A new narrative has taken hold: Ukraine is no longer losing. According to this line of argument, Ukraine’s deep strike capability coupled with Russia’s looming economic and demographic crisis has created conditions where Russia will be forced to accede to a bargain that is more palatable for Ukraine and the West. This narrative has prompted Washington to explore augmenting Ukraine’s deep strike capability with Tomahawk missiles, and President Donald Trump even speculated that Ukraine would be able to reclaim its prewar borders. But given that the Russians have not changed their attritional strategy, and have enhanced their own deep strike capability, it’s worth examining the challenges involved in achieving this outcome.
The administration has oscillated between a conciliatory and confrontational stance towards Russia in bringing about a resolution to the Ukraine war, and this shift in rhetoric may just be the latest iteration in Trump’s pursuit of a deal. If so, there are still key challenges to overcome.
Russia has remained obstinate in its willingness to negotiate for one principal reason: it is winning. As President Trump stated in a noteworthy exchange with Ukrainian President Zelensky: “You don’t have the cards.” This is true. Ukraine does have some advantages: it has rough air parity with the Russians given the contested airspace, comparable small drone capabilities, and superior individual training. It also has a remarkably innovative force, leveraging the engineering expertise of its population for novel battlefield capabilities. Its special forces have also accomplished much even with limited resources, notably its successful drone attack inside Russia which destroyed many of Russia’s strategic bombers.
But Ukraine is fighting a war of attrition. Its advantages mean that Ukraine can achieve short-term gains like the 2022 Kharkiv counteroffensive or the 2024 Kursk counteroffensive; it cannot overturn long-term trends. Russia still enjoys a 2:1 artillery advantage based on Ukraine’s own estimates and is massively outproducing NATO in most deep-strike capabilities. Firepower is key in an environment where trench warfare, not maneuver, dominates. And this is why Russia is willing to tolerate economic sanctions and continued attrition: the fundamentals favor Russia in a marathon, even if they don’t in a sprint.
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