Four Years of Battle – Ten Lessons from Russia's War in Ukraine

From a conflict that was expected to end in a matter of days, four years of fighting followed by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The first thing to note is that the war is not over yet.

By early January 2026, Russia's war in Ukraine will have lasted longer than the Soviets' Great Patriotic War, which lasted from the start of Operation Barbarossa on Sunday, June 22, 1941, to the Nazi capitulation on Saturday, May 9, 1945.

The comparison is not simply chronological; it is rather civilizational. The previous war forged the Soviet myth of historical destiny through sacrifice, suffering, and an almost theological narrative of redemption through endurance. The current war, by contrast, stretches into the future stripped of legitimacy and strategic coherence, prolonged not by necessity but by deceit, not by persuasion but by the refusal of power to confront the catastrophic consequences of its own aggression. Empires, history reminds us, rarely collapse because they are defeated on the battlefield. They disintegrate when the histories that once held their authority finally crumble under the weight of their own misjudgment.

The gloom of the front lines today in Ukraine is in stark contrast to the Christmas cheer elsewhere. The elections before Kiev are at odds with those before Western capitals over spending on social services. The Russian strategy seems to have shifted from making dramatic advances to slowly asphyxiating the Ukrainian Defense Forces through digestion rather than maneuvers. Not spectacular, but effective, especially if drones prevent any concentration of force. This is extremely difficult for those involved, spread thinly across miles of frozen trenches. Field Marshal Slim spoke of the overwhelming factor in modern warfare being loneliness. Even more so today.

And the contrast with the concerns and language of politicians could not be more stark. On December 19, 2025, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that Ukraine “was not our war”. He added that Washington could not “force” a peace deal on Ukraine, although he indicated that American negotiators were still struggling to understand what Russia wanted despite warnings from US intelligence agencies that “Putin has not abandoned his intentions to seize all of Ukraine and reclaim parts of Europe that belonged to the former Soviet empire”. For nearly eight decades, the central assumption of Western statemaking had been that European stability was inseparable from American security, that aggression left unanswered metastases to systemic disorder, and that the protection of free societies abroad was inseparable from the preservation of legitimacy at home. To say otherwise is not realism; it is an abdication of a strategic legacy patiently built after 1945. If this American administration and Russia under Vladimir Putin share one thing, it seems to be their willingness to tear Europe apart.

The echoes of the past are both startling and frightening. “We have suffered a defeat without a war,” said Winston Churchill, noting that the Munich process of 1938 had merely delayed the inevitable conflict with Hitler’s Germany, “the consequences of which will travel with us far along our path. This is only the beginning of the reckoning.”

There is a tendency, exacerbated by the media age, to think of wars as short-term events, a trait founded on an ahistorical understanding of what war is about – rather than movies or battles.

The war in Ukraine has been a disastrous failure for Putin in almost every respect, despite the lack of generosity rewarded by some (but not all) Western governments towards Ukraine. But the White House is offering him a way out. President Trump’s plan for a real estate deal and peace could reward his aggression by enabling him to snatch a victory for himself against the tide of the game. In this convergence of convenience, both Putin and Trump reveal a shared indifference to the rules-based international order, the former deliberately dismantling it through invasion, the latter neglecting it, having ceased to claim that its preservation remains a strategic obligation.

Ten lessons emerging from the conflict that began in February 2022:

1. War as a test of will. There is a persistent failure to think of war as a long-term process shaped by the constraints, context, and choices of politics and people. There is a tendency, exacerbated by the media age, to think of wars as short-term events, a trait founded on an ahistorical understanding of what war is about – rather than movies or battles. Reality, as Ukraine has reminded the world with brutal consistency, does not obey such a script. For example, at the outset, the outcome of the conflict was seen by many, not least in Moscow and Western capitals, as a foregone conclusion, a capitulation rather than a contest, with a heavyweight the sure winner over a middleweight power. Instead, an epic, if grim, struggle has been experienced. The belief at first that the Ukrainians would surrender easily also reflects a lack of understanding of what constitutes fighting force, including what the respective parties believed they were fighting for.

Historically, resource mobilization, technical ingenuity, political imagination, and alliance-building have had a significant impact on outcome. Such characteristics can be seen, for example, in the substitution of drones for relative deficiencies in manpower, airpower, artillery, and armor, and their increasing integration, proliferation, sophistication, and precision. ‘Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will,’ wrote Mahatma Gandhi. Thus, wars are won not by quantitative resource counts or the order of battle at the outset of a war, but by the long-term qualitative metrics of politics, organizational sophistication (i.e., logistics), and the will, leadership, and skills of people.

