Putin Can Neither Win Nor Stop: Kofman on the War of Attrition in Ukraine

Four years of full-scale war - and not a single breakthrough that has changed its logic. Russia advances but makes no progress. Putin maneuvers but loses ground. The West helps but hesitates. In a special episode of the Foreign Affairs podcast, one of the leading Western military analysts, Michael Kofman, breaks down why 2025 was a failed year for the Russian military, how Putin squandered the opportunity that Trump's return offered him, and what really lies behind the talk of a peace deal. His conclusion is blunt: Putin wanted this war from the very beginning - and still wants it more than anything being offered at the negotiating table.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: I'm Dan Kurtz-Phelan and this is the Foreign Affairs Interview.

Michael Kofman: Putin wanted the war. He wanted the war from the very outset, during the negotiations in 2021 and the ultimatums he issued. He still wants the war. And he wants it more than all the other things currently being offered on the table.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: February 24th marks the fourth anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. After Moscow's initial onslaught, Ukrainian counteroffensives, and slow Russian gains since, the war has settled into a brutal pattern of attrition, adaptation, and endurance. Ukrainian cities are rationing electricity as the Ukrainian military struggles to muster the manpower and munitions needed to gain a decisive edge. Meanwhile, the battlefield has become a hellscape of drones and artillery fire with no clear breakthrough for either side in sight.

Michael Kofman has been one of the sharpest observers and analysts of the changing nature of the war, from Russia's troop buildup in late 2021 to the present, in the pages of Foreign Affairs and elsewhere. He has also considered the geopolitical implications of each new phase of fighting, what the continued threat of a belligerent Russia means for the West, and how Ukraine's allies can prepare it for sustained conflict. Now, as the war enters its fifth year, Kofman - a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - argues that Russia retains battlefield advantages, but they have not proved decisive, and more and more, time is working against Moscow. Yet ending the conflict on terms acceptable to Ukraine, he writes, will not be an easy feat either.

In this special bonus episode, I spoke with Kofman on Wednesday, February 18th, about where the war stands four years in and how it might change in the weeks and months ahead.

Mike, thank you for joining me.

Michael Kofman: Happy to join.

The Fourth Year of the War: What Changed and What Didn't

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: I was noting to someone a few days ago that it was after reading a piece that you and Michael Kimmage wrote for Foreign Affairs in November 2021 that I was persuaded that a Russian attack on Ukraine was in fact coming. Since then you've written a pretty essential series of pieces about the course of the war, with the most recent one, "Ukraine's War of Endurance," coming just a few days ago. Since those pieces have served as a pretty formidable first draft of military history, I'm curious: as the war enters its fifth year, what are your reflections on its fourth? If you step back from this particular moment, how would you characterize the progress of the war in the past 12 months? What's changed and what hasn't?

Michael Kofman: I always have two perspectives on this. On the one hand, the battlefield dynamic changes every three to four months at the tactical level. There's always new things, new tactics, new technology being used. But big picture, this has remained a war characterized by attrition and positional fighting for the last two years. Which is not unexpected in a prolonged conventional war as both sides adapt to each other but struggle to establish a decisive advantage and break out of the logic they've established.

That is because cycles of attrition and reconstitution make it challenging for either force to get enough advantage in material or manpower. Technology adds advantages that are operationally relevant but may not strategically change anything in the war. If we look at last year in particular, you saw a big shift in fighting at the tactical level. Ukraine had adapted to Russian dismounted infantry assaults by focusing on drone force, drone units, and substantially expanding production of strike drones.

The Russian military saw that they could no longer attain any gains through traditional mechanized assault or even through infantry attacks and had switched to two tactics. First, infiltration: using very small groups of infantry to go past Ukrainian forward positions - because at this point Ukraine didn't really have cohesive defensive lines - and trying to get into the Ukrainian rear. And second, substantially expanding their own drone force and elite drone units.

Most of last year, the interesting part of the fight was a tug of war over the drone engagement zone. Whoever had superiority in employing drones had the initiative on the ground, freedom of action, and could dictate the pace of battle. The Ukrainian force started out with a significant advantage last year, with that engagement zone being primarily over the Russian military. But over time, through both qualitative and quantitative developments, the Russian military pushed it more over the Ukrainian armed forces, so there was a lot more parity by the end of the year.

Why 2025 Was Not a Successful Year for Russia

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: You write - somewhat counter to the common view - that Ukraine performed well in 2025 and that Russia's pace of advance was slowing compared to the end of 2024. You noted a number of Russian operational failures. Talk a bit about Ukraine's successes and where Russia fell short - again, contrary to the broad expectation you hear around the world.

