That\u2019s changed, with Germany now pledging to deliver Leopard 2 battle tanks<\/a> and approving other countries\u2019 requests to follow suit. Chancellor Olaf Scholz also recently authorized supplying infantry fighting vehicles to help push Russian forces out of occupied Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The evolving approach fits a conflict as fluid as it is unpredictable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, a collection of Western tank-type vehicles<\/a> is slated to arrive on the front lines this spring, with training already underway in donor countries. The vehicles carry the hope of enabling battlefield wins for Ukrainian forces that will lead to some kind of war-ending scenario \u2014 if the weapons arrive in time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Scholz has told Tagesspiegel newspaper he wants Russian President Vladimir Putin to answer one question: \u201cHow is the world getting out of this terrible situation?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Defense News spoke with national security analysts, lawmakers and retired officials, asking each how the conflict could end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Their answers are glum: The war will be expensive, cost lives and likely last at least a few years \u2014 or even become interminable. It will tax the American and European defense industries, especially when it comes to munitions, and could cause economic ruin in Russia. All this while the possibility of <\/b>nuclear escalation remains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And they said winning will depend on a Congress with the resolve to ensure continued support to Ukraine. But even then, the very concept of victory may be inaccurate, they warned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor this year, it would be very, very difficult to militarily eject the Russian forces from all \u2014 every inch of Ukraine or Russian-occupied Ukraine,\u201d Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the U.S. military\u2019s Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters during a visit to Germany last month. \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean it can\u2019t happen, doesn\u2019t mean it won\u2019t happen, but it\u2019d be very, very difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Milley has insisted the war will likely end at the negotiating table \u2014 at some point. Officials and experts expect a bloody spring, as Russia sends new conscripts to the front line and Ukraine tries to repel an offensive while mounting its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the war enters its second year, the spigot of military aid is still gushing. But industrial capacities are spotty, and nations have started to scrutinize how much equipment they can spare while maintaining their own self-defense requirements and that of NATO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, election season in the United States \u2014 Ukraine\u2019s most important backer \u2014 stands to spur arguments that a war in Europe of unknown duration is a costly nuisance for America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Asked about the likely duration of the Ukraine war, analysts in the United States and Europe made similar predictions, with timelines running from months to years to \u201cindefinite.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yohann Michel, a research analyst in Berlin with the International Institute for Strategic Studies think tank, anticipates \u201clong months\u201d ahead, while Michael Kofman, the research program director in the Russia Studies Program at the Center for Naval Analyses in Washington, expects additional years of fighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWars typically tend to go on longer than people expect or hope, but especially interstate conflicts of this length,\u201d Kofman said. \u201cHistory tells us that wars which go on this long \u2026 are likely to become protracted, lasting several years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Perhaps Italian analyst Lucio Caracciolo was the most pessimistic of all. \u201cThis war will last indefinitely, with long pauses for cease-fires,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt will only stop when Ukraine or Russia or both collapse, since for both sides this is a matter of life or death,\u201d added Caracciolo, the editor of Italian geopolitics publication Limes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Peter Roberts, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said there are different ways to define the end of a war: \u201cthe end of the kinetic phase\u201d versus \u201cthe end of a Georgia-style frozen conflict or a Korea-like situation that runs for years.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI would love to think the kinetic phase could end in 2023, but I suspect we could be looking at another three years with this scale of fighting,\u201d Roberts said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Michel added there are as-yet-unknown factors that will determine the end of the conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWho will be first to launch the next offense? What role will the weather play?\u201d he wondered. \u201cThere is the problem of ammunition \u2014 the first side to have a shortage will be in trouble. While there has been no real European program to increase production, will Russian stocks be replenished by China?