What if Ukraine decides to fight on without America?
March 13, 2025
Oleh Kiper, the governor of Ukraine’s Odesa region, is bone-tired — and with good reason. Three years after Russia’s full-scale invasion, the Black Sea port, traditionally the beating heart of the Ukrainian economy, is miraculously functioning, with ships slipping in and out. But it is a shadow of its former bustling self and the city is still facing relentless night-time attacks by Russian missiles and drones.
“They hit our energy sector all the time,” says Kiper. “A lot of power stations have been damaged. We need better air defences but we don’t have enough. And the enemy are continuously upgrading their drones.”
The residents of Odesa, he adds, are “exhausted”.
Kiper’s litany of woes and his very visible fatigue reflect Ukraine’s ordeal as it tries to hold off its far more powerful invader into a fourth year.
A possible respite is in sight after Ukraine on Tuesday agreed to a US proposal for an immediate 30-day ceasefire — as long as Russia reciprocates.
In return, Washington agreed to resume deliveries of military aid and intelligence-sharing with Ukraine, having suspended them last week to pressure Kyiv into reaching a peace deal with Moscow. If Russia agrees to a truce, it could pave the way for more substantive settlement talks.
But there is no sign that Russia is willing to compromise on its maximalist goals of subjugating Ukraine.
Many Ukrainians would balk at any deal that looks like capitulation and are prepared to fight on, even without US support. Many suspect that even if they reach a settlement, Russia will not honour it and war will resume.
“If America leaves us, we don’t have any choice but to keep going,” the governor says. “People like to ask me about ‘Odesa after the war’, but we need to focus not on the future but the present. To finish the war, we have to keep fighting. If we stop now, sooner or later the war will come to Europe.”
Kiper’s stoicism is echoed across Ukraine, although opinion polls make clear Ukrainians would welcome an end to the war. A growing number, up to a third, would accept some form of a compromise — but not if the settlement left them exposed to future Russian attacks.
“Like Churchill said in that movie Darkest Hour,” says Oleksandr Merezhko, the head of the parliamentary committee on foreign policy. “‘You cannot negotiate with a tiger when you have your head in its mouth.’”
So can Ukraine really hold out without American support? Ukrainian and western strategists concede it would be far harder to prosecute the war if President Donald Trump ends once and for all American military aid. In particular, the loss of American intelligence and surveillance, Patriot air-defence batteries and the Starlink satellite system, which is used to synchronise battlefield communications, would be huge setbacks.
“If America abandons us, it will be extremely hard,” says Pavlo, a combat medic, whose nom de guerre is Chewbacca. “Without Starlink it would be a very difficult situation. If they took it back it would be a betrayal of democracy and liberty.”
If Ukraine is to cling on it faces huge challenges, in particular of mobilisation and military materiel. And all the while, after three years in the shadows, domestic politics are starting to reassert themselves and pose mounting pressure on President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
When asked how long Kyiv could hold out without Washington, Ukrainian soldiers, analysts and officials tend to reply “at least six months”. But they argue it could be longer if Europe moves decisively to fill the gap, and domestic arms production intensifies. They also point to the immense price in money and lives that Russia has paid to win territory.
“We will not stop fighting,” says Merezhko, whose defiance captures the current mood despite the start of peace talks. “The situation on the frontline is not all doom and gloom. The Russians cannot take over big cities; they do not have the manpower, and they too are exhausted. The worst-case scenario is that they will be able to take a little more territory. Somehow we will survive.”
Ukraine’s most pressing problem is not lack of weapons or ammunition but a shortage of men, say western officials.
The government’s initial approach was not to send young men to the front, arguing it wanted to preserve them to rebuild society after the war. Conscription was for men from the ages of 27 to 60; so Ukraine had something of a middle-aged army.
But in desperation the recruiters’ gaze is now widening. Last April, the age of conscription was lowered to 25. Amid reports of frontline units operating at only a half or even a third strength, the authorities are now offering special enhanced financial terms for men aged 18-24 to serve on the front. “It’s very hard to meet the recruitment targets,” says a senior western military official. “The target is about 30,000 a month but no one wants to be the last person recruited — or killed.”