Michael Kofman: Even though I described some negative tactical trends, if you look overall at how 2025 went - despite Russia's advantages in material, in manpower, and despite substantially reducing Ukraine's advantage in use of drones - 2025 was not a successful year for the Russian military. Russian advances were mainly along axes the Russian military didn't actually prioritize. Ukraine held Russia to incremental gains. The way the Russian military has been fighting is simply not conducive to attaining any operationally meaningful breakthroughs.

Russian casualties went up over the course of the year. As we got further into the fall and winter, unrecoverable casualties started to match their recruitment rate, so they could no longer expand the force. The trend line in manpower availability started to become increasingly negative for sustaining this pace of offensive activity in 2026.

Bottom line: the Russian military had consistently made the bet that if they conduct offensive operations at very high intensity - even though not large scale - along this broad front of over a thousand kilometers, eventually the Ukrainian military would crack. That they'd be able to grind their way through and force a collapse. That simply hasn't taken place. They weren't even able to take the rest of Donetsk - Ukraine still controls roughly 20% of it. And the Russian military is no closer to achieving even that minimal objective. It will take them a long time to fight over the rest of the Donetsk region, even this year.

Across the board, it's hard to say that 2025 went well for Russia despite all their advantages. And increasingly as they go into 2026, you start to wonder whether time is on their side. If you look at their constraints, their combat performance, and the growing economic strain from sustaining the war, they're not much closer to achieving their objectives than they were a year ago.

Negotiations and the Battlefield

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: The past year, especially since that dressing down of President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in late February, has brought lots of political and diplomatic ferment. Trump promised to end the war in 24 hours - that has not happened. To what extent has all that diplomatic drama affected the battlefield itself? On one level, things on the ground seem to continue almost irrespective of what's happening in negotiations. But both sides are also fighting for position and using the battlefield as an element of those negotiations. How do you see the interaction between those two factors?

Michael Kofman: There isn't an immediate battlefield effect. Although it does affect, for example, recruitment in Ukraine. If people keep going through cycles of negotiations thinking the war might be over, it doesn't have a positive effect on mobilization and morale. If you think the United States is going to force both sides to settle soon, why enlist at this point?

Where it does matter: the reason we watch the fighting isn't because something will be determined by who controls the next 10 kilometers of Donetsk. This war isn't principally about that. But the fighting informs the relative leverage that either side has in negotiations. And now it is increasingly about the relative positions of the two sides in the negotiations. The United States is serving as a catalyst - narrowing positions between Ukraine, Europe, and to a much lesser extent Russia. If you look at who the outlier is, who hasn't really narrowed their political demands relative to their actual military performance, it's definitely Moscow.

The fighting essentially provides information both to Russia and Ukraine, but also to external parties like the United States that are trying to force an end to the war.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: Do you see anything in battlefield behavior or tactical changes by either side that suggests they are in fact preparing for a ceasefire?

Michael Kofman: Honestly, no. The assumption on both sides is that this war is going to go on. It's been very difficult for the United States to impose any kind of artificial timeline or ceasefire on this conflict. The Trump administration keeps trying to come up with a timeline for a ceasefire, and neither side reacts to it.

It's clear the Trump administration lacks sufficient leverage. And the conditions aren't there. The Russian military has an advantage, but not a decisive one - not such that Moscow can really make the demands it's currently making at the negotiating table. Ukraine is not in a dire state, nor is the defense so fragile that they need a ceasefire tomorrow or have to accept any deal.

Ukraine is negotiating from a fairly practical standpoint: objectively, their military situation is not nearly as dire as it's sometimes painted in Washington. It may not be as great as it's sometimes painted in European capitals either. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle.

Putin Squandered His Chance

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: I was struck in your piece - and this was persuasive - that if you went back a year, to that Oval Office meeting, Putin seemed like he was in a pretty great position. That was even true in August when he and Trump met in Anchorage. And Putin has really screwed that up. He made a couple of assumptions that proved untrue. What did Putin get wrong? How did he miss this opportunity that seemed at hand with Trump's return to office?

Michael Kofman: Putin probably made two big bets last year. First, that pressure along this broad front would eventually force a collapse. The Russian military has been making that bet for a couple of years, and it hasn't panned out. But the second was the political bet: that through diplomacy he could maneuver the United States out of the war, collapse the Western coalition, and achieve what he wants that way. Because if you get the United States to turn against Ukraine, sure, Europeans may still be there, but there are critical things Ukraine needs from the United States that Europeans can't easily substitute for, even if they're now providing the bulk of the assistance.