From Rome’s legions shattered in the Teutoburg Forest to France’s slow disintegration in Algeria, from Spain’s exhaustion in the Low Countries to America’s long plunge into disappointment in Vietnam, history offers no shortage of empires that wielded great resources but lacked the moral geometry necessary to translate power into victory. What endures, instead, are communities that build coherence under pressure and meaning under threat. Simply put, Ukrainians also had a say in the outcome, and they still do.

2. Ukraine is not losing and Russia is not winning. The war continues to go much better for Ukraine than the generally gloomy prognosis suggests that Ukraine’s collapse is imminent. Much of this ‘near-term analysis’ rests on a lazy axiom of international commentary: that size determines fate and that big states do not lose wars against smaller ones. History, however, offers a colder lesson. In fact, as historian Timothy Snyder reminds us, they lose wars all the time: think of America in Vietnam or Afghanistan; or Russia in Crimea, the war with Japan, World War I, Afghanistan, or the first war in Chechnya.

Some argue that the Soviet Union would have risked losing World War II without significant Western material assistance. This highlights how the general notion of Russia as a great power is a misnomer and gives it more status – and correspondingly, more respect – than it deserves. The war has further devastated its economy, which, like its war machine, is increasingly dependent on Chinese support. Great powers are not a function of nuclear weapons (although that can help, as discussed below), or even geography, but of organization and perspective.

3. Western politicians have so far been unable to reconcile the difficult choices needed to ensure a Ukrainian victory. In King Lear, the tragedy of the aging monarch begins not with cruelty or malice but with a catastrophic political misjudgment, a failure to make the one decision that would save the kingdom. He tears apart what should have been held together, postpones what should have been resolved, and convinces himself that delay is prudence. By the time clarity comes, the structure he governed has already begun to collapse. Western policy toward Ukraine has followed a disturbingly similar logic. This is because victory for many politicians in the West has not been the immediate goal, since they never thought Russia could be defeated, or did not want Russia to be defeated because they feared the consequences of its collapse. Instead of focusing on the one issue the West can control – giving Ukraine the means to win – the focus has been surprisingly on the aspect the West cannot control: Vladimir Putin's view of the world and his own destiny.

Surprisingly, the US and Europe have not seen it in their interest for Ukraine to win and eliminate Russia as a conventional military threat for a long time. It would not have required a huge amount of military effort from the West, since Ukraine was willing to fight. Victory – defined as the expulsion of Russia from Ukrainian soil – would have allowed Europe to solve its security dilemmas for a generation or more. But the West has lacked the imagination to contemplate a Russian defeat, and consequently the policy to make it happen. This has manifested itself in what historian Phillips O’Brien describes as a ‘golden strategy’ – a middle option that offers enough aid to prevent Ukraine from losing, but not enough to enable it to win.

Aid to Ukraine from most (but not all) Western governments has been ridiculously small, in terms of GDP or defense spending, the scale of what was requested, the speed of delivery, or the technology transferred and the restrictions placed on its use. Instead, Kiev has been given many things that Western donors did not want, and with restrictions on their use for fear of provoking Moscow. And yet, since the end of the Cold War, Western governments have consistently enjoyed minimal influence in shaping events in Russia, just as they seem to have little influence on how Putin negotiates peace.

Ukraine has won overwhelming support in the United Nations General Assembly, but has performed relatively poorly in attracting support from Africa, despite its shared anti-colonial line.

4. Russia continues to dominate the narrative war. In fact, Russia invaded Crimea and Donbass and is striking civilian targets across Ukraine. Yet somehow it has been able to promote and perpetuate a discourse of Ukraine as a ‘non-state’ run by Nazis waging a war fueled by NATO expansionism and the subjugation of Russian minorities, and now set to stop in Donbass. On one level, this reflects the corrupting influence of campaigns facilitated by state control of its media and support for authoritarians elsewhere with similar freedoms.

In contrast, the West has been unable to effectively convince itself that countries’ desire to join NATO does not reflect the organization’s expansionism but rather latent hostilities that prevail in Eastern and Central Europe from decades of brutal Soviet imperialism, nor that stopping Russian expansionism in Ukraine involves part of the cost of stopping Moscow in Europe. Eastern European countries have little reason to trust Russia; while Russia may have concerns about NATO expansion, others have equally concerns about its intentions. Ukraine has won overwhelming support in the United Nations General Assembly but has performed relatively poorly in attracting support from Africa despite its common anti-colonial thread, in part because Russia is largely the heir to Soviet-era goodwill and Kiev has lacked the diplomatic bandwidth to engage beyond Western allies.

Washington, at least under Trump, is repositioning itself not as Europe's partner against Russian aggression, but as a mediator acting in its own narrow interest.

