- 25 Feb 2026
- News
Four years of lessons from Ukraine’s geopolitical frontline
As Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine grinds into its fifth year, shifting global alignments and mounting political pressures are reshaping Europe’s strategic environment. The attempt to crush Ukrainian sovereignty continues, but the invasion has revealed a society capable of extraordinary resilience – militarily, politically and socially.
At the same time, the war is redefining a European security order already under strain from the ongoing strategic ambiguity – and ideological antagonism – which blights the transatlantic relationship. On the fourth anniversary of land warfare’s grim return to European soil, BIG convened an expert webinar to take stock of the situation on the ground – and reflect upon the wider geostrategic implications of Ukraine’s struggle.
The conversation began with an insider’s view: Oleksandra Azarkhina, a former Ukrainian Deputy Minister for Communities, Territories and Infrastructure Development, spoke from Kyiv on the continued resilience of the country’s people and government. She observed that despite Russia’s weaponisation of the cold – bombarding energy infrastructure through the winter – Ukrainians continue to take succour from their continued capacity for operational and technological resistance, with 60% of materiel and 96% of drones on the battlefield Ukrainian-made. ‘We are still surviving – and spring is coming’.
A largely static front line was offered in support by Ed Arnold, Senior Research Fellow for European Security at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI):
‘Ukraine is effectively out-killing Russians by a rate of around 25 times, which is pretty significant in terms of the calculus – both political and military – of Ukraine holding the ground. The Russians have gone around 30 miles into Donetsk in the last two years – a snail's pace, less than 1% of the territory. The Russians are advancing exceptionally slowly – but they're paying a very, very high price.’
His comments were mitigated with a warning that Moscow’s willingness to wage a war of attrition showed little sign of wavering, with recruitment – rather than casualties – the only realistic capacity limitation: he observed that Russia has already lost more men than currently comprise NATO’s entire land forces posture on the Alliance’s eastern flank.
Far from the bloodshed, the peace negotiations – hamstrung between tepid American interest in Ukrainian sovereignty, the ossified maximalism of Russia’s demands, and Europe’s absence from the table. Mariana Budjeryn, Senior Researcher at MIT’s Center for Nuclear Security Policy, evoked the practical impasses, such as the governance of post-ceasefire contested territory and the competing claims to Ukraine’s nuclear power infrastructure. But she also observed with regret that justice has already been tacitly conceded by Kyiv, and questioned what Europe’s impotence meant for the continent:
‘One thing that is not featuring in this latest version of the peace plan is the issue of justice. [...] That means that the people who perpetrated war crimes in Europe, on a continent that in 1945 said ‘never again’, will go unpunished – at least per the terms of the settlement. That's an issue beyond Ukraine. It has broader European significance. It goes to defining what kind of continent do we live in? What kind of rules do we live by?’
Budjeryn continued by observing that actions speak louder that when it comes to future security guarantees.
‘Ukraine learned the hard way that the crux and the substance of a security guarantee is in the actual actions that it's going to precipitate: in force deployment, in concrete commitments of defence assistance, and through technology transfers and joint defence projects.’
Ed Arnold suggested that any security guarantees would have to be given without an ‘unreliable’ United States ‘holding Europe’s hand’, suggesting that Washington’s rupture with NATO Allies was likely to endure. Yet while the Coalition of the Willing has successfully filled the void left by withdrawn US financial support, he claimed it would be unwise to assume similar capacity militarily. Despite political will, such pledges would be ‘dangerous’ in the absence of a clear mission – a framework which can only become apparent through the terms of an as-yet hypothetical ceasefire. This strategic Catch-22 represents a ‘real dilemma’ for Europe’s leadership.
At the industrial level, however, Azarkhina echoed the potential advantages of joint development, procurement and production. The war has supercharged Ukraine’s domestic defence-industrial sector, with output surging from $1.5bn to well over $16bn in the space of five years. Azarkhina pointed to ‘incredible growth’ in home-grown contractors and military technologies, as well as a whole-of-society approach which is seeing civilian companies ‘jumping into the defence sector and transforming it’ and ‘R&D seen as part of the fight’:
‘The Ministry of Digital Transformation introduced an accelerator initiative called Brave1, which allowed for seed grants to all different types of startups and innovations, so they can grow and eventually become contractors of the Ministry of Defence. Decentralised procurement [was also implemented] – on the level of brigades, on the level of the different defence forces, and on the level of charitable foundations.’
Azarkhina called on the rest of Europe to plug into this ecosystem, licencing Ukrainian know-how and scaling up production – creating jobs across Europe’s defence industry and standardising platforms in a win-win situation which would address Ukraine’s key limitation: a production capacity dwarfed by Russia.
The conversation concluded by returning to the question of Ukraine’s European journey. At this month’s Munich Security Conference, President Zelenskyy pressed EU leaders for ‘a date’ for his country’s accession to the Union – a proposition hovering awkwardly between theoretical goodwill and deep practical complexity. Political and institutional hurdles have left Brussels non-committal, yet memories of Euromaidan and its hopes of a ‘European future’ for Ukraine continue to accord these ambitions symbolic weight. Mariana Budjeryn reminded the audience that Russia’s aggression began in 2014 as a direct response to Kyiv’s pivot to Brussels:
‘It didn't start with Ukraine's aspiration of NATO membership, as some people like to allege. It all started with Ukraine wanting to integrate with Europe and rejecting the kind of model of governance that has taken place in Russia [...] In a way, that's one of the big Ukrainian wins: that despite this terrible war, the process of formal integration with Europe is underway.’
The panel were nevertheless united in their assessment of the very real challenges to accession on both sides. From Kyiv, Oleksandra Azarkhina agreed that reforms were still necessary within Ukraine – but pointed to the country’s efforts to root out corruption, even in wartime, as an example of progress made. In Brussels, meanwhile, the EU’s architecture and funding arrangements would need to be reconsidered to successfully absorb a country of Ukraine’s size and agricultural output, with Ed Arnold also evoking the peril of extending the EU Treaty’s mutual defence clause (Article 42.7) to a conflict zone. On security, he suggested that ad hoc intergovernmental frameworks – Nordic-Baltic Aid, the Joint Expeditionary Force – were better frameworks than EU membership. But he also suggested that the exceptional circumstances demanded more flexibility:
‘EU membership is not a silver bullet, although I think it would be very important for helping the country rebuild. [...] And what I think [other countries] have not realised is that Ukraine is unique. And if it is unique, you have to look at your processes and say, these don't work, we've got to try something else. And I think we're still trying to work out what that is. If there is a potential peace deal, I think having flexibility on the side of the Europeans is paramount.’
With no immediate end to hostilities in sight, and despite a vast human toll behind the political and strategic complexities, Ukraine’s capacity for resilience remains undimmed. Our conversation underscored the foundations of Ukraine’s continuing resistance, as well as the illusory nature of Russian military power – an attritional blunt force which, faced with Ukrainian ingenuity and will, finds itself in a costly stalemate. But the webinar was also a timely reminder of the conflict’s defining role in 21st century geopolitics: a prism through which the evolving international order is to be viewed and understood, and the existential challenge by which Europe’s security order will be forged – or broken.