Early on in the spring it definitely looked that way - Washington's view was that Ukraine was the problem in the negotiations. That clearly changed by late summer and fall. Ultimately the United States actually sanctioned Russian energy companies. Intelligence support and material support for Ukraine continued, even though now it's paid for by Europeans. It's no longer aid, but Europeans come up with the money, we provide the capabilities, and support continues. In the big picture, things haven't changed that much. It might be a bit less, but you don't see it resulting in dramatically increased Russian battlefield gains. And if this goes on for another year, the big question becomes: what's Putin's theory of success?

How he got it wrong - I think the Trump administration may have come in very optimistic about what they had to offer Moscow and how much Moscow might prefer that over continuing the war. The problem is they inherently discovered what many others dealing with Russia have discovered. Putin wanted the war. He wanted it from the very outset, during the 2021 negotiations and the ultimatums he issued. He still wants the war. And he wants it more than everything currently being offered on the table.

They discovered it's going to be much harder to get Russia to agree because they don't understand Moscow's priorities and don't appreciate the sunk cost fallacies that often drive wars beyond the point where a decisive outcome can be achieved. When leaders get stuck in the pathology of a prolonged conventional war, sunk costs take on a life of their own. And lastly, leaders are often rational, but they're not necessarily reasonable. If Putin was a reasonable leader, we would not be marking the fourth year anniversary of this war.

Why Putin Won't Stop

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: You say he wants the war. Is that because of the sunk cost fallacy, or because war has become essential to his power - given how the economy and society in Russia have adapted?

Michael Kofman: Great question. It's an active debate. First, Russian society and elites have adapted to this war, and adapting back would be a real challenge and crisis for the Russian economy. If not a reason or incentive to continue, it's certainly clear that continuing the war is easier for him than stopping it, from a purely political-economic perspective. Although the Russian economy is genuinely struggling to sustain the war.

Second, for him this is about legacy. He personally cares about Ukraine in a way that many Russian elites and the Russian public generally don't. Russian leadership is also to some extent deluded about the prospects for success. They believe that if they just continue, they'll ultimately outlast the West through sheer will and that something will break. That's been the internal narrative for some time.

There's also a strong tendency to misreport success. Military leadership throughout 2025 was telling political leadership they'd achieved things on the battlefield that they didn't actually achieve - that the war was going much better than it really was. That probably plays a role as well. There's an active debate about how well Putin actually understands the situation on the ground.

But ultimately the answer is simple. He committed to this, he mobilized the state to some extent in support of this war, and he doesn't want to end it unless he achieves certain minimal objectives. And he still thinks he can. There's a divergence between his perspective and reality. My article lays out one fairly objective point of view, but that's clearly not how it's viewed in Moscow.

Zelenskyy Learns to Work with Trump

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: A lot of people were critical of Zelenskyy's approach to that Oval Office meeting last February, but he seems since to have found the right way of interacting with the Trump administration. How have you seen his learning process over the course of the last year?

Michael Kofman: Ukraine certainly could have done a lot better early on. There's been a very significant amount of learning, partly fostered by support from folks in the United States, Britain, and France. The change in interactions between the Trump administration and Kyiv over the summer and into the fall was dramatic - night and day.

Yes, differences crop up. There was a pressure campaign on Zelenskyy in November by Trump officials who sensed that domestic political issues had weakened him and saw an opportunity to push him toward a deal. But the reaction is very different now. There aren't public spats on Twitter, there aren't those exchanges - things are being handled much better.

In part that's because Europeans are so actively involved in managing the relationship, constantly showing up - like they did after the Anchorage summit, immediately arriving to smooth things over. Active mitigation has been part of the process, but there's also been a real change in approach from Kyiv.

And lastly, there's been a steady shift in attitude in DC as well. The administration came in thinking Ukraine was a big part of the challenge in getting to a settlement and over time learned that actually Russia is the biggest part of the problem, not Ukraine.

Is There a Trump Policy on Ukraine?

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: Do you have an understanding of what the Trump policy on Ukraine is at this point? There may not be one policy, and different parts of the administration have different views. But if you try to distill those into an actual policy, can you come up with one?

Michael Kofman: Great question. Is there a policy? I think there are policies - plural. It depends on who you ask in the administration. The one guiding policy is to end the war as soon as possible. To what extent the administration is interested in an end that is lasting, or one that is substantially favorable or acceptable to Ukraine, is debatable.

And then there's a real question: is there a separate Ukraine policy, or is there actually a policy toward the Russia-Ukraine war? If you read the administration's documents - National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy... although let's forget those documents for a second, because I think you and I will both struggle to believe that Donald Trump himself reads them or spends much time caring about what's in them.