5. The ties that bind the West are not as immutable as one might imagine. The longer the war drags on, the more fragile, fragmented, and distracted the West seems. On one level, there are the disruptors and the defense-minded in Europe, hence the bickering over defense commitments and management by the likes of Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Slovakia’s Robert Fico. But this pales in comparison to the impact of the second Trump administration, which has in fact created a major rift between the US and Europe, as portrayed in this 28-point peace plan, which remarkably presents NATO and the US as two distinct entities.

Trump’s view that Ukraine should not have fought the war influences the overall Russian narrative, to the point of naively rewriting history. This view is confirmed by Trump’s National Security Strategy, which does not portray Russia as an enemy or a threat, but instead describes the US goal as seeking strategic stability with Russia. The strategy portrays the European Union and other transnational bodies as undermining freedom, its minority government as undemocratic, and the threat of becoming ‘less European’ as a threat to US national security. Europe already knows it must become more independent of the US, although this Strategy may signal that this will have to happen sooner rather than later. Washington, at least under Trump, is repositioning itself not as Europe’s partner against Russian aggression but as a broker acting in its own narrow interests. Trump fundamentally disagrees with most of Europe, has become an unreliable ally, and is firmly in Putin's camp.

As former UK Secretary of State for International Development Rory Stewart has said, “Europeans continue to delude themselves. They think that America is essentially on the side of Europe against Russia and that there is some understanding, and that if they just get on a plane or rewrite a draft, Trump will suddenly see the truth, he will suddenly understand that in fact Russia poses a threat to Europe, that Russia invaded Ukraine, that Ukraine must defend itself.”

The post-1945 arrangement rested on a simple but fragile assumption: that the security of others could enhance, rather than diminish, one’s own security. When this assumption breaks down, alliances lose their metaphysical foundation before they lose their material coherence. History suggests that such moments are rarely dramatic at first. They come quietly, disguised as prudence, dressed in the language of restraint, and defended as flexibility. Only later does the system discover that what it mistook for accommodation was actually renunciation.

6. Ukraine’s continued resistance is a boost for nuclear nonproliferation. But the opposite is also true. If a conventionally armed country could defeat a nuclear-armed adversary on the battlefield without the threat of nuclear war (as the US has, for example), then it would not be necessary to arm itself with nuclear weapons. If Russia were to win, defined as holding large swaths of Ukrainian territory, nuclear proliferation would have received a major boost: there are already major benefits to nuclear weapons, not least because they free countries to make choices about what and whom they support, as is clear from North Korea’s approach. The nuclear aspect also illustrates how far the West is from nuclear war – in most scenario assumptions, where the war has progressed would likely have ended in nuclear conflict, whether over Kursk, the destruction of Russia’s Black Sea or Mediterranean fleet in the shadows, or missile and drone strikes deep into Russian territory. Nuclear deterrence has worked, but only to deter the West, not Russia.
The only conceivable way that this peace can last and be a stable basis for rebuilding Ukraine and restoring European security is for NATO troops to be deployed in those areas as a reference point for further Russian aggression.

7. Arrogance remains a strategic weakness. By any measure, the war has been a strategic disaster for Putin – so far. The Russians overestimated themselves as much as they underestimated the Ukrainians, blinded apparently by the belief that Ukrainians were Malorussi, or ‘Little Russians’, a less capable people, a view based on racism, chauvinism and imperialism. This view of a lesser adversary beset by corruption and inefficiency reinforced the belief that a short, harsh confrontation would be all that was needed, the ground being prepared by the so-called ‘hybrid’ war that undermines Ukraine through sabotage, espionage and a media war. Its initial failures reflected and were founded on an initial mess of command, control and military logistics.
8. The Ukrainian economy has not collapsed either, and neither has the Russian one (yet). Sanctions are not a silver bullet, but they have had the effect of driving the war into Russia’s heartland. Sanctions add to the costs of war. This is expressed not, so far as can be discerned, in opposition to Vladimir Putin at the domestic level, but in complaints at lower levels, on occasions over prices. Every modern regime survives on a delicate balance between short-term political legitimacy and long-term economic expectations. Sanctions break this balance.

With Russian casualties now past a million, it is increasingly difficult for Moscow to consider the war a “special military operation,” or even a liberation of Russian minorities. The internet is also being blacked out, ostensibly as a means of protecting key infrastructure from Ukrainian drones and missiles, which have been launched against targets inside Russian territory. This can only increase domestic frustrations, but perhaps not enough to suggest regime change – until it happens.

9. Diplomacy is war by other means. Putin’s resilience and the West’s relatively weak resolve and divisions could help turn what has so far been a military failure – millions of troops and trillions of rubles for a few kilometers of progress – into a strategic victory for the Russian leader. Trump’s original 28-point plan, which called for Ukraine to surrender about a quarter of the Donbass, which it still controls despite nearly four years of war, and would give up its ambition to join NATO, reflects Russia’s demands and its own narratives. But what then? The only conceivable way this peace could hold and be a stable basis for rebuilding Ukraine and restoring European security is for NATO troops to be stationed in those areas as a bulwark against further Russian aggression. Without that, there is little incentive for Ukrainians to trust their country.

