Europe Prepares for a Longer War in Ukraine, With No Strategy to End It

With President Trump and his team preoccupied with the war in Iran, Europe is preparing for a longer war in Ukraine, with dwindling expectations for a negotiated settlement between Moscow and Kyiv.

That leaves Ukraine largely on its own, fighting a war of attrition with Russia with no end in sight. Neither Ukraine nor Russia has a clear path to victory, and no one expects that a settlement of the war could be possible without the active American involvement and pressure on Russia that Mr. Trump has always been reluctant to exercise.

Nor is there an obvious replacement mediator with any significant leverage with the two sides.

Fifteen months after Mr. Trump vowed to end the war in a day, “we find ourselves largely where we began in the negotiations,” said James Sherr, a Russia and Ukraine analyst speaking from Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

He added, “Increasingly, the Europeans understand that there is a fundamental incompatibility of interests and objectives between Ukraine and Russia, and the only sensible course is to continue to stand with Ukraine and deny Russia a victory by military or political means.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine “has lost 80 percent of his illusions” about his ability to get Mr. Trump’s support, Mr. Sherr said. “He’s in a very different place in his understanding of America.” The Ukrainians believe that they are holding their own militarily, and that any resolution of the war “will take place on the battlefield, if at all,” he said.

​​The Europeans underlined that support with two more packages of sanctions aimed at Russia, its economic interests and its oil exports through its shadow fleet. The 20th package, approved on Thursday, had been held up since February by Slovakia and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, who lost his bid for re-election in parliamentary elections this month. The officials are already working on a 21st package to keep up with Russian adaptations.

Europeans hope that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia will come to accept that Moscow has gained what it can in Ukraine and should pocket its wins and negotiate seriously to end the conflict, but they recognize that Mr. Putin wants to deal with Washington, not Brussels, said several European officials who spoke anonymously to discuss sensitive diplomatic issues.

So they would welcome a renewal of serious American engagement if it meant also pushing Mr. Putin to make concessions, not only Mr. Zelensky.

With the European money, Ukraine has the resources and capacity for some time, and it “doesn’t need a deal at any cost this year,” said Alexander Gabuev, the director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.
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The Ukrainians have had some success in damaging Russia’s oil infrastructure. But the problem for the Europeans is that “we lack a theory of victory for Ukraine,” said Claudia Major, a defense expert with the German Marshall Fund. The idea was to put enough pressure on Russia to change its calculus, “but we never gave the Ukrainians enough to do that,” she said.

“Now we just try to keep the Ukrainians in the game until something in Moscow changes — someone dies or is thrown out the window or the economy collapses,” she said. “But it’s not a strategy.”

Mr. Zelensky has shown anger toward the Americans, who continue to favor Mr. Putin’s demands. He has been seeking new diplomatic and military partners, sharing drone expertise with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states and making arms-production deals with Britain and Germany.

Mr. Zelensky also sharply criticized Mr. Trump’s decision to ease sanctions on Russian oil production to keep down global energy prices, saying, “In my view, Russia played the Americans again — played the president of the United States.” He said he had resisted pressure from unnamed parties — implicitly, Washington — to halt attacks on Russian energy infrastructure.