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And long, exhaustive fighting carries its own risks, according to Benjamin Jensen, a war gaming expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That\u2019s because the longer conflicts last, the more they exhaust finite resources and, hence, the parties are more willing to gamble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEven technologically advanced, wealthy states in the Middle East eventually reached a point where they\u2019re lobbing missiles at civilian cities, openly using chemical weapons and fighting in waves \u2014 just people rushing across the field getting shot at,\u201d Jensen said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Either side may act boldly if it winds up on the ropes and needs an exit strategy. Ukraine, Jensen suggested, might try a spectacular special operation to assassinate a Kremlin official, or Russia could decide to use \u2014 or simply test \u2014 nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Jensen\u2019s view, even the collapse of Russia\u2019s conventional force or a traditional Ukrainian victory may not mean the war is over; either could lead to nuclear escalation by Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On Feb. 24, 2022, Russian forces attacked Ukraine without frozen ground to support their armored vehicles, which meant they had to stick to roads, where they stood out as easy targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But this winter, they\u2019re expected to launch attacks across open plains, which would be harder to defeat, said Daniel Rice, a former U.S. Army captain who last year became a special adviser to Gen. Valerii Zaluzhnyi, the commander of the Ukrainian military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe worry is that a large Russian offensive action could punch through, and there\u2019s a lot of worry they could take Kyiv,\u201d said Rice, now president of the Thayer Leadership consulting group in West Point, New York. \u201cPeople are waking up to the reality that you need to give offensive weapons to end this war \u2014 at least to win it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The challenge now is training and equipping an armored force big enough and sophisticated enough to envelop Russia\u2019s fighting force.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ukrainian soldiers will have to learn how to operate and sustain the latest batch of military aid, which includes Marder and Bradley infantry fighting vehicles from Germany and the United States, as well as Challenger 2<\/a>, Leopard 2 and Abrams tanks<\/a> from the U.K., Germany and the U.S., respectively. Also in the mix is a pledge from France to ship AMX-10 RC light, wheeled tanks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s a lot to do in a short period of time,\u201d Rice said. \u201cJust because they have just the right vehicles doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019re going to be able to take a major future offensive action. But \u2026 these Ukrainians have surprised the world every time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Retired Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe, a former commander of the U.S. Army\u2019s maneuver warfare school at Fort Benning, Georgia, said Western upgrades offer Ukraine the chance to dominate the close fight with Russian adversaries and conclude the tactical fighting to its advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Russian forces are already trying to slow down tanks in Ukraine with mines, trenches, and pyramidical, concrete \u201cdragon\u2019s teeth,\u201d a type of fortification not seen in combat since World War II. Ukrainian forces, once equipped and trained for combined arms warfare and tank tactics, will be \u201cdesigned to punch a hole through a defensive network,\u201d Donahoe predicted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the sizable swaths of terrain Ukraine wants to liberate will take time, and to even build the necessary forces will take six months, Donahoe estimated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The recent arms donations \u2014 Kyiv still wants fighter aircraft and long-range tactical missiles \u2014 are predicated on the assumption they\u2019ll force Moscow to end its invasion and begin negotiations because military costs are too high. That objective has coexisted with an expectation that Putin\u2019s government will probably never stop fighting, as losing the war could spell the end to his political power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the course of the past year, Putin\u2019s domestic propaganda strategy has morphed from a message of \u201cfight the Nazis\u201d in Ukraine to \u201cfight the West\u201d there, said Stefan Meister, a Russia and Eastern Europe expert at the Berlin-based German Council on Foreign Relations. \u201cThe narrative is the great struggle of the Cold War,\u201d he said, a framing that has helped to attract new recruits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And the near-total control of information by the government is making dissent difficult. \u201cThose who are against the war have left, and those who remain are adapting,\u201d Meister said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Past attempts to squeeze the will for war out of Moscow economically also didn\u2019t yield the immediate results for which experts hoped. Cracks may begin to appear this year, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe consensus is that ordinary Russians will start feeling it this year,\u201d said Charles Lichfield, an economics and sanctions analyst at the Washington-based Atlantic Council. \u201cBut Russians have a huge degree of tolerance for economic pain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Moscow has proved resourceful when it comes to building autonomy into critical goods, Lichfield explained. For example, the tactic of repurposing dishwasher electronics for weapons, mocked in the West as a sign of desperation, probably means \u201csomebody thought about that from the beginning,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One area to watch is Russia\u2019s payment of pensions. An inability to do so could foster economic discontent capable of turning public opinion against the war, Lichfield told Defense News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt would have to get pretty bad for the Russians to get there,\u201d he said, adding that there\u2019s no way of knowing how many reserves the government stashed away after years of fat checks from energy sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After imposing sanctions and export controls, Lichfield expects the West\u2019s latest economic pressure point \u2014 oil price caps \u2014 to yield results because the Russian economy is so tightly linked to the energy market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The United States, as Ukraine\u2019s most important military supporter, remains the center of gravity when it comes to an eventual outcome for the conflict. American leadership has so far been largely united in their support for Kyiv.