Key Points – The United States, under President Donald Trump, is perceptibly stepping back from its previous level of unconditional support for Ukraine, driven by a realist assessment that Kyiv’s maximalist war aims (like restoring 1991 borders) are unachievable against Russia’s grinding war of attrition.
-With Ukraine facing manpower shortages and Russia making steady, if slow, gains while consolidating control over occupied territories, Trump’s administration is now reportedly prioritizing a negotiated settlement to prevent a worse Ukrainian collapse.
-This shift, marked by conditional aid and a push for diplomacy, signals an end to the era of all-in Western backing for total Ukrainian victory.
The Ukraine War Reality Hits Home for America
It’s done – quietly, but unmistakably. The United States is stepping back from Ukraine. Not all at once, not with a flourish, but with the steady discipline of a president who believes the war no longer serves American interests. And the consequences of that decision are beginning to shape the strategic landscape of Europe.
In March, Trump paused military aid. The move was derided in predictable quarters – reckless, transactional, short-sighted. But the logic behind it was anything but impulsive. It was a signal to Kyiv, and to Europe, that the old framework is finished. The aid eventually resumed, but not on old terms. It’s conditional now. Tied to outcomes. Tethered to diplomacy. And everyone who matters knows it.
Ukraine knows it. Zelensky knows it. Europe knows it.
So the question now is not whether America is committed. It isn’t. The question is how Ukraine adapts, and whether Europe can step up before the whole edifice collapses.
The war is no longer about retaking Crimea or restoring 1991 borders. Those maximalist fantasies died months ago – killed off by battlefield attrition, domestic exhaustion, and the brutal arithmetic of Russian manpower. What’s left is the fight to hold what remains. And even that is beginning to look tenuous. Ukraine is out of manpower reserves. Mobilization is politically radioactive. Ammunition is scarce. Western weapons are trickling in, not flooding in. And the front is moving – not dramatically, but consequentially – in Russia’s direction.
Russia isn’t trying to conquer all of Ukraine. It doesn’t need to. It’s consolidating what it already controls, reinforcing the land corridor to Crimea, slowly pressing into the Donbas, and grinding down Ukraine’s ability to resist. This isn’t shock and awe – it’s siege warfare. It’s attrition with a stopwatch. Russia can outlast the West’s attention span. And it knows it.
Trump knows it, too. That’s why he’s forcing a recalibration. Not to hand Russia a win, but to prevent a worse outcome. The longer the war drags on, the closer Ukraine edges toward collapse—not just militarily, but economically and politically. That’s the true danger: not a negotiated settlement, but a battlefield rout.
The Biden administration refused to acknowledge this. It built policy on hope and slogans. Trump, for all his flaws, doesn’t govern on illusions. He’s not interested in waging ideological crusades for crumbling borderlands. He wants deals. Results. Stability.
And if that means nudging Ukraine toward negotiations, so be it.
Of course, Europe is promising to step in. Germany just approved a multibillion-euro aid package. The EU has unveiled an industrial-scale rearmament plan. France is talking about strategic autonomy again. But the gap between rhetoric and capability is still enormous. Europe talks like a great power but spends like a disarmed NGO. It will take years to rebuild the capacity the U.S. is now dialing down. And Ukraine doesn’t have years.
The Istanbul talks – nominally about prisoner exchanges, unofficially about ceasefire frameworks – produced nothing concrete. Russia’s demands haven’t changed: neutrality, territorial concessions, limits on Ukraine’s future force posture. Ukraine can’t accept those terms now, but the longer this goes on, the fewer cards it will hold.
That’s what Trump is betting on. Not that Russia is right. Not that Ukraine is unworthy. But that war is governed by laws deeper than idealism – laws of force, time, and will. The U.S. has done what it could. It armed, it trained, it funded. But it cannot manufacture manpower. It cannot invent victory. And it cannot make Ukraine more than what it is: a proud but finite state fighting a much larger one, alone.
This isn’t isolationism. It’s strategic restraint. It’s the view that America’s power is not infinite, and that it should be spent where it yields the greatest return. In Ukraine, that return has diminished. The goal now is not to win, but to end – to end the bleeding, the stalemate, the delusion.
Critics will call it betrayal. They’ll invoke Munich. But this isn’t 1938. Russia isn’t Hitler, and Ukraine isn’t Czechoslovakia. This is a border war in a fragmenting world. And Trump’s instinct – to exit before escalation becomes entrapment – is not cowardice. It’s prudence.
What Happens Next?
Ukraine may still fight on. It may still believe in total victory. But the strategic ground beneath it has shifted. Washington is no longer all-in. Europe is not ready. And Russia is not quitting. The illusion of unity and momentum has cracked. What comes next is a long, painful adjustment to that fact.
The West dreamed of triumph. What it will get is settlement. Not because it wants to, but because reality allows for nothing else. And in that settlement – ugly, bitter, imperfect – there may lie the only path to a peace that lasts longer than the next shipment of artillery shells.
This is how wars end now. Not with victory parades. With fatigue. With limits. With someone saying no.
Trump has said it. And the world is adjusting, whether it’s ready or not.
About the Author: Dr. Andrew Latham
Andrew Latham is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. You can follow him on X: @aakatham.
