The four-year war in Ukraine has caused seismic shifts in the world, including the nature of war, the global balance of power, and European security.
For Ukraine, this war was a curse. A curse for surviving and adapting long enough to protect Europe’s borders from Russian forces and spare allies from taking large-scale action.
Kiev is paying the price of chaos in constant defections and relentless losses, Ukrainians told me. “Some of us are still positive, but that’s because we have no other choice,” a military intelligence officer texted.
The people most desperately hoping that the war will really end tomorrow are the Ukrainians who are taking part in this fight. This is a cruel paradox. Many Western countries also wish the war would stop, citing defense budgets and heating costs. But it is Western spending, a lack of material support for Kiev, that is condemning Ukraine to continue fighting.
Europe’s economy is a false one, spending less now but risking much more if conflict escalates in the future.
If the Ukrainian front collapses and Kiev falls, according to most Western expectations, Moscow will quickly move to the NATO border. But this threat will not cause European panic and mass action. The first three years of massive American aid only got us so far and are now coming to an end. But war is not like that, and there may be many more anniversaries to come. After four full years, the ruthlessness and determination shown by Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to have convinced Europe that he might one day stop trying to occupy foreign lands.
Oddly enough, the depletion of Russia’s budget and human resources is also the desire of Western countries to end the war, a sentiment that often goes along with it. However, as the years passed, the war brought about fundamental changes worldwide.
This chaos is so relentless that it may be difficult to catalog it, but let’s start with diplomacy. U.S. President Donald Trump’s rejection of decades-old norms in negotiations, a format packed with red lines and agenda items that had been the mechanism by which peace began for decades, marked a new, disruptive approach. It should be judged solely on its results, not on how much it watered down the established order.
And so far, such results are scarce. Red carpet in Alaska for President Putin facing war crimes charges. Some tough sanctions on Russian oil. Two patchy short-lived ceasefires limited to energy infrastructure. An emotional roller coaster for the beleaguered European allies. And a constant drumbeat of threats against Kiev if it does not compromise. But as President Trump once boasted, peace will not come within 24 hours, nor will it happen within 100 days or even a year.
President Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio even admitted at this month’s Munich Security Conference that the United States does not know whether Russia truly wants peace.
But no new fallout appears imminent for Moscow, even though the latest tripartite talks in Geneva ended after two hours without any public progress. The loop of new venues, formats, topics, and people for peace negotiations seems endless.
Automation of warfare in Ukraine is the evolution likely to last the longest.
In late 2023, Ukraine’s immediate deficiencies in infantry defense and artillery reserves were filled by attack drones. The country has begun to successfully engage in ingenuity and high-tech competition to survive. The pace of change and implementation is unparalleled during the Frontline’s six-week innovation cycle, a time when new ideas to kill emerge.
This progress is continually appalling. Earlier this month, reports surfaced that Russia is using drones equipped with motion sensors to fly into battlefields, wait for infantry to pass, and then detonate them.
The autonomous killing revolution is still not well understood outside of front-line bunkers, and Western militaries are scrambling to adapt.
This war also redefined what it meant to be European.
The NATO alliance and continental security were founded on the promise that the United States would eventually protect Europe again.
No matter how quickly President Trump tries to scrap those guarantees, Europe remains slow to pick up the slack. Centrist leaders in Britain, France and Germany are resisting spending much of their strained budgets on defense against the Russian threat, which their far-right populist opponents may believe can be easily eliminated through negotiations.
Aid to Ukraine has been slow to advance, and NATO’s defense budget has been promised to increase to 5% of national income for the next nine years, a period when few current leaders will be in power.
Despite Russian drones invading European airspace and repeated Russian-linked sabotage on the continent, Western officials persist in insisting that Russia’s time is running out and that it is headed for military and economic collapse.
There is evidence to support that, Western officials rightly claim, including in 2024 and last year. But until this anticipated chaos suddenly erupts to the surface of Russia’s closed society, collapse remains a hope rather than a Western strategy.
Meanwhile, the balance of power in the world is distorted, with the United States retreating from its hegemonic obligations.
