decisions that benefit Russia and disadvantage Ukraine. Moscow aims to persuade its audience that the only sensible outcome is a final settlement on Russia’s terms. Surrendering to Russia, the steamroller narrative suggests, is humane because it would spare the lives of soldiers and civilians who would otherwise be crushed. Putin has effectively injected the steamroller narrative into the international information space and U.S.-Russia negotiations.

The Kremlin has exaggerated perceptions of Russian military performance by claiming faster advances and greater territorial control than the facts support. Moscow frequently asserts that Russian forces have seized settlements that in reality remain under Ukrainian control. The aim is to create the impression of steady Russian momentum and a Ukraine perpetually on the back foot—bolstering demands that Kyiv cede substantial territories as a condition for peace. This narrative persists despite Russia’s failure to fully conquer these areas after four years of war.

A prominent example is the false claim that Russian troops captured Kupyansk, an operationally significant town in northeastern Ukraine, roughly 40 kilometers from the Russian border. The Kremlin publicized this claim ahead of Putin’s Dec. 2 meeting with U.S. negotiators in Moscow. In fact, Kyiv never lost the town. On Dec. 12, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a selfie from Kupyansk.

Putin and his lieutenants are masking the reality that Russian forces are advancing literally at a snail’s pace, achieving small gains at huge and unsustainable costs. In 2025, Russia captured just 0.8 percent of Ukraine’s territory, far below typical rates in modern mechanized warfare. Even some of the most infamous trench battles in World War I showed more rapid overall advances.

Assuming it can sustain the fighting and advance at its late-2025 pace, Russia would need until August 2027 to seize the rest of Donetsk oblast and until April 2029 to seize Donetsk along with the remaining parts of Zaporizhia and Kherson—three regions it declared annexed in 2022. Seizing all of Ukraine would take roughly a century.

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On average, Russia incurred roughly 1,200 casualties per day in 2025. Ukraine’s drone kill zone has trapped Russian forces in brutal positional warfare by denying them the ability to mass tanks and armored vehicles for a breakthrough. Instead, Russian units maneuver in small infantry groups of three to five. Combat footage shows soldiers crawling over the corpses of their fallen comrades to gain only tens of meters.

Russia’s military power is finite, and the assumption that it can fight indefinitely is false. The war imposes high and compounding costs on the economy. In January, Russia raised its value-added tax to 22 percent to offset record ‌military spending amid falling oil and gas revenues. In November, it began selling gold reserves as its sovereign wealth fund continued to shrink. A month earlier, Russia began preparing for compulsory mobilization. Facing a labor shortage, Russia plans to recruit tens of thousands of Indian migrant workers.

Ukraine’s situation on the battlefield is difficult but not critical. While Russia remains dangerous, a collapse of Ukrainian defenses is unlikely. With the front line a vast drone kill zone, both sides are locked in positional warfare with little capacity for rapid maneuver.

The war’s decisive battleground thus remains international support for Ukraine. Putin rightly assesses that if he can outlast the West—or better yet, persuade it to abandon Ukraine—Russia will win. The false narrative of inevitable Russian victory should not influence Western policy.

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Four Years on, Europe Is Taking Over

By Carl Bildt, a former Swedish prime minister

By all reasonable standards, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been a massive strategic failure. After four years and at the cost of substantially more than 1 million Russian casualties, Moscow controls slightly less than 20 percent of the territory of Ukraine, of which it already conquered 7 percent when it grabbed Crimea and the eastern Donbas in 2014.

But Putin is in no mood to concede failure and accept a ceasefire. He’s counting on his army to succeed where it has failed so far, on the Trump administration to pressure Kyiv into accepting Russia’s core demands, and on the Europeans to get tired of the war and stop supporting Ukraine.

As of now, none of Putin’s three avenues forward looks likely to succeed. Most Europeans have recognized Ukraine’s war of defense as Europe’s own. Were Putin to succeed in conquering Ukraine, he might well be tempted to continue in an effort to unravel the entire European security structure. But if Ukraine survives as an independent and sovereign nation, it would severely constrain his strategic options.

There were fears during the first year of war that European support would gradually decline, that key states could seek accommodation with Moscow, and that Ukraine would be left on its own. But support hasn’t waned. European countries in different configurations—including the European Union, the Nordic-Baltic-Ukraine coalition, and the so-called coalition of the willing—have not only continued their massive financial and military support but largely replaced U.S. aid since the start of the second Trump administration.

