By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

Having a strategy—a theory of victory—is essential to winning a war. In 2022, Russia’s initial plan to capture Kyiv and decapitate Ukraine’s leadership failed, and its current approach of grinding down Ukraine’s resistance through attritional war is just as unlikely to succeed. Ukraine, meanwhile, adeptly deployed defensive tactics to expel Russian troops from the Kyiv and Kharkiv regions, as well as much of Kherson, in 2022. But Ukraine’s 2023 offensive lacked the troops, resources, and tactics necessary to score a decisive battlefield victory against Russia, and although this summer’s Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region has thrown Moscow’s forces into disarray, it will not lead Kyiv to victory.

Tactics are not strategy, and defensive warfare is, at best, a punishingly slow path to winning. To end the war soon and on terms favorable to Kyiv, Ukraine will need to go on the offensive once again in 2025. After the failure of the 2023 offensive, Ukraine will need to convince reluctant Western backers to increase their material support by showing them a realistic military strategy—one that includes clear objectives, actions in support of those objectives, and an understanding of the resources required. To foreclose the prospect of an eventual Russian victory through attrition, Ukraine’s strategy should aim to maintain defenses, inflict steady battlefield losses, and expand territorial control in at least one direction. If executed successfully, such a campaign could compel Moscow to negotiate by the end of summer 2025.

For any of this to be possible, Ukraine needs support from the West. And the West’s ability and willingness to help will depend on the results of the U.S. presidential election in November. If Vice President Kamala Harris were to win, her administration would at minimum maintain the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine, given the United States’ critical national security interest in seeing Russia defeated and deterred from further aggression toward Europe. In this scenario, Washington and an increasingly potent NATO would back a new Ukrainian offensive in 2025. Over the past two and a half years, the United States has made significant investments in the defense sector. Europe has stepped up, too: 23 of 32 NATO member states have committed two percent of their GDP to defense spending, and the continent has expanded its weapons production. Assessing the state of the war three years in, a new Harris administration could determine that more fulsome support for the Ukrainian military effort is necessary to exert pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin and bring the conflict to an end. To secure that support, Kyiv will need to bank small-scale but meaningful victories with the resources it has now, providing a proof of concept for a strategy for 2025.

Firing toward Russian forces at the frontline near Pokrovsk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, September 2024

An alternative outcome in the 2024 U.S. election would be extremely dangerous for Ukraine. Former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Senator J. D. Vance, would helm an isolationist administration that would cease all U.S. support for Ukraine, disengage from European security, and make friendly overtures to Russia and other authoritarian countries while projecting hostility to NATO and other traditional allies. Under these circumstances, Kyiv’s remaining partners would be able to provide just enough assistance to maintain the country’s defenses, limiting Russian forces to slow, incremental gains. At worst, U.S. detachment from Ukraine and Europe could cause the war to devolve into a wider conflict. Kyiv and its European partners must start planning now for the enhanced security cooperation that would be necessary should United States pull back. Although Ukraine’s prospects for a decisive military success would diminish in any Trump contingency, steps that Brussels and Kyiv take today could cushion the blow.

 

A Theory Of Victory

Ukraine would be lucky if Harris triumphs in November. But this outcome alone would hardly guarantee victory. To increase its odds of success, Kyiv needs to adopt a winning strategy. For the next few months Ukraine must focus on blunting Russian offensives while building military capacity for an offensive in 2025. This “hold, build, and strike” approach would require a rapid increase in Western support to succeed—and Ukraine will need the resources now for a new campaign in less than a year.

Ukraine has already taken some of the steps to build capabilities for an offensive. Kyiv has invested heavily in producing drones, which have proven capable of shaping military outcomes as they hammer Russian assets. Ukrainian naval drones have taken swathes of the Russian Black Sea Fleet out of commission and reopened maritime commerce in the Black Sea. Domestically produced attack drones have punished frontline Russian forces, and long-range attack drones have destroyed Russian military and support infrastructure. Kyiv now needs to further expand its drone warfare capabilities and boost domestic production of cruise missiles, artillery, armor, and other military equipment. With sufficient financial backing from the West, Ukraine would be able to properly mobilize its military-industrial base for war.

Mobilizing more troops is as important as securing material aid. It is entirely possible for Ukraine to conscript the roughly 300,000 military-aged men it needs without severely degrading the country’s economy. The recruits will be necessary both to fill units depleted by battlefield losses and to form new units, which would also allow for worn-out troops to rotate off the frontlines. If Ukraine were to begin a recruitment campaign today, new forces would be sufficiently trained to relieve frontline units in six months. Some of Ukraine’s new units will need six to nine months of additional training and some battlefield experience to prepare to serve as the shock troops and strike force for a 2025 offensive. Given the tight timeline, recruitment efforts must start immediately.

