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News Analysis
Europe Prepares for a Longer War in Ukraine, With No Strategy to End It
With American dealmakers wrapped up with Iran, neither Russia nor Ukraine has a clear path to victory — or toward a negotiated peace.
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Ukrainian soldiers training this month in the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
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Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
By
Steven Erlanger
Steven Erlanger, based in Berlin, covers European and Middle Eastern security and diplomacy.
April 25, 2026,
5:02 a.m. ET
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With President Trump and his team preoccupied with the war in Iran, Europe is preparing for a longer war in Ukraine, with dwindling expectations for a negotiated settlement between Moscow and Kyiv.
That leaves Ukraine largely on its own, fighting a war of attrition with Russia with no end in sight. Neither Ukraine nor Russia has a clear path to victory, and no one expects that a settlement of the war could be possible without the active American involvement and pressure on Russia that Mr. Trump has always been reluctant to exercise.
Nor is there an obvious replacement mediator with any significant leverage with the two sides.
Fifteen months after Mr. Trump vowed to end the war in a day, “we find ourselves largely where we began in the negotiations,” said James Sherr, a Russia and Ukraine analyst speaking from Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.
He added, “Increasingly, the Europeans understand that there is a fundamental incompatibility of interests and objectives between Ukraine and Russia, and the only sensible course is to continue to stand with Ukraine and deny Russia a victory by military or political means.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine “has lost 80 percent of his illusions” about his ability to get Mr. Trump’s support, Mr. Sherr said. “He’s in a very different place in his understanding of America.” The Ukrainians believe that they are holding their own militarily, and that any resolution of the war “will take place on the battlefield, if at all,” he said.
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President Emmanuel Macron of France, left, with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Thursday at an informal meeting of the European Council in Cyprus.
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Nicolas Tucat/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
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