Loans and grants from EU institutions accounted for almost 90 percent of the financial and humanitarian flows in 2025. A handful of European countries, in particular Germany, Britain, and the Nordic countries, accounted for about 95 percent of military aid last year. A recent EU loan arrangement of 90 billion euros, along with other funds, effectively finances the Ukrainian state through 2026 and 2027. Despite all the doubts four years ago, Europe has stepped up.

How Europe commits to Ukraine’s future security is likely to take different forms. There will be some presence of forces in Ukraine itself, as well as financial and other help in strengthening Ukraine’s defense. For all the rhetoric surrounding U.S. and European security guarantees, the most important one will be Ukraine’s own ability to defend itself. Here, European support will be especially crucial.

No one can predict when the guns will fall silent. There will be some arrangements—perhaps only temporary ones—between Russia and Ukraine. The Kremlin might try another big offensive this year, like similar failed attempts in 2024 and 2025. But at some point, Putin will have to concede that continuing the war will achieve nothing more than further weakening Russia.

Initially, Donald Trump sought to achieve a ceasefire. But in Putin’s private meetings with Trump in Anchorage, Alaska, he managed to change Washington’s position. The Trump administration has since been pressuring Ukraine to accept the Kremlin’s territorial demands.

Essential for the security of Europe is therefore Europe’s own support of Ukraine—during the war and afterward, when the country will have to be stabilized and rebuilt. Peace in any genuine sense of the word can only come when Vladimir Putin has left the Kremlin and Ukraine has entered the European Union.

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Russia’s War Has Joined Europe to Asia

By C. Raja Mohan, a columnist at Foreign Policy and former member of India’s National Security Advisory Board

As much as the world has focused on the United States’ shifting foreign policy since the second inauguration of Donald Trump, the geopolitical effects of the Russia-Ukraine war have been constant. His predecessor, Joe Biden, sought to align U.S. allies in a “latticework” of overlapping alliances and partnerships to deal with the challenges presented by Russia in Europe and China in Asia. He urged Asia to take more interest in European security and the NATO allies to do more in the Indo-Pacific.

Trump appears uninterested in a grand Eurasian coalition. Instead, he insists that allies take responsibility for their own security amid Washington’s new focus on the Western hemisphere. That has produced the same imperative as before: more collaboration among U.S. allies in Europe and Asia.

The fear of abandonment by the United States is nudging allies and partners to beef up their own defense capabilities and explore greater collaboration, whether with or without Washington conducting the Eurasian orchestra. Each in his own way, Biden and Trump have accelerated the emergence of an increasingly interconnected Eurasian geopolitical theater.

The Biden years saw the United States’ Asian allies attend the annual NATO summits. Japan sought to mobilize Asia in defense of Ukraine on the grounds that standing up for Kyiv’s sovereignty is also about defending Asia against Chinese territorial expansion. South Korea’s growing defense capabilities now contribute to Eastern Europe’s security. Russia’s side of the war has seen a similar Eurasian alignment. China became a more active supporter of the Kremlin’s ability to sustain its military misadventure in Ukraine. North Korea not only provided a large part of Russia’s artillery munitions but also sent troops to fight with Russian forces.

Eurasian integration is no longer an abstraction. Since Trump returned to office, Europe has accelerated its effort at economic diversification with a special focus on the Indo-Pacific. New trade initiatives with Australia, India, and Indonesia stand out. Europe is also rebooting security partnerships with major Asian partners. For example, it has agreed to promote new defense industrial collaboration with New Delhi that is expected to reduce India’s dependence on Russian weapons.

The return of geopolitical thinking to Europe—after decades spent sneering at realism and power politics—will also have to address a more difficult challenge: how to address the consequences of Trump’s quest for better U.S.-Russia relations. As Europe continues to provide defense and economic support for Ukraine and develops its deterrent capabilities against Russia, it risks ceding diplomatic engagement with Moscow to Washington.

A similar challenge awaits Asia as Trump seeks “respectful relations” with China while still promising a robust defense of the first island chain facing China’s eastern seaboard. China is a more dominant presence in Asia than Russia is in Europe. Most Asian countries are more than eager to pursue stable ties with Beijing given its economic heft—even as they hope that Washington’s security commitment to Asia remains solid. While Asian partners pray that Trump will not be tempted into accommodating China in the region, they would want to hedge by expanding ties with other Asian states and European partners.