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Richard A Fisher
June 5, 2025 at 9:44 am
I do believe that your assessment of Putin is wrong. He does want all of Ukraine and then move on to the rest of eastern Europe. His goal is to reestablish the territories of the former USSR.
Michael Collesano
June 5, 2025 at 12:12 pm
Russia will get exactly what it demanded 3 years ago. No nukes. No NATO. Keep Danbas. Destroy Kievs military. Everything else is propaganda, uninformed blather, and useless 20th Century ideology.
Taco
June 5, 2025 at 12:30 pm
Right decision or right path by america.
Tearing full-bore & headlong into the stuped stupid donbass war against a nuclear power, albeit a fading one, would surely open the way to ww3.
Who, who, exactly who were responsible for the stupid donbass war.
They were US dogbarker-in-chief joe biden, his equally barks-barky sidekick jens stoltenberg, various euro officials and euro mass media.
Then came maverick trump and his well known publicly televised dressdown of little 2-bitty bit ukro hitler zelenskyy on 28 feb 2025 changed the course of history.
The recent drone attack was a well-planned op like the 2022 nordstream gas-pipeline op.
Those reflected just how low euro members of NATO would stoop to force open the road to ww3. But they have failed to reckon with the path taken by trump. Failed.
Swamplaw Yankee
June 6, 2025 at 7:06 pm
The inner beltway reader has a prime display of Yelloooo bellllliiie syndrome in this article. This cherished tradition was most evident in 1939-40-41-42 when the USA Yellloooo belllliiiiie army was demanding that Newfoundlanders and Canucks fight with life and limb while we Yankee cowards relaxed Mariache dancing down south way with the very brave Mexican nationals. What does Hitler, what do British Empire forces have to do with good ole times in the USA in 1939?
Right from the first sentence, strategy commander ole Yellleer belts out in public the “traitorous” urgent need to surrender the WEST to the cold war prime enemy: Putin. Forget any few facts, that may filter into the dark depths of the inner beltway aquarium. Surrender to the commies as fast as possible, Buddy!
The peer reviewer has to be ecstatic that out and out traitors have a first amendment right to exercise in public their sell out the USA ambitions. The peer reviewer rarely has a chance in those “academic” pretend sites to even refer to the fact of the existence of surrender artists + yelllllooooou bellllliiiiiie cowards.
The author demands that the WEST give up the return of the geopolitical advantage of owning the Ukrainian Crimea land mass and the Black/Azov sea zones. The author demands that the WEST forget that the Obama-Biden- Democrat cabal in 2013-14 unilaterally greenlighted the free, no-cost, gifting of this advantage of the WEST to the prime, vile cold war enemy of the WEST: Putin.
There is zero evidence that the old scam of covert unilateral USA action was not unilateral. The Obama-Biden-Democrat cabal demanded a covert unilateral free, no-cost, giveaway betrayal of the WEST by greenlighting the enemy: Putin. That is, consciously, betraying the WEST. Otherwise, the Democrat cabal of 2025 would be waving the Obama coordination, consultation flag all over the international MSM.
The worst part of this international crime to the WEST, is that in 2025 the MAGA rank and file are unable to find any MAGA elite that have the adroitness or intellectual capacity to string up and hang in the USA MSM the O-B-D cabal for its betrayal of the WEST. Can you believe this MAGA moronic gift to the Benedict Arnold Brigade of the O-B-D cabal?
So in 2014-15, the Obama-Biden-Democrat cabal stonewalls, refuses to alter or withdraw it’s covert traitorous greenlighting of a criminal geopolitical crime, allowing the Imperial Empire of Russia to walk unimpeded into the Ukraine. In 2025, apologists inside the USA whine that the billions that Putin spent in 2014 invading the Ukraine is just so ok as the USA spent zero dollars opposing the orc muscovite elite invaders.
This benidict arnold in the first sentence tells the readers nothing to see here, bud, walk briskly away from any possible questions of what the USA did in Ukraine in 2013-14. The fella refuses to bring up much, including the POTUS actions in 1964 + 1974 in the same geopolitical sphere, Cyprus. Still unsolved and favouring an enemy of the WEST.
That is the first sentence, demanding the USA keep betraying the WEST with all its moronic might.
The USA has much hoopla about its armed forces. Words like strategy abound. Guys like Clausewitz are really underlined a lot. The reader knows that this fella actually had the Ukraine as a test field. The orc muscovite elite, used Ukraine as a slave colony, using kidnapped Ukrainian girls and boys as slave objects and selling them later for Ottoman gold to Muslim sex traders in Caffa in the Crimea.
This fella, Clausewitz referred to something the USA seems to lack, be quite out of stock on: “Coup d’oeil”. What Yankee do we see in 2025 that has quickness of perception, boldness, perseverance in the armed forces? Or, even in the Congress?
Luckily, the peer reviewer can smell and spot the septic tank writers that promote the enemies of the WEST. This writ of surrender of Ukrainian families to the thousand year old butchers of Ukrainians, peasant russia, might need a comparator. Peasant orc russia starved twenty million Ukrainians in 32-33 in their thousand year old war on Ukrainians. What did the USA really do to stop Putin’s grand pappy from robbing starving Ukrainians of the food in their kitchens and farms? The USA MSM was full of this russian genocide of Ukrainians. Listen to Yankee op-ed septic tankers that praised Bolshevik cadre that supported Stalin? -30-