But if you look at the people involved, it's not clear to what extent there really is a Ukraine policy or how invested they are in the question of Ukraine. To the extent Ukraine fits in their policy toward Europe, it is to shift the burden for maintaining security on the European continent to Europeans as much as possible. That policy is very clear. And I suspect in the future Ukraine will essentially become a subcomponent of that broader trajectory in US policy.

What Only America Can Provide

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: When you look at US support, what are the things that only the US can provide? Is it really just intelligence and air defenses, or are there other things that Europeans can't pay for or backfill?

Michael Kofman: Yes, Europeans are now paying for most of this, that's true. But there are air defense interceptors for systems that we provided and that are essentially only made by the United States. Certain types of precision strike munitions. Parts, maintenance, and components for equipment we provided to Ukraine over the course of the war. And intelligence support of various kinds that I won't get into.

It's not that European countries can't substitute for some of that, but they're certainly not in a position to do all of it or to do it at scale. That would take a considerable transition. And the United States coordinates much of the security assistance to Ukraine through the Security Assistance Group-Ukraine (SAG-U) in Wiesbaden. There's a whole village there - not just European colleagues but Western countries involved under a separate mission. We are still in the leading and coordinating role. That's not to say Europeans can't fully take it over, but it would be a significant transition.

Looking Back: What Could Have Been Done Differently

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: Lingering on Zelenskyy's approach to the US - one thing that was especially clear at his speech at the Munich Security Conference a few days ago is that he's going out of his way to criticize Biden decisions about fears of escalation, Russian nuclear use, and not moving certain weapon systems quickly enough. Since we're at the four-year anniversary, it's worth looking back at some of those decisions. If you could go back and advise decision-makers to handle things differently, do you think we might be in a different place now?

Michael Kofman: I am, to many people's annoyance, right in the middle of this debate. The question is whether different decisions would have produced a difference in degree or a difference in kind. Because there are quite a few "ifs." A lot of things are contingent in war that would have to come together for an outcome that's genuinely different in kind. I don't subscribe to the simplistic narratives that if only we had done this one thing differently, a prolonged conventional war would have had a completely different outcome.

That said, in the Biden administration early on there were exaggerated concerns about the risk of escalation in the first couple months of the war that probably delayed the organization of efforts to transfer capabilities to Ukraine by a couple of months. Although intelligence sharing in many respects changed on a dime at the opening of the war - in ways that many of us as analysts couldn't have predicted, both from the United States and European countries - and it made a real difference on the battlefield. But the material support came later.

The other factor was that the US military, based on its experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, had a really mistaken notion of how long it would take the Ukrainian military to absorb these capabilities. Ukrainian personnel who already had fairly capable Soviet systems were transitioning, say, from Soviet-type artillery or air defense to our systems far more quickly than expected. This was an institutionalized military with good technical backgrounds.

The main criticism you can levy at the United States and other Western countries is that throughout the war, a number of capabilities were deployed not at the scale where they could make their greatest impact, but trickled onto the battlefield in smaller numbers. And often poorly timed. For example, ATACMS capabilities were deployed after Ukraine's summer 2023 offensive instead of before it, so they could have been employed against Russian rotary aviation. The decision to provide Western armor was a debate for Germany that cost a couple of months in late 2022.

That said, the bulk of choices on force employment, strategy, and mobilization were made by Ukraine. Just recently Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the former Commander-in-Chief, claimed that during the summer 2023 offensive he wanted to concentrate forces along one axis and it was political leadership that forced him to split them three ways.

You can't view this war as one that solely selects for Western support and Western decisions without the actual country and military that were fighting it. They were shaped by Western constraints, true, but many of the choices that had the greatest impact were made by Ukrainians.

And lastly, the conversation on Western assistance tends to ignore what it takes to actually make these things happen. This is the magic wand theory of security assistance. Building the entire security assistance enterprise - training, logistics, the pipeline - was a significant part of Western efforts in 2022, and you had to build it in order to use it. As I put it: if you could build a bridge in three days, you'd have a bridge in three days. The problem is that you can't. Some historical counterfactuals fail because they don't appreciate the practical constraints.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: In Munich, Biden officials in the audience were bristling at Zelenskyy's criticism. They pointed to the Zaluzhnyi criticism about dispersing forces, and they also cited what they saw as a serious risk of nuclear use by Russia in Fall 2022 if Russian lines had collapsed. Do you see validity to their view? How did you assess the nuclear risk?

