KYIV—Stopping Russia’s war on Ukraine has been the Trump administration’s highest priority foreign-policy challenge for over a year. Shortly after his inauguration, President Donald Trump began this effort in a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since then, US officials have held a series of meetings with their Ukrainian and Russian counterparts. Yes, there have been targets of opportunity that focused US attention and resources for short periods of time, such as Venezuela and now Iran. But over the past year, the administration’s top officials have almost certainly devoted more hours to Ukraine than to any other foreign-policy issue. Trump and Putin spoke again by phone on Monday, with aides saying both Iran and Ukraine were topics of discussion. When the current Iran operation is finished, the administration should return to devoting its primary attention to ending the largest land war in Europe since World War II and finish the job.
When the US and Israeli attacks on Iran began on February 28, I was on a train leaving Kyiv as part of an Atlantic Council delegation. It was for me the latest of more than a dozen visits to Ukraine since February 2022. After a week of conversations with Ukrainian friends, soldiers, officials, and former officials in Odesa and Kyiv, I left impressed with their guarded optimism and unguarded determination to prevail in this war.
At the same time, it was clear immediately after the US strikes began that the Iranian operation would absorb resources and top-level attention for the duration of the operation. But when it ends, there will be a great opportunity for US President Donald Trump to help end the fighting in Ukraine.
Freedom’s name
After enduring the coldest winter in memory and the most intense Russian attacks of the entire war, Ukrainians had welcomed the end of winter and a perceptible shift in momentum on the battlefield. According to Ukrainian generals I spoke with, successful counterattacks on the southern end of the thousand-kilometer conflict zone had regained hundreds of square kilometers of territory, in part because Elon Musk had denied Starlink communications to Russian military forces. A homegrown, long-range Ukrainian cruise missile had severely damaged a Russian military production center in Votkinsk, a thousand kilometers deep into Russia, causing panic among Russians. Unmanned interceptors have blunted Russian attack drones and are now being deployed in the Middle East to defend against Iranian attacks—attacks that are being aided by Russian intelligence, which is helping Iran target US military facilities.
Some Ukrainians I spoke with held out hope that the ongoing negotiations among Ukraine, Russia, and the United States could lead to a cease-fire. Most, however, were skeptical that the Russians were serious.
Ukrainian soldiers expressed grim determination to hold off and even push back Russian attacks. They appreciated the US and European support that had sustained them for the past four years. One captain described a moment of panic when, alone in a trench on the contact line, he was unable to contact his supporting command and felt momentarily abandoned. In that moment, he questioned whether all their sacrifices had been worth it. It was an intensely personal account, but he was also making a larger point that US support—military, financial, political, and moral—was supremely important to Ukrainians’ ability to continue defending their country. Left unsaid was the understanding that US support enables Ukrainians to defend the rest of Europe and vital US national interests against an aggressive Russia.
While the Trump administration might pay less attention to a principled rationale for supporting Ukraine—they have other strong reasons—one young woman nonetheless put it clearly and forcefully; she said, “Freedom’s name is Ukraine.”
Trump’s opportunity
The US president is uniquely capable of ending the war in Ukraine, the most difficult conflict he has addressed. And while progress over the past year has at times been slow, Putin knows that Trump has the leverage to force him to stop the killing. Putin fears long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles coming into Ukrainian hands. Trump seriously considered sending these weapons to the Ukrainians last fall and could still do so—or, even better, he could allow the Ukrainians to manufacture these weapons themselves.
There are other steps Trump could take, too. Despite a temporary reprieve for Russia’s oil revenues due to the oil price spike caused by the Iran war, Putin is terrified by the prospect of resumed pressure on the oil exports that fund his war on Ukraine. The Trump administration has already levied tariffs against India for buying Russian oil, sanctioned the two largest Russian oil companies, and seized Russian-flagged oil tankers used to evade sanctions on Russian oil exports (as have the French, Belgians, and British). Trump could use this military and financial leverage to force Putin to stop the war.
Europe’s moment
With or without Russian agreement on a cease-fire, the Ukrainians will need the ability to deter and defeat, if necessary, another Russian invasion. After all, Putin has blatantly disregarded previous promises not to invade Ukraine. The first line of defense will be the Ukrainian army—which is trained, equipped, supported, and funded with Western help. The French and British, the two nuclear-armed European powers, are leading the planning for a military force to be deployed on Ukrainian territory, which has the support of more than thirty other nations. Moreover, Trump has agreed to back up this European-led reassurance force with air power based in Eastern European NATO nations. The current thinking is that this “coalition of the willing” would deploy in western Ukraine after a cease-fire. But since the Russians refuse to negotiate seriously and a formal cease-fire might not be possible, the coalition should deploy this force now.
Because they understand the threat from an imperialistic Russian autocrat more immediately than the United States, the Europeans have augmented their military planning with impressive financial support to Ukraine. Stymied so far by a couple of European Union (EU) member states in the effort to use hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian frozen assets to support Ukraine, a majority of EU nations plan to borrow ninety billion euros to keep Ukraine solvent and able to purchase weapons, including from US defense manufacturers, for another two years. That $200-plus billion in blocked Russian assets also remain available if the bloc were to agree to use it.
The Europeans are also offering Ukraine another security guarantee—membership in the EU on an accelerated basis, perhaps as early as next year.