KYIV—The woods around Ukraine’s capital were still snowy and the skies overcast as our train approached Kyiv–Pasazhyrskyi station in the early morning of February 24. The carriages were filled with former senior Western officials, prominent journalists, and national security experts heading to the Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference, which takes place every February on the anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
In previous years, the forum was the capital’s most high-profile event, with many Ukrainian leaders and elites in attendance. This year it came in a close second to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcoming eleven European leaders and senior officials to the city, as the visitors announced a €920 million aid package for the country’s battered energy system.
What’s more, over thirty leaders of the Coalition of the Willing, including British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, convened virtually to speak with Zelenskyy alongside those leaders physically in Kyiv. They reaffirmed the role the coalition would play to prevent future Russian aggression—including by deploying troops—if US President Donald Trump’s efforts to broker a peace deal prove successful.
It all added up to a more positive atmosphere than one might think given the typical tone of the discussion about this war in Washington.
The beginning of warmer weather
At 28 degrees Fahrenheit, the morning air was crisp but a good bit warmer than the often subzero lows Kyiv suffered in January. The extreme cold had given Russian President Vladimir Putin one more reason to intensify his air assault on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, a major focus of Moscow’s military campaign every winter since the 2022 invasion. In targeting energy infrastructure, Putin’s goal has been to bludgeon Ukraine’s civilian population into submission, something the Russian military has not been able to manage on the battlefield.
In recent weeks, Russian attacks have inflicted significant damage on an already weakened Ukrainian energy system. These attacks follow other major blows to Ukraine’s ability to generate power, including Russia’s seizure of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in March 2022 and its destruction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric dam in June 2023. As a result, Ukraine’s electrical generating capacity has fallen from nearly 34 gigawatts before February 2022 to less than 14 gigawatts today.
Even with a significant amount of energy imports, Ukraine experienced major power outages throughout the country this winter, and many homes were without heat and electricity in subzero weather. But this was of little strategic value to Putin. Many of the Ukrainians I spoke with in Kyiv said that they were furious but not disheartened by the bombings. They had no choice but to continue the war because, however unpleasant, living under Russian bombs is much better than living under Russian occupation. Besides, they added, spring would soon be here.
In the middle of the battlefield
At the YES conference and in meetings across Kyiv over the following three days, I had the opportunity to speak with senior Ukrainian officials in the president’s office and in the foreign affairs, security, energy, and economic ministries and agencies. I also spoke with opposition leaders, journalists, and everyday Ukrainians. I found that the warming temperatures—and the presence of supportive European leaders bearing vital aid—were not the only reasons that many Ukrainians were more upbeat than I had anticipated.
Perhaps the most important factor was the modest good news from several quarters on the battlefield. While commentary in the West over the past year has spoken of small but inevitable Russian gains on the ground, recent developments suggest a less gloomy situation.
To begin with, Ukrainian forces took advantage of billionaire Elon Musk’s decision in early February to switch off Starlink service near the battlefield—thus substantially slowing Russian communications and weakening the accuracy of Russian weapons. In addition, Ukraine recently launched and expanded several small offensives in the Donbas, the south, and the north, retaking some 200–400 square kilometers of territory. These gains have undermined Moscow’s claims—repeated often—that Russian forces have taken control of Pokrovsk in Donbas and Kupiansk near Kharkiv. They also help puncture the narrative, regrettably shared by some officials in Washington, of inevitable Kremlin battlefield advances.
In some areas, Russia is making advances, but they come at an exorbitant cost—an average of nearly 35,000 dead or wounded per month in 2025, according to a report by analysts Seth G. Jones and Riley McCabe. Last spring, there were reports of casualty ratios of one to five or six favoring Ukraine. Recent reporting suggests the ratio has gone up substantially—to the point that Russian recruitment efforts cannot fully replace combat losses, the first time this has happened in the war. Ukraine’s new defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has indicated that Russian casualties could increase to 50,000 or more a month. Russia’s tactic of deploying what are effectively kamikaze waves of troops, in an attempt to conquer more territory as fast as possible, will only increase its losses.
The Ukrainians I spoke with were also heartened by the successful deployment of the long-discussed Ukrainian Flamingo cruise missile in late February. It successfully hit a Russian arms production facility in the city of Votkinsk, more than eight hundred miles from the Ukrainian border. This new weapon will force Russian defense production and the basing of Russian military aircraft further from the battlefield. It will also complicate the movement of Russian military supplies to occupied Ukraine. Growing economic woes in Russia resulting from the sanctions imposed by Trump on Rosneft and Lukoil, as well as the seizure of several Russian “shadow fleet” oil tankers, also complicate Putin’s war effort.
An end to the war?
There was much talk in Kyiv about the state of the negotiations to end the war. Some Ukrainians were concerned by reports that the Trump administration was pushing hard for their country to hand over the heavily fortified territory of the western Donbas that Russian forces have been unable to take—on the dubious assumption that Moscow would be willing to agree to a durable peace once it controls all of the Donbas. Few Ukrainians accept that logic, but some find comfort in the fact that the United States and Ukraine are now discussing turning this area into a “free economic zone” that would require both Ukrainian and Russian forces to withdraw an equal distance from their current positions.
Some Ukrainians I spoke with also echoed Zelenskyy’s public statements that the US security guarantees agreed by the two parties are robust. As a reminder of how far things have come, a year ago Washington was not willing to discuss guarantees. Of course, according to news reports, these details are only being discussed between the United States and Ukraine. There is no indication that Moscow would be willing to accept anything less than full control of western Donbas. Nor does Russia appear willing to accept European troops in Ukraine as a deterrence force.
We left Kyiv late on February 27. Before arriving in Warsaw the next day, we heard the news of US-Israeli strikes on Iran. Some reports suggested that Trump made the decision because he concluded that Iran was not negotiating in good faith, which was hardly a secret. This decision underscores the puzzle in the Trump administration’s efforts to establish a durable peace ending Russian aggression in Ukraine. Most of the diplomatic energy thus far appears directed at reaching agreement between the United States and Ukraine, while the Kremlin has said no to a half-dozen US proposals to stop the shooting. From time to time, there have been rumors of flexibility from the Kremlin, but so far there is no hard evidence. There were similar rumors about Iranian flexibility—until Trump got tired of being played.
Note: The author’s travel to Kyiv was sponsored in part by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, which hosts the Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference.