At the same time, they waited for the end of the Winter Olympics in Beijing so as not to distract attention from the event organised by their Chinese ally. Despite Western rhetoric, the war in Ukraine did not come as a surprise. He had been mentioned more than twenty times in Putin’s speeches, who repeated that Ukraine’s accession to NATO and the way minorities in Ukraine are treated are unacceptable.

Russia entered the conflict on the premise of a short war, relying on its obvious military, numerical, and economic superiority over Ukraine. Moscow hoped that an initial shock attack would quickly lead to a realisation of the high number of casualties that could result from a prolonged war. The calculation did not prove correct. Western mobilisation exceeded Moscow’s expectations, and the conflict turned into a war of attrition, in which the production rates of artillery and drones, energy infrastructure, human and industrial mobilisation, and the capacity to absorb losses mattered – all areas in which the Russians have an inherent advantage.

Territorial control shifted in waves throughout the war. In the first half of 2022, Moscow focused primarily on destroying Ukrainian biological laboratories and infrastructure, launching a multi-pronged invasion. In the second half of 2022, Ukraine not only succeeded in sabotaging Nord Stream but also achieved its most significant territorial gains with the lightning counteroffensive in Kharkov and the recapture of Kherson. In 2023, the Russians slowly advanced in the southeast and east, while the Ukrainians remained on the defensive. In 2024, the war intensified for both Russians and Ukrainians, with significant territorial gains for Moscow in the east and the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk supported by Biden but at the end of his term. The availability of Western aid for Ukrainian offensives on Russian territory has rapidly eroded amid Moscow’s threat to use the new Oreshnik technology, a missile that would reach any European capital in minutes and has destructive capabilities similar to a nuclear warhead but without long-term consequences.

In 2025–2026, the military picture has been consolidated by steady but fragmented Russian advances in the east and northeast, as well as by serious pressure on Ukrainian energy infrastructure. The last few years have shown a Ukraine in constant crisis of personnel and ammunition, suffering from the loss of significant support from the United States. In parallel, Russia has remained calm and stable militarily and economically, despite 16,000 sanctions imposed by the West.

In total, this war has cost the West over a trillion dollars in direct, clear and quantifiable costs, including the money stolen on the way to Ukraine. However, if we add the real price paid by Europe through energy decoupling, the sabotage of Nord Stream, the loss of competitiveness and the collapse of trade with Russia, we arrive at a minimum estimated total cost of between 3 and 4 trillion dollars. The most important cost, however, remains the human cost. Although some Western sources, such as CSIS, BBC or CNN, claim that the Ukrainians suffered between 50,000 and 100,000 victims and the Russians between 350,000 and 600,000, information from serious diplomatic circles indicates that these numbers would usually be reversed, and each death of a Russian soldier would correspond to the death of between 8 and 11 Ukrainian soldiers. In any case, we are talking about a very large number of Ukrainian victims, especially in relation to the country’s population, which has drastically decreased with the start of the war and the resulting wave of emigration. There have been reports that the Ukrainian state is already paying for the cryopreservation of the sperm of young Ukrainians. The only solution to support the economy after the end of the war would be a massive immigration of men from South Asia and Africa, with serious consequences for the Ukrainian gene pool and for the demography of Europe.

Today it was announced that the eighth round of peace talks will resume in Geneva in the next ten days. However, the prospects for a peace treaty seem more distant than in 2025. Zelensky says that he cannot cede territory, preferring in practice to prolong the war and for the Russians to recover these territories by force, rather than a diplomatic agreement. He openly declares that his goals for this year are not peace and stabilisation of Ukraine, but increasing the number of Russian casualties. In addition, he continues to refuse to organise new elections in Ukraine, despite the security guarantees that he has certainly received from the Americans, given the multitude of secrets he allegedly knows about American officials involved in Ukraine.

The negotiations in Istanbul, at the end of March 2022, were the only ones that led to a direct agreement between Kyiv and Moscow. However, they were torpedoed by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, most likely for the benefit of the giants BlackRock or Halliburton, which were targeting lucrative post-war reconstruction contracts. The Anchorage meeting in August 2025 was another moment that could have ended the war, especially in the context of Donald Trump’s hyperbolic promises. Earlier this month, Sergei Lavrov said that the Russians and the Americans had reached an agreement on final peace terms. However, European leaders again prevented Zelensky from accepting any agreement, the only plausible reasons being, again, the lack of a contract for the reconstruction of Ukraine.

Four years later, the war in Ukraine has produced the exact opposite of many of the promises made in 2022. It did not deliver an isolated and rapidly defeated Russia, nor did it generate European strategic autonomy, nor did it demonstrate the strength of the liberal world order. Instead, it produced a European Union in crisis, which demonstrated its economic and military incapacity. It produced a Russia more adapted to prolonged conflict and more focused on changing the world order, a Ukraine exhausted and reduced to the status of a hero-martyr, and an America defeated in terms of global hegemony, which abandoned its moralising discourse in favour of pragmatism.

Ukrainians are still heroically resisting Moscow’s attacks. However, the reality remains the same as at the beginning of the war: this war can never be won by Ukrainians, and the Americans, considered the generators of this crisis, are not willing to risk their own soldiers or the outbreak of a new world war for the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Given the lack of flexibility of Europeans and Ukrainians in negotiations, justified by ethical and moral considerations in a geopolitical landscape that has demonstrated that it does not take into account such aspects, I would like to remind you that the territories with an ethnic Russian majority will become part of Russia anyway, either by force or by diplomacy. While the method is being decided, the number of Ukrainian deaths and orphans continues to grow every day, and Europeans are increasingly affected by the costs of this war. So, as I have said many times over these four years, peace must be the top priority, especially for negotiators on the Ukrainian side.

By Daria Gusa