As the US walks away, Europe needs to step up for Ukraine. But does it have the will? | Ukraine

After three years of Russia’s attempt to occupy and annex Ukraine, the country continues to put up a fierce resistance.

Russia is suffering more than 1,500 casualties a day and only slowly taking ground. But the Ukrainian army is also being put under immense pressure.

As the opening moves are made towards a negotiated solution, it is vital that military support is maintained. If Vladimir Putin believes he can reach his objectives by force, he will talk, but won’t stop fighting.

The Russian approach today has three core components: infantry, glide bombs, and first-person-view (FPV) drones. Russian infantry advance continuously in small groups to threaten Ukrainian positions. The Ukrainians focus on trying to kill their attackers over the 10km or so in front of their positions to minimise the size of the Russian units that they must fight directly.

The Russians have struggled to take ground, largely because of the continued decline in the quality of their infantry driven by a high rate of attrition over the course of 2024. But this tactic puts the Ukrainian troops in the crosshairs of Russia’s other capabilities.

The most lethal tool in Russia’s arsenal today is the glide bomb. The Russians use precision guided glide bombs, launched from Russian aircraft between 40-70km behind the frontline, with enough explosive power to collapse trenches or level buildings. To avoid being killed in their trenches the Ukrainians must spread out, so that a squad of eight soldiers is tasked with defending between 70-200m of ground. With so few defenders at any point along the front, it becomes hard for soldiers on the positions to rest, and they must be resupplied.

Resupply is threatened by Russia’s drones and artillery. Russia has caught up with Ukraine in using FPV drones, and innovated with the use of fibre-optic-wire-guided FPVs that are impervious to electronic warfare, to hunt Ukrainian troops and vehicles behind the frontline, where Ukraine now suffers about 50% of its casualties. Combined with Russian artillery, this makes it exceedingly dangerous to resupply the fighting positions or evacuate the wounded.Ukrainian medics are having to talk soldiers through procedures over the radio, because it is too dangerous to try and reach the trenches.

This combination of systems is slowly forcing Ukraine back. Even though Russia is taking more casualties it has the mass to continue with this attritional exchange for another year. The Russian force attacking Ukraine now comprises 580,000 troops. The Russians contracted 400,000 soldiers in 2024, whereas the Armed Forces of Ukraine are holding 1,200km of front with fewer than 200,000 troops. On this basis, Putin believes he can simply fight for longer than Ukraine can sustain the effort.

Although at present Russia has the military advantage, the margin of that advantage is thin. The Russian military is massively underperforming, largely because of the poor quality of its infantry and a lack of lower-level command and control. While Russia is regularly breaching the Ukrainian defence lines, it is failing to exploit those breaches. The current paths to a military victory for Russia are that Ukraine finds itself with so few troops that it cannot properly defend the entire front, allowing Russia to simply bypass Ukrainian units, or Ukraine’s partners stop supplying the country with enough arms to keep fighting. Closing down these Russian paths to victory require measures by Kyiv and its partners.

The biggest risks for Ukraine today are force generation and morale. Ukraine has enough people to keep up the fight, but it has a broken training system. The bulk of tactical training is done in the combat unit, but the good combat units are all fixed at the front. This drove Ukraine to try to create new brigades, but the result was inexperienced new units, while the experienced force was hollowed out. If the recruits are simply sent to the existing units, however, they will find themselves in combat with inadequate training.

President Zelenskyy has started to address this problem by stopping the creation of new units and forming army corps, which are intended to command several brigades so that experienced units can be brought off the line, receive new recruits, and train them, before going back to fight. The other vital function of this reform is to give Ukraine’s veterans the chance to rest. Other measures that could significantly improve morale would be increasing payments and compensation to families and providing any means to defeat the glide bomb threat. This should be a priority for Ukraine’s partners.

If Ukraine can fix its force generation process then the timelines for a Russian military victory could be protracted significantly. In these circumstances leverage would swing away from Moscow and it is possible that Russia would switch tack. Rather than slowing down talks to buy time to break the Ukrainian army, the Russians might well push for a ceasefire. But Ukraine would then be in immense peril. It would need to hold elections – which will be contentious. Troops will want to be demobilised and see their families. But Russia will not demobilise, and once it stops taking heavy losses its industries will rearm its forces. The risk then becomes that Moscow destabilises Ukraine internally, cripples its economy by threatening to restart hostilities, and then attacks when Ukraine is much weaker.

It is because of this sustained threat, even in the event of a ceasefire, that President Zelenskyy has emphasised that security guarantees are essential for a lasting peace. The United States has now made clear that it will not be the guarantor. Europe’s policymakers therefore now face a clear choice. If they want peace, they must invest in their militaries to be able to keep it. If Ukraine is defeated the threat to Europe will be acute. Enabling Ukraine’s victory similarly requires investment in the industrial capacity to sustain it. Europe has the money. It is not yet clear if Britain and Ukraine’s other European partners have the will to spend it.

Dr Jack Watling is senior research fellow for Land Warfare at the Royal United Services Institute.