Western countries have a critical role to play, too. The Biden administration and the Harris national security team must commit to supporting a Ukrainian military strategy for 2025 and begin to develop a policy and coordinate their efforts to ensure continuity through a transition period in the event of a Harris win. At the same time, Ukraine should demonstrate its own commitment to launching another offensive in the summer of 2025 by mobilizing its manpower and industrial base. If Ukraine were to do so, additional material support could become an easier political sell in the United States.

To implement Kyiv’s strategy, Western assistance must expand in size and scope. In addition to providing adequate supplies of munitions, artillery, rockets, and missiles, the Ukrainian campaign will require a surge of Western tanks, armored vehicles, logistics and engineering support, artillery systems, multiple launch rocket systems, air defense systems, and electronic warfare systems to outfit at least 12 new brigades (approximately 60,000 troops). A reauthorized U.S. lend-lease program can facilitate the transfer of equipment. Some resources may be drawn from U.S. stockpiles in Europe, or even directly from operational units abroad. The stocks would need to be replenished over the next several years. Although drawing down U.S. supplies is a calculated risk, it is one worth taking—it is better to give Ukraine the resources it needs to win this fight than to hold critical equipment in reserve in case of a remote contingency.

Part of the solution is fixing the Western gear Ukraine has already received. Ukraine needs to be able to repair damaged Western-produced equipment domestically rather than relying on repair facilities in Europe. Much of the equipment simply needs basic services and replacement parts, yet Washington has stubbornly resisted contracting U.S. defense firms to conduct repairs inside Ukraine. This is partially out of concerns that the Russian government would perceive the presence of U.S. personnel in Ukraine as an escalation, and partially from worries about these individuals’ safety in a conflict zone. Washington’s prohibition must end immediately. Right now, an estimated 30 to 40 percent of Ukraine’s equipment is functional. If the United States were to lift its restrictions, that rate could rise to 90 percent, tripling the equipment available for Ukraine’s next campaign.

Ukrainian forces also need training in combined-arms warfare to make a new offensive a success. Such a program can be held in Ukraine with seasoned former military personnel from the United States, the United Kingdom, and other NATO countries teaching Ukrainian troops Western military planning and decision-making processes. Ukrainian service members could shadow the foreign instructors and eventually learn to lead training programs themselves, ensuring that the content of the training could reach the entire Ukrainian military.

The purpose of the training is not to teach Ukrainian troops how to fight the Russians; they have been doing so for two and a half years. Rather, its focus would be on planning for a major new offensive. Ukrainian forces must receive better tactical training, including for night combat, as well as training from former members of NATO militaries on how to choreograph complex offensive operations—particularly how to breach heavy defenses. Multiple brigades need to be working seamlessly and in unison to respond effectively to inevitable changes on the battlefield.

A full brigade, from the leadership down to the platoons, can complete this training within eight weeks. Multiple brigades can be trained at once as the program expands, with more trainers active and new units available to rotate forces off the frontlines. In nine months, a score of brigades could be ready for a major offensive. No single investment in a weapon or a piece of technology is as vital to Ukraine’s success as good training, and the process must start immediately.

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration should push Washington to prioritize this training initiative. Combined-arms instruction of Ukrainian personnel on a large scale has been lacking throughout the war. Kyiv should begin making the case to the Biden administration today, but it should also consider framing U.S. support for later phases of the scaled-up training program as something an incoming Harris administration could claim as a signature policy.

 

Prepare For The Worst

Initiating plans for a 2025 offensive now can mitigate some of the threat that a potential Trump victory in November poses to Ukraine, but Kyiv can do only so much to hedge against that possibility. During Trump’s first term, his administration vacillated between the cool competence of the “adults in the room” who enacted a traditional conservative national security policy and the chaos of Trump seeking maximum benefit from transactions with foreign governments while failing to understand the dangerous repercussions of his actions. In the case of Ukraine, Trump’s erratic approach translated into an attempt in 2019 to extort Zelensky to deliver a fabricated investigation into Biden, Trump’s chief rival in his 2020 reelection campaign. I reported and exposed that scheme, which became the grounds for Trump’s first impeachment, while serving on the National Security Council. Later, Trump undercut Kyiv by repeating Russian talking points on Ukraine and the Biden family throughout the 2020 campaign. He pushed to ease punitive measures levied against Russia after it annexed Crimea in 2014, suggesting, for example, that Russia be readmitted to the G-7. The former U.S. president maintained his pro-Moscow stance out of an affinity for strongmen and a desire to buck the U.S. political establishment, and he meanwhile developed a vendetta against Kyiv after Zelensky did not bend to his extortion attempts. Trump even called Putin a “genius” in the opening days of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Trump’s words encouraged other Republican politicians to adopt pro-Russian rhetoric, encouraging Putin to believe his attack on Ukraine would come with little cost.

A second Trump presidency would follow a pattern similar to the first. Once again, Trump’s decisions would be governed by self-service, a sense of grievance against those he feels slighted by, and a myopic focus on short-term gains over long-term consequences. This time, however, Trump would approach foreign policy with a stronger belief in his own immunity from accountability. His team would consist not of experienced, independent advisers but of blind loyalists, many among them dedicated to carrying out the plans in Project 2025 to deconstruct the national security apparatus, including the military, to ensure its absolute obedience to the chief executive.