A shift in Washington’s strategy and the prospect of improved U.S. ties with Russia and China will increase the incentive for deeper cooperation between Europe and Asia. What we might be witnessing is a phase when the United States remains a key actor in Eurasia, but Europe and Asia learn to do more with each other on an equal basis, rather than a return to a very unequal past. Russia’s war in Ukraine and Trump’s new approach to the region have profoundly altered the geopolitical calculus of both Europe and Asia.

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Europe Waits as Trump Talks to Putin

By Agathe Demarais, a columnist at Foreign Policy and senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations

After four years of war, the future of Ukraine hinges on the outcome of the Trump administration’s negotiations with the Kremlin—while Europeans wait outside the negotiating room. As we enter the fifth year of the war, we could face one of two very different scenarios. One is that a U.S.-Russia peace deal could end the war. Another is that a collapse in negotiations between Washington, Moscow, and Kyiv could extinguish any short-term hopes of a ceasefire or lasting peace.

From an economic perspective, the consequences of these scenarios for Europe would be very different. A U.S.-brokered peace deal would likely entail some form of U.S. sanctions relief, immediately raising the question of whether the European Union would join by relaxing its restrictions. Conversely, a breakdown in U.S.-Russia relations could revive transatlantic collaboration on Ukraine and pave the way for stronger sanctions on Russia.

First, consider the scenario of a U.S.-Russia agreement to end the war. From an economic perspective, this would have three immediate consequences for Europe.

For starters, Moscow would likely only agree to such a deal in return for sanctions relief from the United States, such as the removal of designations on its shadow fleet of oil tankers that supply China and India with Russian crude. This would quickly put Europe in a bind: The EU private sector would lobby to similarly relax EU measures, arguing that U.S. sanctions relief puts European firms at a disadvantage compared to their U.S. competitors. In this scenario, EU member states would have difficulty renewing Russia-related sanctions unanimously every six months. The next major renewal is due in July.

Second, any U.S.-Russia agreement would likely include deals for U.S. energy firms to develop Russian oil and gas deposits. Again, Europeans would find themselves in a difficult position: Existing pipelines and geographic proximity make them the main target for Russian oil exports, with U.S. firms providing financial or technological help. At a time when many European policymakers already fear that the bloc is becoming overly reliant on U.S. supplies of liquefied natural gas, the prospect of Russian energy reentering the EU market with U.S. help could ring alarms in many EU capitals. Third, a U.S.-Russia peace deal would shift the conversation about Ukraine toward reconstruction. Donald Trump has made it clear that he wants Europe to foot the bill for this. With fiscal resources drying up in many EU economies and the World Bank estimating in February 2025 that reconstruction will cost $524 billion over the next decade, such a scenario could fuel divisions among Europeans, reminiscent of recent bitter disputes over the fate of Russia’s frozen central bank reserves.

Now, consider the consequences if U.S.-Russia negotiations fail. Disillusionment with the Kremlin in Washington could lead to renewed U.S.-EU collaboration on tighter sanctions, such as joint designations of the Russian shadow fleet. This would be a nightmare scenario for Moscow, which is already reeling from the October 2025 round of U.S. sanctions against oil giants Lukoil and Rosneft. With Indian and Chinese refiners increasingly reluctant to defy U.S. sanctions, the discount on Russian Urals oil compared to the global Brent oil benchmark has widened to about $27 per barrel. At current prices, this means that Russia is selling its oil at a roughly 40 percent discount to competitors. Consequently, Russian energy revenues sank by half year over year in January; they now account for only 24 percent of the Kremlin’s fiscal receipts, down from around half before the war.

The Kremlin knows that time is running out on the economic front. 2026 could be the last year that Russia can sell LNG and pipeline gas to its remaining European customers. Sales totaled about €22 billion eurosin 2025, financing a significant chunk of Russian military expenses. Things will get even trickier in 2027, when the EU’s total ban on Russian LNG and pipeline gas imports takes effect. The U.S. prohibition on Russian uranium imports will also take effect late that year, further depriving Russia of export revenues.

If European leaders want to credibly argue that they deserve a seat at the negotiating table, they need to prepare for the economic consequences of both a U.S.-Russia peace deal and ruptured negotiations. These two scenarios would force EU policymakers to make starkly different choices on sanctions, energy, and reconstruction finance. With Europe’s credibility and future at stake, improvisation would be the worst option.

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