World powers are pursuing their objectives in Ukraine. China is refraining from providing sufficient military support to guarantee Russia’s victory. But as Russia gradually becomes a junior partner in the relationship, it is buying enough oil and selling enough dual-use drone equipment to keep it afloat. India has been the Americans’ Asian ally of choice for decades, and has provided Moscow with money to buy cheap oil for years, but it may only be slowing down due to larger trade deals with the United States.
Europe has been largely abandoned by Trump to chart its own course, with Rubio recently dismissing it as approaching the “annihilation of civilization.” The United States is moving from global hegemony to a new era in which its goals are scaled back and localized, and allies are selected around myopic bias and ideological compatibility. The White House’s National Security Strategy refers to “other great powers separated by vast oceans” (possibly China, India, and Russia), a mild expression of the end of America’s global influence and dominance.
Shock, fatigue and bravado among the Ukrainian people
These profound changes are neither academic nor conceptual for Ukrainians, meaning coldness, anxiety, pain, sadness, loss, and even death. Even after four years of experiencing what should have been a numbing trauma, the shock is still evident.
Katya, a military intelligence officer I first met during the failed counteroffensive in the summer of 2023, never missed an opportunity to smile boldly, even as she moved through the heights of chaos on the front lines. CNN is using a pseudonym for privacy reasons. She has a revolver. A medic close to her committed suicide 18 months ago. Most of her days are covered by death. Every time I see a blue check mark indicating that my message was received, I feel a sense of relief that she is alive.
“War becomes a game but you have no choice but to put in another coin and play another round,” she texted me. She was troubled not only by Russia’s effectively lethal use of new drone technology, but also by the brutal deployment of foreign mercenaries from Loba, Nepal, Nigeria, and Syria.
Ukraine’s labor shortage frustrates her, as does criticism of its strong recruitment drive.
“The fatigue is serious right now,” she said. “In our society, we rarely talk about how tired people are after years of non-stop fighting.” She said there was a growing problem of low skills among commanders, “mostly inexperienced and overconfident,” causing “unnecessary casualties and conflict.”
For civilians, the front lines are also moving rapidly. Yulia worked at a hotel in Kramatorsk, a military base on the Donbass front, where we often stayed until half of it was destroyed by a missile. She remained in the city and worked at a cafe while the sirens continued to sound in the city. A week ago, she was bullish that her town would not be destroyed, even though the Russians were only 11 miles away: “Life goes on, restaurants, barbershops and supermarkets are still open.”
But after a week in Kiev, she returned to find small attack drones frequently hitting cars and apartment buildings, and heavy Russian airstrikes on the outskirts. “I hope Kramatorsk will not be occupied,” she said. “But given the shelling, it will be difficult.” She is now being rushed to the nearby city of Kharkiv, where the last of her family members will be leaving. Her boyfriend has just been drafted into the military and, thankfully, will be working at a checkpoint for now. “Everything is changing rapidly,” she said.
A senior Ukrainian official still expresses shock that Russia, a so-called “brotherly state” with deep social ties to Ukraine, actually invaded. “Probably the biggest shock was that (the invasion) actually happened,” he said. He requested anonymity regarding his personal opinions.
With the race to rapidly advance drone technology, Timur Samosdov finds it “impossible to relax even for a moment.” What works today to attack the Russians will not work next month. He is operating one of the first drone forces I saw in late 2023, launching efficient interceptor drones to counter the Shahed that is currently plaguing the southern city of Odesa. Two combat drones were used at a gender reveal party to spew colored smoke into the sky above the coastline to celebrate the newcomers who would soon arrive at their homes. For girls, it was pink.
Samosdov said the lack of infantry was causing slow territorial losses as Ukraine was outnumbered “20 to 1” on the front. This is very serious and painful. But he said Ukraine’s technological advances mean “the enemy is inflicting thousands of casualties every day.”
His bravado is born out of existential necessity rather than pretense. “Ukraine is invincible because we will do everything for victory, regardless of whether someone helps us or not,” he said.
There is little choice but to believe. The war has torn apart a fifth of the country, but even with meager and erratic support, Ukrainians must rise from the dust, be praised by the West, and return to the brink of isolation once again.