In other words, no one would be left to push back against Trump’s misguided policy choices. For Ukraine, this is a worrying prospect. Trump has signaled that he would end U.S. aid to Ukraine and pressure Kyiv to make concessions to Moscow to end the war. Both recent statements by Vance and an article in The Hill by Donald Trump Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (now a member of Trump’s transition team) have suggested that, as president, Trump would endorse a peace plan that would see Ukraine cede the Donbas region to Russia and abandon the prospect of EU and NATO membership in exchange for a cease-fire and a vague “security assurance,” which Kyiv would likely consider meaningless after similar assurances failed to maintain Ukrainian territorial integrity in 2014. A Trump-Vance administration could thus seek to legitimize Russia’s conquest while offering Ukraine nothing more than a revival of the nonaligned position that served it poorly in the past. Even if Trump were to take a more hands-off approach by simply making good on his threats to cut military support to Ukraine and withdraw the United States from NATO, the Western campaign to support Ukraine and pressure Russia would be significantly weakened.

Any strategy to help Ukraine end the war on satisfactory terms would be considerably more difficult during a Trump presidency. One possibility is that Ukraine would be left under-equipped and unable to advance, but not sufficiently weak to yield, resulting in Russia slowly gaining ground. Even worse, if Trump were to make a hard pivot away from Ukraine and toward Russia, the war could expand to other theaters in Europe. Putin could decide to act on Trump’s invitation to Russia to do “whatever the hell they want” to NATO members that do not meet the alliance’s defense-spending targets, interpreting Trump’s words as a signal that his administration would decline to respond to further Russian aggression against Europe.

In this scenario, Kyiv’s fate would rest more than ever on its European partners. Having lost U.S. protection, European leaders could decide to expand their material support and deploy troops to Ukraine, calculating that it would be better to fight Russia on Ukrainian territory than in Poland, Romania, or the Baltic states. They might expect such a step to trigger a Russian reprisal, but in European leaders’ view, the absence of the United States would invite Russian aggression anyway by eroding NATO’s collective defense. In 2024, French President Emmanuel Macron publicly mused about the prospect of European troops operating in Ukraine, showing that some European leaders are already thinking along these lines. Whether European countries alone can keep Russia in check is another question; Putin may see a period of U.S. absence as an opportunity to break the NATO alliance for good.

As it makes plans with its European partners, Kyiv is appealing to European interests and framing a Ukrainian victory as the surest way to guarantee a lasting peace on the continent. But it also needs a plan to manage the fallout if efforts in aid of Ukraine become a source of division between Brussels and Washington under a Trump administration. Ukrainian policymakers should start by engaging on bilateral terms with members of NATO’s eastern flank, aiming to create a coalition of partners willing to provide support regardless of the United States’ position.

 

The Next Phase

Waiting for the outcome of the U.S. election is not an option. If Ukraine stands any chance of conducting an offensive in 2025, the United States and Kyiv’s other partners need to start implementing a new strategy today. Ramping up the necessary resource provision and training can soften the blow of a Trump victory by giving NATO time to adjust. The alliance is already taking steps to prepare for potential disaster, including the announcement over the summer of a new military command in Germany to oversee the provision of equipment and training to Ukraine, which could operate in the event of a U.S. withdrawal from NATO under a Trump administration.

Even if Trump wins and cuts off U.S. support before an offensive can begin, the continued development of Ukraine’s industrial base and drone production facilities, improved maintenance capabilities for Western-provided weapons and equipment, and the training and equipping of Ukrainian forces to execute effective combined-arms warfare over the coming months will help Ukraine undermine Russia’s military strategy. Other NATO members are capable of sustaining support to Ukraine for several years, and together they have the economic might, if not yet the will, to outpace Russia’s defense production. Kyiv would still need to conduct a modest 2025 offensive, using a smaller inventory of European equipment and leveraging domestically produced material as much as possible. To prevent the conflict from spreading beyond its current theater, Europe would likely need to commit troops to Ukraine to keep Russian forces engaged in the eastern part of the country. Kyiv and its European partners would also need to coordinate broader efforts to deter an emboldened Russia.

In the event of a second Trump term and a U.S. turn to isolationism, the steps Kyiv takes now to gear up for a summer offensive can at least position the Ukrainian military to sustain its defenses and continue to wear down Russia through the next year. But if Harris wins and maintains or even expands U.S. support, Ukraine can aim to make considerable military gains by late 2025. The preparations that Kyiv and its partners must make over the next few months are clear. Whether the next phase in Ukraine’s military campaign leads to a strong position at the negotiating table with Putin or a war stuck in grinding attrition—or even dangerous escalation—may ultimately depend on American voters’ choice in November.

 

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