Michael Kofman: If we go back to Fall 2022, that was a genuine nuclear crisis, though I don't think the risk was that high because the conditions were never met. Russian mobilization stabilized their lines and they were able to withdraw from Kherson. We never got to a point where nuclear use was likely. But there's more to it, and it tends to be underplayed. That said, it didn't drive anything in US policy - the United States didn't in any way affect Ukrainian operations during that time. Things played out because of the situation on the ground. I myself was in Kherson in October 2022.

On the 2023 offensive - yes, there were recriminations all around. My view is that we could have done better, but the concept of operations was unworkable from the outset. The big choices on distribution of forces and the decision to continue the offensive through November even though it had clearly failed were ultimately Ukraine's. That's a conversation for Ukrainians to have among themselves - and they're increasingly having it.

What happened in this war is the result of both Ukrainian and Western effort. Both the successes and the failures have to be jointly owned to some extent. Outcomes in war tend to be multi-causal. I'm very wary of anyone who points to a single cause for any outcome in a conventional war such as this.

Ukrainian Endurance: Weaknesses

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: In the new piece you stress that the key factor now is how each side manages to endure and exhaust the other. On the Ukrainian side - where are the areas of weakness?

Michael Kofman: The long-run challenge for Ukraine has been first and foremost manpower. Difficulties with force generation and a force whose combat strength has diminished on the front. Ukraine has compensated with drone units, better tactics, and the fact that their force is qualitatively better than the Russian military. But the war remains manpower intensive. Drone warfare is manpower intensive.

Another issue is command and control above the brigade level. The Ukrainian military is largely brigade-oriented and for a long time struggled to organize efforts above that level. Last year they created corps, which is starting to lead to significant improvement. But the military is still micromanaged from the top. You see a clash of cultures: bottom-up innovation, mission command at the battalion level and below, and also senior leadership that requires approval from higher command to change positions, won't allow mobile defense, won't let forces withdraw even when the battlefield geometry is really unfavorable.

And third, Russia has really expanded its strike campaign against Ukraine over the last two years. The volume of missiles and drones has increased near exponentially. It's not just driving people out of cities or affecting critical infrastructure - especially electricity this winter. It also affects defense industrial production, which also requires electricity.

Ukraine has been on two treadmills simultaneously: one focused on the ground war - munitions, manpower - and another focused on air defense and adapting to the evolving Russian strike campaign. Western air defense is primarily used against ballistic missiles and cruise missiles - high-end capabilities like Patriot. Against the one-way attack drones that make up the bulk of Russian strike packages, Ukraine has been expanding the use of interceptor drones.

Winter and Putin's Theory of Success

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: I haven't been to Ukraine in a couple of years, but when you talk to people even in Kyiv, there seems to be a real weariness this winter - freezing temperatures, almost no heat and electricity. That does seem like a not totally implausible theory of success for Putin: enough Ukrainians get through this winter and say they can't do it again without some assurance that air defenses will improve. Is that reading wrong? And are there innovations that might prevent the effectiveness of these missile and drone barrages next winter?

Michael Kofman: This winter is a particularly cold one, and that's a big part of the problem. The last two were rather warm. Despite all the hardships, Ukraine has proved remarkably resilient. If the Russian strike campaign isn't able to substantially break Ukraine this winter - yes, people are struggling, yes in Kyiv there have been days with only one and a half to two hours of electricity and heating - but if people get through this winter, then the real question is: what is Putin's theory of how he's going to further break Ukraine's will? I don't see it happening, just because it hasn't happened in practice.

Bombardment has a very weak track record of achieving significant political outcomes for a country that can't actually advance or achieve breakthroughs on the ground. A bombing strategy is a fairly weak substitute for inability to break the deadlock on the battlefield. I have a fairly dim view of bombardment against civilian infrastructure as an alternative. It's not going to work for Russia. It hasn't worked for a lot of countries, though plenty have tried thinking it might work for them.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: On the manpower front - do you see mobilization debates evolving in a way that will address that, or is it just a hard constraint?

Michael Kofman: It's going to be a struggle throughout this war. It will never be fully resolved. But Ukraine can get much better at force management, at organization, and at what they do with the people they have. And they know that. They can also get much better at tackling the AWOL problem, which substantially saps the strength of Ukrainian units.

Those who think you can just use technology and have nobody on the front lines are mistaken. This technology is rather manpower intensive. Ultimately you can't have a battlefield of just drones. If you do, you're selecting for only one advantage. And if the last year has shown that advantage can be taken away, you could end up in a very bad place. A single point of failure: only one part of your force doing all the lifting. And if the other side does better in quality and quantity, that could have very negative consequences.

