When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, many Western intelligence assessments anticipated a swift Russian victory. Kyiv might fall within days, the government could collapse, and the rest of Ukraine might follow Crimea into Russian control. Few expected that, more than four years later, Russia would still be struggling to subdue a country it had expected to conquer almost at its leisure.
But the Ukrainians have demonstrated not only an extraordinary capacity to endure suffering, but also an ingenuity on the battlefield that has repeatedly surprised Moscow and its Western observers. They have adapted commercial technology to military purposes, transformed drone warfare, developed new methods of striking Russian infrastructure, and even carried the war temporarily onto Russian territory. What was supposed to be a demonstration of Russian military power has instead become a prolonged and enormously expensive struggle.
One might imagine that the United States would regard this as a remarkable strategic opportunity.
For nearly eight decades, a principal purpose of NATO has been to deter Soviet, and later Russian, aggression in Europe. Donald Trump has repeatedly complained that European nations have not contributed enough to their own defense. Yet here is Ukraine, not even a NATO member, tying down enormous Russian military resources, destroying Russian equipment, and demonstrating the limits of Moscow’s conventional military power.
A successful Ukrainian defense, and certainly a Ukrainian victory, would serve interests that generations of American presidents, Republican and Democratic, have considered fundamental to European security.
And Ukraine has accomplished much of this without American soldiers fighting on its behalf.
Yet since Trump’s return to the White House, American policy toward Ukraine has become increasingly difficult to reconcile with those strategic interests. Military assistance has become less predictable. Deliveries of essential weapons, including Patriot air-defense interceptors, have been subject to interruptions and uncertainty. Trump famously told Zelensky that he had no cards, while pressing him to accept an end to the war that could leave substantial Ukrainian territory under Russian occupation.
The irony is considerable. Ukraine has denied Russia the decisive victory Moscow anticipated, developed the ability to strike targets deep inside Russia, and demonstrated a capacity for innovation that military establishments around the world are studying. Yet the United States has increasingly pressured Ukraine to limit its resistance rather than concentrating that pressure on the country responsible for the invasion.
Now the president has gone further.
Trump has publicly called for Ukraine to replace Volodymyr Zelensky, the leader who refused to abandon Kyiv when Russian forces approached the capital and who has since become an international symbol of resistance to conquest.
Not Vladimir Putin, who ordered the invasion. Not the government in Moscow, whose missiles and drones continue to strike Ukrainian cities and civilian infrastructure. Trump has called for the replacement of the president of the invaded country.
The immediate dispute concerned Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries, which Trump blames for worsening global diesel shortages. Having reached an arrangement with Moscow to ease restrictions on Russian diesel, the American president turned his displeasure toward the Ukrainians for attacking the infrastructure that helps finance Russia’s war.
Trump has since issued an executive order waiving most of the new sanctions against Russia overwhelmingly approved by Congress, invoking a national-interest exception in the very law intended to increase pressure on Moscow.
There is a peculiar inversion of responsibility here. Russia invades Ukraine, Ukraine strikes Russian energy facilities to weaken its capacity to continue the invasion, and the American president demands that Ukraine stop.
And now comes another obstacle, potentially among the most consequential.
Ukraine’s military has become heavily dependent upon Starlink satellite communications, including the military-oriented Starshield system, for drone operations, battlefield coordination, and other essential functions. This week, Ukrainian officials reported sudden restrictions that disrupted important missions, including operations intended to intercept Russian drones.
The restrictions were not merely theoretical. Ukrainian military personnel reported that drones lost connectivity when traveling above newly imposed speed limits, disrupting strikes against Russian military targets and interfering with air defenses against incoming Russian attacks. Some service was subsequently restored, but the episode exposed a vulnerability Ukraine can scarcely afford.
Elon Musk, whose SpaceX operates the technology, has stated that Starshield is controlled by the United States government and that restrictions on its speed or usage are determined by the American military and ultimately the president. The White House has not publicly established who ordered the changes or why, and an American official has denied administration involvement.
Musk, meanwhile, declared that Zelensky had gone too far and subsequently appeared to endorse calls for him to leave office.
The precise responsibility for the restrictions remains disputed. Their military consequences are considerably less abstract.
Ukraine is fighting a country with a much larger population, greater industrial resources, and an enormous capacity to absorb losses. Its ability to compete depends heavily on innovation, intelligence, and communications technology. To interfere with those advantages, even temporarily, is to make an already difficult struggle more dangerous.
Russia remains a geopolitical rival of the United States. It supplies military assistance to Iran, challenges European security, and has demonstrated its willingness to use force to redraw international borders. Ukraine has done more to expose the limitations of Russian military power than many Western strategists could have imagined.
One might reasonably expect Washington to recognize the advantage. Or perhaps it is not the advantage this administration prefers.
Instead, Zelensky finds himself confronting not only the Russian army but an increasingly uncertain American partner, one whose president seems more irritated by Ukraine’s refusal to surrender than by Russia’s determination to conquer it.
The Ukrainians have repeatedly found ways to overcome obstacles that once appeared insurmountable. Their endurance has been extraordinary, their improvisation remarkable, and their willingness to fight for their independence beyond anything Moscow anticipated.
But courage and ingenuity are not inexhaustible resources, and even the most determined nation cannot indefinitely compensate for every disadvantage imposed upon it.
It will be interesting to see what Zelensky and Ukraine come up with next.
One wishes they did not have to keep finding out.