So far, Russia is predictably and steadfastly adhering to these demands, despite changes and concessions from the Western or Ukrainian side that come from negotiations and pressure, suggesting that Putin does not want to give up his dream of recreating imperial Russia, or that he could not stop even if he wanted to, given the investment of blood and treasure already made.

Or perhaps he believes that, with Trump in the White House, he has the momentum behind him. This explains why Moscow is pretending that it is Europe that is trying to derail Trump’s peace plan, which suits this White House, given his view of Europe as separate from U.S. interests. Putin’s goal of forcing Ukraine back into the Russian orbit is likely to continue through diplomatic and political influence, including in the Ukrainian and other European elections. Finally, Putin’s diplomatic stance toward Europe is not aimed solely at Europe. It is designed for Washington. By portraying Europe as an obstacle to peace, Moscow seeks to break Western coherence at its source and transform American mediation into American disengagement. The end state is not Ukrainian neutrality but Western resignation: a geopolitical environment in which Russia’s re-entry into imperial influence looks not as an aberration but as the new normal.

This was never a conflict just about Russia and Ukraine, but about the impact that Moscow's action would have on the principles that have guided the international system.

10. The rules of the international order are being rewritten. China has been a net beneficiary, so far, of the war in Ukraine, selling dual-use goods to Russia and importing cheap energy, while inserting itself into the heart of European security. For this reason, Europeans, including NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, are fully convinced that if China were to invade Taiwan, it would not be a “one-front” war, but a coordinated attack involving a Russian invasion of a European ally. This is why it is necessary – contrary to Trump’s preference – to see the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific as a single theater.

For this and other reasons, this was never a conflict solely about Russia and Ukraine, but about the impact that Moscow’s action would have on the principles that have guided the international system, including sovereign norms that protected borders and the weak against the strong, on the one hand, and Trump’s articulated move toward a 21st-century version of spheres of influence dominated by great powers, on the other. However, like the 19th-century version, this image is unlikely to promote stability given the hierarchy of states and the primacy of interests that inevitably lead to friction and conflict. For these reasons, successful negotiations to end this (and any other war) will require elements of justice, fairness, international law, and security guarantees, not just a focus on real estate.

It is clear what is required to end this war. Ukraine must be given the weapons to defend itself and, in doing so, increase the costs to Putin so much that he, or his successor, cannot continue. Anything else, notes former US ambassador Dennis Jett, is simply a strategy to appease a dictator.

We must not forget that any peace that ignores justice, law, and credible guarantees does not end conflict; it simply moves it to the next stage. Civilizations do not decay because they lose battles. They decay because they lose the conviction that certain outcomes must not be allowed, no matter the cost. When this conviction falters, order becomes a negotiation with entropy.

The current generation of leadership has benefited from the rules-based order. But it has been allowed to wither, with minimal commitment to its maintenance.

“If, God forbid, Ukraine is forced to make this deal,” says former world chess champion and Russian opposition figure Garry Kasparov, speaking to the West, “then it is very clear, Putin will realize his dream and then, you are next.” The consequences of failing to arm Ukraine decisively or to favor Russia in peace negotiations could still reach the 21st century version of appeasement, with disastrous results elsewhere for the global order as we once knew it.

The current generation of leadership (and the previous one) have been the beneficiaries of the rules-based order. But it has been allowed to wither, with minimal commitment to its maintenance. In this sense, Russia (and other autocracies) may think that the war in Ukraine has achieved more than they had hoped; without the US as guarantor of this order, the world is likely to return to a realist and less liberal view of international relations. It remains to be seen where liberal democracies will be in this new world.

And yet, it reminds us of the discipline of remaining steadfast when circumstances no longer seem to be in our favor. Today it is clear that the defining traits of this world are neither brilliance nor superiority, but courage and resilience.

“Memoirs of Hadrian” by Marguerite Yourcenar vividly exposes the real conditions of power: Authority, reputation, and ambition exist on borrowed time. They crumble before flesh. Time is the only sovereign that never abdicates. Only what is built with discipline stands. This requires addressing the misallocation of resources and talent, the fragmentation of knowledge, the inefficiency of capital, and the institutional rigidities that prevent competence from increasing. Everywhere the same pattern emerged. The world does not lack intelligence. It lacks coherence. It does not lack ambition. It lacks architecture. Sustainability is not a property of circumstance; it is a product of construction.

The current situation in Ukraine reminds us thatand, despite all efforts to shift the responsibility to others, history is not shaped by those who simply understand. It is shaped by those who decide.

The Geo Post.