Who Holds the Cards? A Path to Ending Russia’s War Against Ukraine

When President Trump met with President Zelenskyy in February 2025 in the now-infamous Oval Office visit, the U.S. President told Zelenskyy that he had “no cards.” Since that meeting and with the war in its fifth year, Zelenskyy holds a lot more cards, and Ukraine is far from losing.

Indeed, Ukraine is turning the tide on the battlefield, transforming Russia’s strategic depth (long viewed as a strategic asset) into a strategic vulnerability with long-range drone strikes and attacks on Russian infrastructure and supply lines. Ukraine’s burgeoning defense industry is a global exporter of defense innovation. Ukraine is now the asset that Europe and the United States cannot afford to lose, not a liability that they must save.

Europe is finally waking up not only to supporting Ukraine but to growing its own defense industrial base. The process is too slow, not fully cohesive, and fraught with political minefields, but the change is real and long-term. It helps that the Trump Administration has made clear that we are in a new era of burden-shifting, and Europeans will have to take up the responsibility for defending themselves and Ukraine. The United States, after many rounds of negotiations failed to end the war, is pivoting to support Ukraine’s momentum. U.S. security assistance remains, albeit at much lower levels, but Washington is also focused on conflicts elsewhere, particularly the Middle East.

Russian objectives in the war have not changed—the Kremlin’s maximalist goal has little to do with territory. Rather, it is to destroy Ukraine as a nation and use it as an avenue to further expand the war against NATO and ultimately the United States. With Ukraine holding off and even pushing back Russian forces, Putin is failing to achieve even his minimal military and political objectives. But as he has staked his legacy and political survival on winning in Ukraine, he is increasingly constrained politically to make a political win out of a loss.

This is the current status quo: Ukraine is defending Europe; Europe is paying for that defense; Russia is the only country that can stop the war; the United States is the only actor that can force Russia to do so by ramping up support for Ukraine while it holds battlefield momentum and imposing costs on Russia. Until this formula changes, long-lasting peace will not be in sight. But if Ukraine can continue to push its battlefield momentum, it can de facto “freeze” the current line of contact. Together with U.S. diplomatic reengagement in the negotiations and European security commitments, a ceasefire could be within reach.

The Mood in Ukraine

Politically, Zelenskyy has retained public support since the 2022 invasion.¹ Despite real recruitment challenges and desertions, morale in Ukraine is high heading into the summer of 2026, buoyed by battlefield successes.

On the battlefield, Ukraine has the momentum, at least for now. New long-range capabilities now let Ukraine hit Russian military and energy targets deep inside of Russia. Ukrainian strikes on Russia’s oil-refining facilities reportedly caused Russia to cut oil production by 300,000 to 400,000 barrels per day in April 2026—potentially the sharpest decline since COVID.² Such “long-range sanctions,” as Zelenskyy calls them, could undermine Russia’s gains from increased oil prices.³

AI-driven drone innovations have allowed Ukraine to push back Russian sea and land incursions. Ukraine is putting significant pressure on Crimea, cutting off supply lines to the Russian-occupied peninsula. As other countries confront the threat of drone attacks on critical infrastructure, Ukraine’s multi-layered air defense capability is now in high demand. And Ukraine is building capability at lower cost. For example, the VAMPIRE system is an $8,500 per unit drone with a 20 kilometer range and high resistance to electronic disruption.⁴,⁵ In comparison, the most exquisite Western drone interceptors can cost up to $9 million.⁶ Ukraine is on track to produce about 7 million drones this year, up from 4 million last year, with a defense budget of only $65 billion.⁷

The United States Takes a Backseat—For Now

On the American side, public support for Ukraine remains strong across the political spectrum (59 percent of Republicans and 75 percent of Democrats).⁸ Congressional support also remains strong with every Ukraine supplemental package passing by wide majorities.

President Trump came into office intending to reach a peace deal, and his administration has pushed for a diplomatic solution. Unfortunately, Russia has remained the obstacle to peace. Support for Ukraine has since slipped off the agenda as other geopolitical issues took higher priority. The administration established a new mechanism, the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL), that allows NATO allies to purchase U.S. military equipment and transfer it to Ukraine. About $4.5 billion has been pledged to Ukraine through this program, but there are fears that munitions drawdowns from the Iran War may delay future deliveries, producing more anxiety among Europeans about U.S. political commitments and the defense industrial base’s capacity.⁹,¹⁰ These industrial base issues are likely to persist; a growing consensus holds that even a potential $1.5 trillion defense budget cannot resolve them.

