Key Points and Summary – Despite the US pausing some critical arms shipments, Ukraine still has a path to victory, albeit one that increasingly relies on European support and its ingenuity.
-While the war has devolved into a bloody stalemate, supporters argue that Russia can be defeated, just as it was in Afghanistan.
-Europe is stepping up, with nations like Denmark sending its entire F-16 fleet and others providing billions in aid.
-Kyiv Can Still Win: Ukraine’s own capabilities have also improved dramatically, particularly its ability to conduct long-range drone strikes deep inside Russia, demonstrating a resilience and tactical prowess that could still turn the tide of the war.
U.S. Support Pulled for Ukraine: Kyiv Now Destined to Lose the War?
This past Tuesday, the Trump Administration announced that it was halting the delivery of multiple weapons to Ukraine.
Among the weapons affected by the shipment halt are 155mm artillery shells, AIM-7 Sparrow air-to-air missiles, the Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS), and Patriot and Stinger air defense missiles.
This highly controversial decision couldn’t have come at a worse time for Kyiv’s war effort against Russia, as it came right on the heels of what was reportedly Russia’s biggest aerial attack since the start of the war.
During the final weekend of June, Vladimir Putin’s forces launched a total of 537 aerial weapons at Ukraine, including 477 UAVs and decoys and 60 missiles.
Whatever the rationale behind the White House’s decision, and whether one agrees with it, it begs the question: Can Kyiv still win its seemingly never-ending war against Russia at this late stage in the deadly game?
Early Optimism Eventually Petered Out for Ukraine
In the first sixteen or so months of the war, there was much cause for optimism that Ukraine could defeat Russia.
Flush with arrogance and overconfidence, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his “special military operation” against Ukraine in February 2022 under the assumption that the latter country would fold in a few days.
Instead, Ukraine’s military forces gained the admiration of freedom-loving nations around the world by their stiff and heroic resistance, “punching above their weight”.
This heroic fight was manifested in multiple instances, from the immortalized stand of the defenders of Snake Island to Bayraktar drones destroying Russian tanks by the bushel basket to the sinking of the Russian Navy flagship Moskva.
Russian battlefield casualties and materiel losses grew and grew, and concurrently, so did Putin’s humiliation on the world stage.
However, that initial optimism faded after Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which began in the summer of 2024, ended up stalling, and since then, the war has devolved into a bloody stalemate with no end in sight.
In spite of the grim situation, Ukraine’s supporters in the US and elsewhere are still holding out hope for a Ukrainian victory.
For example, during a 9 April 2025 conference (cosponsored by The Remembrance Society [TRS] and the American Coalition for Ukraine) at the Capitol Visitor Center in Washington, DC titled “Vladimir Putin – World’s Number One Terrorist: Implications for U.S. Policy,” James S. “Jim” Gilmore III , former U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), stated that “Russia was defeated in Afghanistan, they can be defeated again.”
The question is, “How?”
Can Europe Do More to Help for Ukraine?
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen certainly thinks so. At a press conference last week, she called for the European Union (EU) to increase its military support for Ukraine to compensate for the White House’s decision to halt arms sales to the country. A trend of increasing EU assistance was already underway in 2025.
EU member states have already provided approximately €50 billion ($58.88 billion USD) in military aid to Ukraine. A prime example is Denmark, which is seizing the initiative via its shipments of artillery shells and its entire fleet of F-16 fighter jets to the embattled Ukrainians.
A 17 June 2025 article on the Ukrinform (the National News Agency of Ukraine) website titled “Europe largely fills decline in US aid to Ukraine” provides some additional statistical insights on European nations that have risen to the occasion:
–Britain has allocated €EUR 4.5 billion so far this year
–France has pitched in €2.2 billion
–Sweden allocated €1.6 billion in March and Norway allocating €670 million in April—record monthly figures for both Nordic nations
One Ukraine Advocate’s Cautiously Optimistic Message
That person in question is former German soldier (and former volunteer fighter with the Croatan Defence Council) Roland Bartetzko, who ventured into Ukraine in 2022 to provide logistical support for the war effort.