The big challenge for the Russian military: despite improving in drone employment and substantially outproducing Ukraine in several categories of drones, they're unable to capitalize on those developments. The way they fight and their internal issues prevent them from converting that into a significant breakthrough. Ukraine is still holding them to incremental gains. At least, that's been the story for 2025.

But I want listeners to appreciate that we tend to extrapolate from the last phase of the war. The one thing we know is that things are going to change. Wars are unstable systems - transitions are gradual, then sudden. Who knows what the fighting will look like three or six months down the line.

Russia: Economy and Endurance

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: What about Russian staying power in a war of endurance? You note pretty serious manpower concerns and economic strain. One lesson of recent history is that big economies can endure that kind of strain longer than we think. How do you assess Russia's ability to sustain this?

Michael Kofman: On the one hand, I don't see anything that tells us the Russian economy is going to collapse this year or the military will suddenly be unable to sustain the war. But I see a whole bunch of indicators that time is increasingly not on Russia's side, and that the war hit the point of diminishing returns probably by the end of 2024.

First, they were able to substantially reduce equipment losses by fighting in a way that leads to much higher manpower losses. Their manpower advantage is running into a trend line: they won't run out of people, but they'll have difficulty sustaining the same pace of offensive operations this year unless something changes significantly in casualties or recruitment. The way they fight is not leading to greater combat efficiency, greater gains at lower cost, or any significant breakthroughs. This year looks like it might be more of the same. And that bodes very poorly for Russian objectives. Remember, Russia is the attacking side - it has the burden of offensive operations, it's trying to take territory.

Second, economic indicators are mostly negative. Russia is facing stagnation. It's particularly hurt by low oil prices and forced to offer significant discounts on sales to countries like China. It's facing a regional budgetary crisis - directly relevant to recruitment and contract bonuses. Industrial production of civilian goods is slowing, and military production is leveling off too. The real question: how long can they sustain budgetary outlays of 40% of the government budget on this war, at about 8% of GDP? Maybe for the rest of 2026. But the country is increasingly vulnerable to external shocks. And Moscow has no good story for what things look like if the war simply carries on from 2026 to 2027. Nothing improves for Russia - not economically, not in manpower or equipment availability.

Starlink and Its Impact

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: The other change is in Elon Musk's policy. Reports say he was restricting Ukrainian use of Starlink, and more recently restricting Russian use. Is that significant?

Michael Kofman: It is. We've yet to see the full effects. It will impact three things. First, Russian use of strike drones that were starting to use mini Starlink terminals. Second, uncrewed ground vehicles (UGVs). Ukraine has led in using these to offset battlefield losses, and most use Starlink terminals - it's the cheapest way to enable communications. Russia had started to expand UGV use as well, again through Starlink. There are workarounds - Wi-Fi bridges, relays - but Starlink was the easy solution, and it's gone.

But the most important impact is on organization of communications and command and control at the tactical level. Russian forces were not as dependent on Starlink as the Ukrainian military - they adopted it later. But as they came to rely on it over the last couple of years, the dependency grew. The combined effect of having Starlink cut off and having to employ other communications means - with lower data bandwidth, harder to set up, less portable - is compounded by Russian leadership's own decision to throttle Telegram, trying to push troops onto a different platform. The combination will disrupt Russian command and control. Will they adapt? Yes. But will it affect latency in how they organize strikes and their situational awareness? Most likely. We just don't know the full impact yet.

Negotiations: Territory and Sequencing

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: Setting aside your skepticism about negotiation prospects in the near term - as you look at the key dimensions of these discussions, let's start with territory. Zelenskyy still says he won't hand over the parts of Donbas that Ukraine controls. That seems to be a core demand of Putin and something the Trump administration has endorsed at various points. How costly would it be to hand over that territory?

Michael Kofman: The defensive importance of what's currently left of Donetsk in Ukrainian control is far less the issue. I think it's overemphasized because of the political cost of handing over any territory to Russia. I understand why Zelenskyy wouldn't want to do it and is demanding a national referendum. How that referendum would play out, I have no idea. I'm not sure anyone does.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: Yes, there have been polls, but polls show one thing and people vote differently. You never know how people will ultimately vote on a peace deal.

Michael Kofman: The Trump administration sees this very simplistically as a land-for-security-guarantees deal. But the war is about much more than just land or Donetsk.

I do think their pressure is serving as a catalyst to advance the negotiations. I don't agree with those who see it as just performative. However, we're still quite far from a deal. The situation on the ground doesn't push either party to sign something they see as disadvantageous.