A Vulnerable Europe

The defense of Ukraine is the most critical issue for long-term European security, and public support in Europe is high.¹¹ As Russia has expanded its war beyond Ukraine by intensifying hybrid attacks against European countries, a shadow war has engulfed the continent. These actions have raised alarm bells in countries beyond the Eastern Flank, but neither threat perception nor the pace of defense investment and rearmament is even across Europe. A “crescent division” is emerging between the Nordic-Central European-UK arc—who see Russia as the greatest and most urgent threat—and the rest of the Western and Southern flank who do not.

Even with recent increases in defense spending in most European countries, Europe's defense industrial base remains nonexistent. Europe is also deeply reliant on Middle Eastern energy imports after weaning off Russia, making it the biggest loser from the Iran War. Politically, leaders of the major European countries—Germany, France, and Italy—are unpopular and all face elections in the next three years that will likely hand victories to more populist parties. Whether from AfD or Reform, such leaders will prioritize national over Europe-wide interests, fueling fragmentation. This will further weaken Europe’s defense industrial base. This cocktail of defense industrial weakness, economic stagnation, political volatility, and America’s deepening engagement elsewhere leaves Europe acutely vulnerable over the next five years.

Russia Adapts Militarily, but Putin is Weakened

Militarily, after major setbacks, Russia has copied and, in some cases, out-innovated Ukraine’s capabilities. For example, Russian advances in electronic warfare now let Russia redirect Ukrainian drones to strike European countries. Once reliant on imported Iranian Shahed drones, Russia now manufactures its own jet-powered “Geran” drones, posing a significant challenge to Ukrainian air defenses.¹²

Russia’s economy has thus far been surprisingly resilient to Western sanctions and low oil prices. However, sanctions have extracted a cost on Russia’s ability to borrow as it has spent down reserves, engaged in hyper-spending on the war, including higher recruitment bonuses, and lost at least 350,000 working-age men to the front lines. These factors have slowed Russian GDP growth from 4 percent in 2024 to about 1 percent in 2025.¹³¹⁴ From January to February of 2026, the Russian federal budget reported a deficit of $69.9 billion, blowing through its entire annual target deficit of $50.5 billion.¹⁵

These pressures have not yet forced a change in Kremlin strategy. Putin’s legacy and political support are tied to victory in Ukraine. Pressure on Putin is mounting just as he has the fewest off-ramps to declare victory. This pressure comes not from the “liberal” factions, which have been killed off or repressed, but from hardliners pushing a more aggressive “final solution” to the Ukraine problem.

The Ukraine-Iran Connection

The U.S. strikes on Iran quickly revealed the critical importance of Ukraine’s drone innovations for air defense. For Ukraine, the Iran War has positioned the country as the global leader in defense innovation and drone production. Ukraine’s army is the strongest and largest in Europe, and as it flexes its muscles on the battlefield, Zelenskyy is no longer the man with no cards. Ukraine has made its own cards.

The war also revealed the interconnectedness of the two conflicts with Russia and China serving as key enablers for Iran. Iran provided Russia with its Shahed drones to attack Ukraine, which the Russians have since improved on, providing next-generation Shahed models to Iran for its attacks on Israel, U.S. assets, and the broader region. Russia has also provided intelligence information to Iran, including targeting data, which has allowed Iran to carry out precision strikes on U.S. targets. And behind much of this is, of course, China, which has been the key enabler of Russia’s war in Ukraine, de facto subsidizing Russia’s military-industrial production that then allows Moscow to simultaneously carry out the war in Ukraine while providing military assistance to Iran.

Europe is emerging as the biggest loser. It has taken the brunt of high energy costs from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Coupled with increasing demands for defense spending, growing public resentment over the economy, anxiety about the future of the transatlantic alliance, and the prospect of long-term economic stagnation, Europe finds itself in a pressure cooker with no clear way out.

While Ukraine may have more cards than it did a year ago, the United States still holds all the cards in reaching a lasting peace. As negotiations with Iran continue, the political effects on the United States remain unclear. Rising energy costs are unlikely to dissipate quickly, which will have political consequences. As attention turns to the domestic political calendar, the White House is unlikely to take up Ukraine negotiations. That will be another task left to Europe, which, for now, is ill-equipped to carry it out.