{"id":254063,"date":"2025-07-10T17:43:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T17:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/254063\/"},"modified":"2025-07-10T17:43:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T17:43:12","slug":"russia-is-digging-in-for-the-long-haul-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/254063\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia is digging in for the long haul in Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stay informed with free updates<\/p>\n

Simply sign up to the War in Ukraine myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\n

The writer is editorial director and a columnist at Le Monde<\/p>\n

Donald Trump may have impressed the Nato secretary-general, Mark Rutte, and his European partners with his abusive father act, but one leader seems immune to his tantrums: Vladimir Putin. \u201cWe get a lot of bullshit thrown at us by Putin,\u201d the US president warned on Tuesday, frustrated by the lack of progress in his effort to achieve a ceasefire in Ukraine. The Russian leader\u2019s response came loud and clear. Within hours, Moscow launched its largest drone attack on Ukraine, sending 728 drones and 13 missiles to strike cities around the country.<\/p>\n

Trump, who boasted before his re-election that he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, now has to contemplate the prospect of a long conflict. Unmoved by his pressure, Putin is determined to achieve his ultimate goal, which is to subjugate Ukraine, whatever the cost. Ukrainians for their part still show remarkable resilience and unflinching determination to resist Russian domination. This full-scale war, now in its fourth year, has become existential for both belligerents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Twice in the past two weeks, in lengthy phone calls with Trump and with President Emmanuel Macron of France, the Russian leader has sent a clear message: any solution will have to address what he calls the \u201croot causes\u201d of the conflict. This would imply, in his view, pushing Nato\u2019s borders back to where they were in 1997 and denying Ukraine any form of sovereignty. So much for a spirit of compromise.<\/p>\n

Despite a staggering number of Russian casualties, which western sources put at 1mn killed and wounded, Putin believes that his battlefield superiority is growing. To him, not winning this war is unthinkable. He has built his country\u2019s economy and his own legitimacy around it. Changing his narrative from \u201ca special military operation to denazify Ukraine\u201d to \u201cfighting Nato\u2019s aggression\u201d makes it an open-ended project, a forever war that has become key to his survival.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Moreover, recruitment of fresh troops is now based on a bounty system that feeds the economic development of poor regions and allows the Kremlin to avoid an unpopular nationwide mobilisation. As Dmitry Muratov, editor of the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, told me: \u201cTo their families, those soldiers are more valuable dead than alive.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

For Ukrainians, defeat would simply mean the end of Ukraine. The way Russian authorities have taken over territories they conquered in the East, methodically erasing any sign of national identity and cultural heritage, shows the depth of Putin\u2019s commitment to the denial of Ukraine\u2019s existence as a nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ukrainians, too, think that they can fight on, despite devastating losses and manpower shortages. Progress by Russian forces, for all their might and their war economy, has been remarkably slow. Ukraine\u2019s former foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, argues that Moscow has gone from occupying 18 per cent of his country\u2019s territory in late 2023 to only 19 per cent today. Kyiv\u2019s forces are still capable of delivering shocking blows to their enemy, as they did last summer with their incursion in the Russian region of Kursk and on June 1 with Operation Spiderweb, an audacious drone attack that inflicted serious damage on Russia\u2019s strategic bomber force.<\/p>\n

Less visible but even more consequential, Ukraine\u2019s defence industry has increased production. It is now an important part of Europe\u2019s military industrial base, which is undergoing profound changes as the continent re-arms. This is where the uncertainty over Trump\u2019s strategy towards Russia and Ukraine, if there is one, plays a key role.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Over the past six months, European leaders have watched helplessly as the US president first courted Putin, aligned himself with the Russian president\u2019s positions and berated Ukraine\u2019s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy \u2014 then changed his tune, going so far this week as to reverse the Pentagon\u2019s decision to halt some arms shipments to Kyiv. Trump now says he is considering sending crucial Patriot air-defence systems to Ukraine.<\/p>\n

But will he? Will he push a new sanctions package that could further weaken Russia\u2019s economy? Confused by the back and forth, many in Europe suspect Trump may lose interest in Ukraine and turn to matters closer to his heart, as he did with North Korea in his first term. It will then be Europeans\u2019 duty to help Ukraine repel the Russian aggressor by themselves. Defeat cannot be an option for them, either. \u201cDo not imagine that if Ukraine is defeated, life beyond Hungary\u2019s border will be peaceful,\u201d warns a Finnish diplomat. \u201cUkrainians will then fight a guerrilla war, which Russia will repress using intolerable methods.\u201d <\/p>\n

One way or another, this will be a long war \u2014 however it ends.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the War in Ukraine myFT Digest — delivered directly…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":254064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-254063","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114830182531615669","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}