Rob Lee, senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, believes the course of 2025 will largely be determined by whether Ukraine can sustain its recruitment numbers while stabilising the rate of desertion and people going “absent without leave”.
Yulia Klymenko, a leading opposition MP, says the government has badly mishandled the issue. Like an overwhelming majority of Ukrainians, she opposes lowering the age of recruitment, arguing it will accelerate an exodus of young men abroad and, ultimately, create a demographic crisis. “The tragedy is that mothers are sending 16-year-olds out of the country so they don’t have to serve,” Klymenko says.
Rather, she says, the government needs to oversee a more efficient conscription of older men and tighten up on the exemptions that have been granted for those working in occupations deemed vital for the economy, which are thought to have been widely abused. “Where are the 6mn people who should have been called up and haven’t been?” she asks, referring to a generally accepted ballpark figure for the number of men who are eligible to be drafted but have not been.
Klymenko highlights the erratic levels of training provided by different army units, which she sees as a legacy of the inefficient conscription system of the Soviet Union as one of the obstacles deterring sign-ups.
“People fear they will be sent out without training and without weapons. They don’t want to be meat.”
The uncertainty about the future of US military support will not help persuade young Ukrainian men to fight. America’s suspension last week of military deliveries and intelligence laid bare to Ukraine how tough it would be to lose it permanently. Without its US ally, Kyiv will have to confront two key factors: how quickly it can expand its own defence industry and, crucially, whether Europe can fill the gap left by the Americans.
Mustafa Nayyem, a prominent government adviser, argues that the shift over the past three years from a conventional ground war to a high-tech war favours Ukraine’s chances of staying in the fight. The battlefield is now a “kill zone of 10-15km depth controlled by drones and robots”, he says. Ukraine’s pressing need, he continues, is not for more of the weaponry that dominated in the first year of war, such as tanks. What it needs is finance to invest in its expanding drone industry.
“If you ask a frontline commander: ‘Do you want Himars [precision-guided missile launchers] or 10,000 drones a month?’ they will say 10,000 drones a month,” Nayyem says. “Those on the frontline are already starting to think of how to fill the gap. Many on the frontline invent and make their own weaponry.”
The latest battlefield reports from Kherson, the frontline city liberated in late 2022 after months of Russian occupation, reinforce his depiction of a high-tech war. Oleksandr Prokudin, head of the Kherson regional military administration, says the number of drone attacks on the city is intensifying, most recently to about 1,700 a week.
The Russians, he adds, are now using a new type of drone operated via fibre optic cables rather than radio signals, which are harder to detect and jam. Ukrainian forces are trying to respond by using nets to tangle the cables. It is like a scene out of Star Wars, Prokudin says.
Ukraine drone production has soared and is due to reach 2.5mn to 3mn units this year. Oleksandr Yakovenko, the chief executive of TAF Drones, is one of the leading manufacturers in the nascent drone industry. Last year his company manufactured 400,000 drones. This “will be the year of the land drones” or robots with wheels, which are used to evacuate the wounded or deliver supplies, he predicts.
But he also warns that the Russians are adapting quickly to this new form of warfare. “Two years ago we were a few steps ahead of them. Now we are just one step ahead of them,” he says. “If we do something, then they create a counter system. We are still the first to innovate but they also have good products.”
Buoyed by the innovations of the domestic drone industry, Nayyem is cautiously bullish that Ukraine can keep fighting without America “and even win” but, he adds, “as long as Europe supports it”.
The EU, its 27 member states, the UK and Norway have given some €62bn in military aid to Kyiv since February 2022, about the same as the US. There have been further sizeable pledges for 2025 in the past few weeks, including an additional €4.3bn from Norway and €1bn from Spain. But Europe’s small stockpiles of weapons and ammunition were quickly depleted after Russia’s full-scale invasion and European governments have been slow to ramp up production.
“Allies are not spending fast enough to bend the curve on industrial capacity,” says a senior western official.
European munition manufacturers have expanded production lines for artillery ammunition with the help of EU subsidies and should be able to produce 2mn shells this year. Ukrainian-made missiles and drones can to some extent substitute missiles like the Himars, which Europe does not make. Several European countries are looking to follow Denmark in funding Ukraine’s domestic weapons manufacturers, which have capacity to expand but lack cash.
