That is why the Russian president has for months sidestepped Trump’s proposals to freeze the fighting with a territorial compromise that the U.S. thought would be attractive for Moscow. Instead, the Kremlin is sticking to its maximalist demands, which would effectively make Ukraine its vassal and change the balance of power in Europe.
Trump’s latest deadline for Putin to show he is serious about peace talks with Kyiv has lapsed. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s European allies continue to discuss sending peacekeepers to maintain a peace that is nowhere in sight.
What’s missing, say many policymakers and analysts who are critical of Trump’s approach to peacemaking, is a concerted U.S.-European strategy to shorten Russia’s countdown clock and change Putin’s calculation, because, on current trajectories, he could win his bet.
Russian endurance
Russia’s economy grew strongly in 2023 and 2024, despite Western sanctions, thanks to energy exports and the fiscal stimulus from heavy military spending. But strains and shortages have been building up, growth is faltering, oil and gas revenues are down sharply, and the government’s deficit is rising.
That doesn’t mean it is approaching a crisis that would force Putin to shrink his war aims.
“Problems are visibly mounting, but the Russian economy is not going to run into the wall any time soon,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.
Antidrone netting shrouds roads in a town near the front line in Ukraine’s south.A Ukrainian military vehicle drives through a town near the front line.
Even with its worsening outlook, the economy can support Russia’s war effort for at least another 18 to 24 months before problems become severe, he said.
A determined Western effort to tighten sanctions, and better enforce existing ones, could shorten that time frame, Gabuev said, as would lower oil prices. But it is hard to cut off Russia’s oil revenues altogether, he said.
China and India now buy the bulk of Russian oil. India says it will continue to do so despite U.S. secondary tariffs imposed in August. The U.S. and Europe have so far shown little appetite to punish China, which has the power to fight back in any trade war, over its extensive economic support for Russia.
Even if Russia’s finances deteriorate sharply, that doesn’t mean Putin will give economics priority over his political goals—including his historical fixation with restoring what he sees as Russia’s rightful status and sphere of influence.
With borrowing constrained by international sanctions, budget cuts could fall on civilian spending to protect military outlays. Army recruitment could shift toward more coercive mobilization if the funds for lavish signing bonuses run dry.
Putin isn’t totally insensitive to economic fallout—such as inflation—that could cause widespread discontent, said Maria Snegovaya, a Russia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. The proof, she says, is that Putin has tried hard to insulate much of Russian society from the war, in both his economic and mobilization policies.
Ukraine’s intensifying campaign of drone attacks against Russian oil refineries and pipelines aims both to reduce Russia’s export revenues and to spread domestic disruption. It is already leading to fuel rationing in some regions.
“It is getting harder to maintain the appearance of normalcy,” said Snegovaya. “Russians become unhappy if the war interferes with their lives.”
But in an increasingly authoritarian country, there are ever-fewer ways for Russian society or elites to express discontent or take action, she noted. She estimated Russia could sustain its war on Ukraine for another three years, unless sanctions tighten considerably.
A member of a Russian youth movement at a ceremony marking the end of World War II in Moscow.
Ukrainian tenacity
On current battlefield trends, another two or three years of war could stretch Ukraine’s defenders to breaking point.
Although Russia’s big offensive in eastern Ukraine this spring and summer has achieved only marginal territorial gains, the relentless attrition of men is weighing on Ukraine’s army, which can’t replace its losses as easily as Russia with its much larger population.
Moscow’s military goal isn’t so much to capture land as to exhaust Ukraine’s forces, until Kyiv is forced to capitulate. Putin is likely to reduce his aims and accept a deal that Ukraine and the West can live with only if he believes Ukraine won’t buckle on the battlefield, while his internal political risks from continuing the war are rising.
The continued supply of Western arms and ammunition will be essential for extending Ukraine’s ability to resist, alongside the buildup of Ukraine’s own military industries.
Stabilizing Ukraine’s manpower shortage is also crucial. In the eastern Donetsk region, the main crucible of the fighting, the infantry has become so sparse that small groups of Russian soldiers are often able to infiltrate the wide gaps between their dugouts. Ukraine relies on mines, artillery and above all on drones to pick off the Russians.
Kyiv is continually improving its drone capabilities to compensate for its infantry shortage, but it can’t defend the country with a robot army alone.
A bombed school in a Ukrainian town.Ukrainian defenses near the front line in the Zaporizhzhia region.
Ukraine is paying a price for skewed military draft practices that have put much of the burden of mobilization on middle-aged men from poorer rural and provincial areas, sheltering the urban middle class and the young. Russia’s war recruitment is even more socially and regionally lopsided, but its greater size and authoritarian regime means it can get away with it. In Ukraine’s more democratic society, it grates.
“Social inequality is the main problem behind the infantry crisis. The draft offices take the farmer out of his tractor but not the attorney out of his office,” said Serhiy Ignatukha, leader of the Bulava drone unit in Ukraine’s Presidential Brigade.
Like many tired front-line veterans, he is frustrated about the large number of able-bodied men who frequent the bars and nightclubs of cities such as Kyiv, Dnipro and Odesa. “We should be like Israel, where everybody fights,” he said.
In addition, rigid Soviet-style habits of Ukraine’s military command, which many soldiers say have caused unnecessary losses, have also eroded trust in the army leadership as well as citizens’ willingness to sign up. Many front-line officers and military analysts have said for the past two years that Ukraine needs to overhaul how it generates and manages its forces.
“Maybe we still didn’t reach that critical point yet where the need for change forces action,” said Capt. Oleksandr Shyrshyn, a battalion commander in Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade, who has been highly critical of the army high command.
Ukraine has repeatedly defied the odds since Russia launched its full scale invasion in February 2022. Despite shortages of men and munitions, it has kept finding ways to stay in the fight.
Ukraine’s deepest resource is “our will to survive, which helps us to act in nonstandard ways,” said Shyrshyn. “To find the way, where there is no way.”
Write to Marcus Walker at Marcus.Walker@wsj.com