Ukraine is forced to face the harsh Trump reality it hoped would never happen.

CNN
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Bets were hedged, growth opportunities created, and insurance policies developed. But ultimately, most hoped it wouldn’t happen.

Ukraine and its NATO allies have had to mull over the idea of ​​a Trump victory for months, while juggling the vanity of a strong US president who could be an even tougher ally, a mediator who could bring a favorable peace, or a fresh pair of eyes who could see a new put an end to the debilitating war.

It was just a consoling fiction: the path ahead for Kyiv will be extremely difficult. There should be no eternal mystery about what a Trump presidency means for Ukraine. Donald Trump said he would end the war “in 24 hours” but did not say how. He also said that “Zelensky should never have allowed this war to start” and called him “one of the greatest salesmen I’ve ever seen” who receives $100 billion for each visit to Congress.

This morning, the fact that these statements are wild exaggerations ceased to matter much. They have become the distorted lens through which the president-elect of the United States will view the largest conflict in Europe since the Nazis. Trump may appoint a cabinet that slightly adjusts the pace or tone of his instincts, but ultimately he will want to go. It doesn’t matter that, strategically, the war in Ukraine has so far provided the Pentagon with a relatively cheap way to humiliate its second-greatest adversary without costing American lives. That’s anathema to two things Trump didn’t like during his first term: costly U.S. military involvement abroad and the disappointment of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin’s initial response – that US-Russian relations cannot get any worse than they are now under President Joe Biden – certainly belies the jubilation. The coming year has become, according to most analysts, a cautious adventure for Russia. Moscow is positioning forces on the hilltops around Ukraine’s military centers in the Donbass – near Pokrovsk, Kurakhovo, Chasovoy Yar – to ensure the punitive ousting of Kyiv from the Donetsk region this winter.

Success in Donetsk could open the door wide to major cities such as Dnepr and Zaporozhye, which would suddenly make the Ukrainian capital very vulnerable and likely tip the scales of war. However, the clock is ticking for Russia’s efforts. Western officials have suggested that the level of casualties – about 1,200 killed or wounded a day – would not be possible without another large, unpopular Russian mobilization, and that Moscow could see a real crisis in armor and ammunition production next year.

Putin played these recent cards, hoping for a Trump victory, confident that he would remain a man of instincts—an isolationist and distrustful of America’s long-term alliances.

Trump is erratic and unpredictable, especially on complex and time-consuming issues such as international conflicts. He prefers a quick exit from Afghanistan to the Taliban, or Singapore facing North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, or a drone strike against Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander Qasem Soleimani. We may never know whether he has truly explored the direction he is pushing for Ukraine, or whether he simply never wants to talk about war or spend money on it ever again.

Whatever the speed and detail of Trump’s approach, the damage will still be felt in the coming weeks. I recall last December that a huge morale blow was dealt to Ukrainian soldiers when Congress suspended US military aid for about six months. Frontline troops have told me they will have to leave their positions without that help, even though they know the Biden administration still wants – in principle – to support them. They will now have to deal with an inverted situation: While some help may still be coming from the Pentagon and European NATO allies, the Trump administration has instead taken a hostile stance toward Kyiv.

Moreover, Trump is entering the White House at perhaps the most dangerous moment for Kyiv since the start of the war. A number of frontline analyzes show that Ukraine lost ground at an almost unprecedented rate in October; the loss of small villages, which in themselves are insignificant, but overall represent a strategic setback that leaves the east extremely vulnerable.

There has long been a political flaw in NATO’s approach; The Biden administration was reluctant to arm Ukraine sufficiently to risk Russia being defeated militarily, fearing a broader escalation. But Biden also couldn’t let Russia gain the upper hand. Instead, the alliance urged Ukraine to persevere in the hope that Putin would eventually collapse. It was a tangled contradiction at the heart of support for Kyiv, but still better than asking Ukraine to capitulate.

Without the will to fight – the belief that the battle can be won – it is almost impossible to ask Ukrainians to sit in a trench under artillery fire or to drive their armor into the deadly fire of enemy positions. Nobody wants to be the last soldier to die in a war; no one wants to give their life protecting a family that will most likely live under Russian occupation anyway.

Trump’s victory could also complicate Zelensky’s position itself. For years, Zelensky, to paraphrase Trump, has been, above all, a preeminent salesman of Ukraine’s interests. Now he is weighed down by enormous baggage from Trump’s first term, when he was consumed by Trump’s requests to investigate the Biden family. Can Zelensky remain that seller? Would a new face at Bankova be more likely to receive military aid or reach a viable peace agreement?

Those tired of the war in Ukraine—whether Kyiv’s allies or soldiers on the front lines—should still not accept the idea of ​​a Trump-backed deal. In Syria in 2013 and Ukraine in 2015, Moscow has proven that it negotiates to buy time to prepare or achieve its military goals. Putin will accept any territorial benefits that he can flesh out—he already has those benefits at the negotiating table. But then he will regroup and will not stop. He presented the domestic war as if Russia were facing the mass ranks of the entire NATO alliance. The overheated Russian economy, the astronomical death toll, and the retooling of the Russian industrial base – all for this supposed fight – cannot simply be undone. Putin increasingly needs war to maintain his power.

This is evident in his maximalist behavior towards Russia’s neighbors in the last month. Recent unrest in Georgia and Moldova, where pro-Russian forces have challenged pro-European movements with limited success, could lead to even greater Russian intervention in the coming months. Putin is unlikely to suddenly abandon his thirst for greater influence in the region. Remember his original motivation: this war started because he wanted to occupy Ukraine and keep it out of NATO and the European Union. The Russian blood shed over nearly three years probably requires more victory than simply preserving the territorial gains it already has.

Meanwhile, one vital lesson of war will face a serious attack. Over the past two years, Putin’s most vocal opponents have promoted the core message that we no longer need to fear Russia; that the Kremlin inflated fear of its hulking Bear as a psychological weapon to compensate for its military decrepitude. Ukraine’s unexpected resistance showed that fear was misplaced and that Moscow was struggling to defeat a neighbor it once despised as unable to fight.

Now the Trump White House may be asking the world to quickly swallow an apparently similar claim that is terribly different: that the West shouldn’t fear Russia because it doesn’t really do much harm. This would be Putin’s greatest victory and the West’s most painful weakness.