Washington is clearly impatient - it wants a settlement by the summer of 2026. But "an artificial timeline cannot easily be imposed on this conflict." That is the view of American analyst Michael Kofman in a Foreign Affairs article published February 16, 2026.
As "Hvylya" reports, Kofman examines the nature of the conflict and why America's drive for a swift outcome may not match the war's actual dynamics. The Trump administration has already shown this impatience - issuing an ultimatum that elections must be held in spring or Ukraine risks losing US security guarantees.
"This was never, and is not now, simply about land," the analyst stresses. Moscow seeks to impose its will on Ukraine and destroy it as an independent state with a distinct national identity. Ukraine is suffering from exhaustion - but not from despair. In Kofman's assessment, "time is increasingly not on Russia's side, no matter how Moscow tries to portray the situation."
Ending the conflict on terms acceptable to Ukraine, he says, "will not be an easy task." It will require sustained Western support to give Ukraine advantages in intelligence and technology, continued adaptation by Ukrainian forces, and significantly greater economic pressure on Moscow from Western governments. The EU is already working on anchoring Ukraine's EU membership in any future peace deal as a structural security guarantee.
Wars are contests of will and endurance as much as contests of systems, Kofman reminds his readers. Moscow cannot resolve "the fundamental mismatch between the military means it has and the political objectives it seeks to achieve" - regardless of how many times the American administration names a preferred peace date.