Since then, he has been providing regular insider reports on Ukraine’s ongoing fight via his Quora account. Accordingly, on 20 June 2025, he posted a good news/bad news assessment in response to one poster’s question about the current strength of the Ukrainian Army compared with the start of the war.
Mr. Bartetzko gave a quite candid assessment in his bad news section, but then went on to provide multiple bullets of good news. Among them:
-Russia is facing many of those same problems
-Quality of training of the Armed Forces has improved immensely.
-Ukraine’s SBU (State Security Service) and the GUR (military intelligence) are capable of striking deep into Russian territory.
-“Ukraine has drones—hundreds of thousands of them. These small but deadly gadgets have compensated for many of the military’s shortcomings.”
Though Bartetzko didn’t go into further detail on the drone factor, it was most dramatically exemplified by Ukraine’s 1 June 2025 drone strike that destroyed several of Russia’s Tupolev Tu-95 “Bear” and Tu-22M “Backfire” strategic bombers.
Mr. Bartetzko concluded by saying “This war is far from over. If we stay focused and continue our support, Ukraine will prevail.” To put that another way, as the one saying goes, “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the dog.”
About the Author: Christian D. Orr, Defense Expert
Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor. He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU).
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Jim
July 7, 2025 at 11:06 am
This article is a repeat of the greatest tropes put out by Ukraine war supporters over the course of the war.
Sorry, it’s not a “stalemate.”
Russia advances… in mostly small unit advances (due to drones which make massing troops dangerous for both sides), but adding all the advances together constitutes, as the Pentagon puts it, a ‘lava flow’ style of advance… slow, but unstoppable.
The author like almost all other war supporters is willfully blind when it comes to the high casualties Kiev’s soldiers are suffering.
Willing to Keep Kiev’s forces fighting to the last Ukrainian… as long as they’re willing to die at the front.
Americans are wise to the 5th Generation Warfare propaganda which relies on lies… lies… and more lies.
But you know what? You can prop up support on the home front for a while, but you can’t lie your way to victory on the battlefield.
But you can lie your country to defeat on the battlefield… or your proxy, as in this case.
…. to the last bunker… resulting in a broken country… or no country left at all after all is said & done.
Swamplaw Yankee
July 7, 2025 at 12:01 pm
ahhh.. Komrade dzhimmm, Putin’s dopplerganger leach is sucking more pica space. Depend on Komrade Dzhimmm to confuse the facts, the average Doodle Dandy reader. The hatered for Ukraine; surges out of dzhimmmmm! -30-
Jim
July 7, 2025 at 12:38 pm
No, just an American who is against the war like millions of other Americans who have had enough of the lies… and throwing good money after bad.
However, I’ll acknowledge despising the Stepan Bandera hyper-chauvinists who kill & murder to get what they want and if they can’t control a physical asset they want to destroy it — mafia style.
We see what they did in Ukraine: engage in a bloody, violent overthrow of a democratically elected president and afterwards instituted a police-state (not all at once, but over time… so as the “frog” (People) wouldn’t jump out of boiling water (revolt)… but rather sit there until the water is slowly raised to a boil and the methods & tactics of the police-state are fully implemented, “the noose is tightened,” before the average Ukrainian could do anything about it).
In that sense Nazi Germany and the Kiev Banderites are the same… brutal & ruthless… and care little for democracy is it goes against their agenda or being in power.
Kiev’s regime is a cancer on Europe which needs to be excised & eliminated for the peace & prosperity of Europe.
That time looks to be on the horizon.
(Why do I feel this way? Because my dad piloted B-24’s over Nazi Germany to rid the European Continent of Nazi ideology & brutality, as millions of Americans sacrificed to defeat Nazi Germany and they didn’t do it just to have our government turn around in the 21st Century and support a regime with similar ideology… what a betrayal to all those Americans who fought & died in the 1940’s to eliminate Nazism, to then turn around and embrace a similar ideology today… pathetic.)