The biggest issue I see: this is a problem with a Russia-Ukraine dimension, a Russia-US part, a US-Ukraine part, and a Europe-Ukraine part. There are a lot of moving pieces - who gives security guarantees to whom, who deploys or doesn't deploy a security assistance force, what Russia gets from the United States, such as restoration of economic ties or lifting of sanctions.

And the biggest issue is sequencing. This may seem like the boring part, but it's critically important. Yes, there's a likelihood that a deal will be made. The question is whether it will be implemented. That's the story of Minsk 1 and Minsk 2. The people who just want to get to a deal don't spend enough time thinking through whether the sequencing will work or whether it's too complicated.

For example: should there be a ceasefire first, then a withdrawal? If there's a referendum, one side will demand a ceasefire to hold it. Does the United States offer Ukraine security guarantees first, and then Ukraine considers a deal on Donetsk? Or the other way around? Which goes first?

Implementation collapses in sequencing. And the failure to follow through will reveal who's negotiating in bad faith. I have my own strong assumptions about that - the history is pretty clear.

My biggest concern: the Trump administration could walk away saying they made a deal to end the war, but the deal is never actually implemented. And we end up in a situation of neither war nor peace - waiting for hostilities to resume.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: Would that advantage Russia or Ukraine?

Michael Kofman: In many respects, Russia. If you think about people returning to Ukraine, restoration of investment, Ukraine's economic future - yes, the Ukrainian military is mobilized and you can keep people at the front for some time, but eventually they'll want to demobilize. In the near term, a pause clearly advantages Russia. Years down the line, if Russia doesn't relaunch the war, it's harder to say. But in the short term - definitely Russia.

That's why Ukraine is so concerned. What's the point of signing a deal that's not worth the paper it's written on, that Russia might break shortly after, when they have a significant advantage over the Ukrainian military? And when the United States has turned its attention elsewhere and decided the problem is solved?

Security Guarantees: How Real Are They?

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: What about security guarantees? We've seen some pretty expansive versions from both the Americans and the Europeans - significant European troops, American Article 5-like guarantees. In Munich, European policymakers were saying in private: "Do you really think Europe is going to go to war with Russia over the Donbas?" That suggests more skepticism than the headlines indicate. How do you assess the prospect of real security guarantees?

Michael Kofman: It seems like we've moved quite a bit on security guarantees from the United States to Ukraine. It may be an executive and/or legislative agreement. It won't quite be a treaty, but functionally it would be a fairly significant political commitment. Europeans are putting together a coalition of the willing for a security assistance force. The big question: are they actually going to do it? Are they faking it to make it - or faking it to fake it, just to stay in the conversation?

Security guarantees are really a package of commitments: sustained financial support for Ukraine and its military, steady provision of capabilities and munitions after the war, some kind of military presence, and a clear contingency for what the United States and other Western countries would do if the ceasefire is broken - so Ukraine doesn't feel completely left in the lurch.

There are many questions: is this part of the deal with Russia? Will anyone ask Moscow's opinion? Most believe this can only be done once a ceasefire is agreed.

I keep raising the sequencing issue. What happens first? Do we offer guarantees? Does Ukraine vote on the deal? Who signs? There's increasing reporting that the US wants Ukraine to hold elections. Zelenskyy might also want elections with a simultaneous vote on the deal - his best chance of re-election as a wartime president. How does all that come together?

I'm sorry I have more questions than answers. But it's clear this has been worked on since the fall, and negotiations have advanced quite a bit - between the US and Ukraine, between Europeans and Ukraine, between the US and Europeans.

How serious and credible are these guarantees? If they're real commitments from both executive and legislative branches, they're significant. Ultimately they're as credible as your belief that Donald Trump as president would act on them in defense of Ukraine. But they are commitments that carry reputational costs. And they're as credible as the actions taken to back them up. Are forces deployed? Are plans developed to support Ukraine? Or is this just a piece of paper - like the Budapest Memorandum, 30 years later?

Although, to be perfectly honest, NATO Article 5 doesn't say all that much either. It says states individually and collectively will provide military aid. It doesn't specify what that assistance has to be or what form it takes. That's why we have operational plans, why we have forward-deployed NATO battle groups in the Baltic countries - because the guarantee alone isn't enough. That's why throughout the Cold War there was a large US military presence in Europe. That's why there were regular exercises like REFORGER (Return of Forces to Germany) - to show the US was committed to moving forces to Europe in the event of a Soviet attack.

Because what the Trump administration wants to do is, from my point of view, somewhat contradictory. They want to reduce the US military commitment to Europe while expanding the US security commitment to Ukraine. You can't have both.