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rep. Adam Smith of Washington, the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, expects the war to end at the negotiating table, but said serious diplomacy hasn\u2019t begun because Putin is still clinging to \u201cmaximalist\u201d goals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe ultimate end to this is the Ukrainians take back as much pre-Feb. 24 territory as they can get, force Putin to the bargaining table, and then ultimately Ukraine would have to compromise somewhat on issues like Crimea and portions of the east and arrange for solid security guarantees going forward,\u201d Smith told Defense News in a phone interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRight now, the Russians are talking about a major offensive in the next four months,\u201d he added. \u201cIt seems like the Russians are at least thinking that they have some possibility of succeeding in that effort. I am skeptical.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For its part, the Biden administration has started deliberations around the thorny question of whether helping Ukraine should entail retaking Crimea, which Russia seized and then annexed in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThat would be an extraordinarily risky thing to do,\u201d Smith said. \u201cBut it\u2019s important to have those conversations. And from what I understand, high levels of our government have talked about it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the former National Security Council director for European affairs in the Obama administration, said he \u201cwould not encourage Ukraine to seek to reassert control over Crimea by force, simply because the escalation risks are very high.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cCrimea is of considerable strategic importance to Russia,\u201d Kupchan told Defense News. \u201cIt looms large historically. It\u2019s difficult for me to imagine that the Russians would accept complete defeat and expulsion from Crimea.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But some on Capitol Hill are more bullish about lining up behind President Volodymyr Zelenskyy\u2019s goal of fully restoring Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty over its territory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., visited Ukraine in January and subsequently told Defense News at a news conference that \u201cthe American military has consistently underestimated the Ukrainian fighting ability.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEverything I have come to learn about the will and determination of the Ukrainians leads me to conclude retaking Crimea is within reach, and they need the artillery that will enable hitting targets \u2014 the sites of missiles destroying infrastructure in Ukraine,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blumenthal has joined other lawmakers \u2014 particularly pro-Ukraine Republicans \u2014 in pushing President Joe Biden to give Zelenskyy most of the weapons he requested, including long-range ATACMS missiles and F-16 fighter aircraft.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, also called for sending long-range missiles to Ukraine alongside advanced Gray Eagle and Reaper drones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe should deliver these assets quickly to make an immediate difference on the battlefield,\u201d Wicker said on the Senate floor in January. \u201cIn concert with our allies, this approach of \u2018more, better, faster\u2019 would give the Ukrainians a real shot at victory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the Biden administration has voiced concerns that sending ATACMS to Ukraine could enable strikes into Russia, potentially escalating the war into a broader conflict with NATO, the Ukrainians could use those long-range missiles to strike Russian launch points on their own territory \u2014 including in Crimea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Smith indicated he disagrees with the Biden administration\u2019s decision not to send long-range missiles, noting every Ukrainian official assured him they would not use them to attack Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Smith also said ATACMS producer Lockheed Martin no longer makes the missiles, and the U.S. military still needs them in its stockpiles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\u2019re looking at a variety of different options there,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re not currently being made, so it is legitimately a question of readiness on our part and whether we\u2019d have enough to spare. There are discussions about other longer-range munitions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Biden administration earlier this month announced it is sending<\/a> Ukraine the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb. The GLSDB has a range of up to 93 miles, doubling Ukraine\u2019s strike range. However, that still falls short of the ATACMS, which would allow Ukraine to strike Russian targets about 190 miles away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Pentagon declined to say whether the GLSDB will be used to attack Russian targets in Crimea. The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington told Defense News that Ukraine would not strike Russian territory with longer-range weapons pledged by the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/CoverTest4.jpg.jpg\")
How long a war?<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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On the offensive this spring<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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Pressure points<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
Which weapons will Washington send?<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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Future funding<\/h1>\n\n\n\n
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