But on air defence, the situation is more worrying. Europe is not in a position to replace or restock the more powerful US-made Patriot systems, which can shoot down ballistic missiles. France has not substantially expanded assembly lines for its equivalent system, the SAMP/T, due to a lack of orders. And although they do have some reconnaissance planes and satellites of their own, European militaries remain dependent on US advanced intelligence-gathering and targeting capabilities.
A planned rapid rearmament by Germany and other countries and a new €150bn EU loan facility could help equip Ukraine in the medium term. European leaders have every incentive to arm the country to the teeth to strengthen its position in peace negotiations but also to help deter future Russian aggression.
However, some EU leaders are worried that Trump could punish them if he feels that their increased military support for Kyiv is impeding his peace deal.
“It is quite possible that the Americans at some point will actively object to what we are doing,” says a senior European diplomat.
The Trump administration is also likely to turn on Zelenskyy if he stands in the way of a deal he deems unacceptable. The US president has already questioned the Ukrainian leader’s legitimacy, describing him as a “dictator”, a narrative pushed by the Kremlin, and urging new elections. Some Trump allies called for Zelenskyy to resign after his Oval Office bust-up with the president. Ukrainian officials see this as a destabilisation campaign inspired by Moscow that will sow division across Ukrainian society at a particularly difficult moment.
But Ukrainians have rallied around their president since his clash with Trump, and his ratings, which have steadily waned throughout the war, have risen. “I didn’t vote for him,” says Pavlo, the combat medic. “But I’ll support him as long as the war continues. We can laugh at him. But it’s not OK for outsiders to.”
Still, there is incipient speculation in Kyiv’s political circles over how long Zelenskyy will stay in office. “We are in the final act [of Zelenskyy’s presidency],” says a senior Ukrainian official. “And the hot phase of the war.”
Political opponents who threw their support behind Zelenskyy publicly after the Oval Office fiasco are in reality preparing for elections, forming alliances and testing public messaging. Some opposition politicians have started outreach to the Trump administration and the US president’s Maga allies in Washington, including attending a prayer breakfast in the US.
The military governor of Kyiv, Tymur Tkachenko, a Zelenskyy appointee, says everyone in Ukraine wants elections but only after the war. “Fight. Win. Elections,” he adds.
Klymenko, the opposition MP, while critical of the government’s record in tackling corruption in parts of the public sector, says it would be impossible to hold an election until the end of the war. She highlights the logistical complexity of organising a vote when up to 7mn Ukrainians have left the country and nearly a million are in uniform.
But, behind the scenes, politics is intensifying and becoming more virulent. When Zelenskyy last month put sanctions on his predecessor and opposition leader, Petro Poroshenko, it was widely seen as politically motivated by some opposition parties.
Volodymyr Ariel, a close ally of Poroshenko, says that far from becoming a new Winston Churchill, Zelenskyy had failed to unite the nation. “Simply put, Zelenskyy has not become a true leader,” he says. “He is unable to adapt to the challenges Ukraine faces today. He remains selfish, narcissistic and arrogant in his dealing both within Ukraine and with international partners.”
The Trump administration has made no secret of its desire to work with a new Ukrainian leader. Opinion polls suggest that Valery Zaluzhny, the former army commander, now Ukraine’s ambassador in London, would win against Zelenskyy in a landslide. But he might not be the more amenable president that Washington is seeking.
In a speech to Chatham House last week, Zaluzhny accused the Trump administration of calling into question the unity of the west. “We see that it is not just the axis of evil and Russia trying to revise the world order, but the US is finally destroying this order.”
Many Ukrainians are desperate for an end to the war, yet there is little confidence that the preliminary talks between US and Ukrainian officials will lead to a durable peace. For now, the expectation is that the war has to continue.
“Yes, with each day in each year it gets harder to wage war,” says the MP Merezhko. “We are tired. But I immediately tell myself that if I surrender it’s not going to improve my situation. And this is true about Ukraine. If we surrender it will not improve our situation. It will make it much worse.”
Cartography by Steven Bernard