And their belief that Europeans will just do more of it - Europeans are not in a position to take this over from the United States. Not for themselves, and not for Ukraine either. It's good to motivate European allies to invest in security and eventually manage it on their own, but they're not there yet. A deal on the war, if it doesn't happen this year, has a good chance of happening next year - but it's going to happen much sooner than European capability arrives to manage this problem on their own. That is 100% a fair assessment.

Ukraine's Theory of Success

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: Before we close, I want to come back to the idea of a theory of success from the Ukrainian perspective. What's the most optimistic plausible scenario for the next year?

Michael Kofman: Make the war effectively futile for Russia. That means effectively leveraging their advantages to stabilize the front, holding Russia to incremental gains, increasing Russian casualties beyond their recruitment ability. Also trying to control operational depth and regain superiority in the drone engagement zone. Scaling the solutions they've already deployed to protect critical infrastructure from Russian strikes. And increasing their own strike campaign against Russian energy export infrastructure to raise the costs. And together with Western countries, increasing economic pressure so that the limiting factors on Russia's ability to sustain the war increasingly come to the fore in Russian decision-making over the course of this year.

I think that's feasible. Ukraine is seeking an acceptable end to the war, hoping to gain the rest at the negotiating table - not necessarily through a single negotiation. What you saw last year is a substantial narrowing of Ukraine's political aims relative to military means and what's possible. One that still leaves Ukraine in a fairly good position if the war ends with prospects for the future.

What Could Shift the Balance

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: With the caveat you've stressed - we can't know what sharp turns the war will take. You describe both sides struggling to break out of the prevailing battlefield dynamic. Do you see technological or tactical innovations that could dramatically shift the balance?

Michael Kofman: For Ukraine, there are technologies the West could still transfer that would substantially enable Ukraine's own domestic production, especially of strike capabilities. I see technological developments that could allow Ukraine to regain control of operational depth. But I don't see anything that's necessarily a game changer.

I have a strong view that there are no real game changers in a conventional war. The things that truly change the game are changes in operational concepts, force structure, and organizational capacity. It's not just a technology that gets employed - it's how you employ it and how the force is organized around its employment. Those take time to develop. Most things treated as game changers provide a limited advantage for a particular operation and can enable operational success, but then they drive cycles of adaptation and the other side develops counters. Looking for a singular "wonder weapon" is a very superficial way of looking at warfare.

But I definitely think there are things Ukraine could do this year to regain the advantage and make the war even more futile for Russia. On Western capabilities, there are unfortunately real limitations in Western stocks and defense industrial production. I don't see the US or other countries providing a lot more, but I do see them providing certain boutique capabilities that can help.

A lot comes down to how the force is used. Ukraine has been expanding an unrestricted warfare campaign against the Russian shadow fleet, both in the Black Sea and beyond, which could affect Russian revenue. The war has become increasingly regionalized - Ukrainian activity, Russian activity including actions against NATO countries and their airspace. I see potential developments that could change things. But I also see both sides consistently adapting to each other and struggling to change the prevailing dynamic.

Worst-Case Scenario

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: We should consider the flip side. If things go unexpectedly badly for Ukraine or unexpectedly well for Russia over the next year - what does that look like?

Michael Kofman: There's a lot you can't tell from just looking at how territory changes hands - these are lagging indicators. There are many things you don't see happening within both forces. That's part of why I do field work in Ukraine, traveling there every couple of months. And even then you're mostly seeing one side of the equation.

There are always things to account for. One side might have a more successful offensive than expected. One side could be weaker than it appears. There could be cascade effects - disabling Starlink for Russian forces could hit their command and control harder than we anticipate. The Russian strike campaign could hobble Ukrainian defense industrial production more than we know - because in the choice between powering homes and producing the capabilities you need, a country will choose one over the other.

And there are external shocks we don't account for. Say the United States in the next couple of weeks launches a sustained strike campaign against Iran - that consumes a lot of US munitions and attention, diverting from the Russia-Ukraine war. Other wars won't wait for your war to finish, and they can substantially affect US attention and prioritization. There are economic shocks that could hit the Russian economy, which is quite vulnerable. The West could go after the Russian shadow fleet in a way that would seriously crimp export revenue. There are a number of factors that aren't easy to predict.

Dan Kurtz-Phelan: Mike, thank you for doing this on the fourth anniversary of the start of this phase of the war. Thanks for the most recent fantastic piece and all the work you've done for Foreign Affairs over the last few years.

Michael Kofman: Thanks a lot. Thanks for hosting us.