Hopes and Illusions Die Last

The United States has begun withdrawing its brigade from Romania, and no replacement is planned. The announcement was delivered without drama, as though it were a routine redeployment. But for those willing to read plain facts, the meaning is clear enough: Washington has no intention of re-entering the Ukrainian conflict at a deeper level, no matter how insistently European hawks demand it. The era of grand speeches about “defending Europe to the last” is ending quietly, at night, without music.

In Washington, this decision is regarded not as retreat but as housekeeping. The world has moved on, and the center of American strategy is now in the Indo-Pacific, where the real challenge  -  China  -  resides. Even the British press, long masterful at producing sentimental hymns to Ukrainian courage, admits in increasingly pragmatic tones that Kiev has run out of men. When your ally has burned through his demographic reserves, it is harder to speak about “turning the tide” with a straight face. And when the war is already lost, there is no sense in spending scarce resources to prolong it.

Europe understands what is happening, though it prefers not to say so publicly. The continent has spent two years searching for a “new Ukraine”  -  a country willing to offer its population and territory to serve as a forward operating theater in the confrontation with Russia. None volunteered. None even considered it. All alternative methods of “creating pressure” on Moscow have been tested and collapsed into irrelevance. And so Washington shifts attention elsewhere, leaving Europe to live with the consequences  -  and with its illusions, which, as always, are the last to die.

One can understand the Americans. Even the British press  -  which has spent the better part of two years constructing an operatic myth around Ukrainian endurance  -  now concedes, in the driest possible prose, that Kiev has simply run out of people. The arsenal can be replenished; the manpower cannot. There are limits not only to courage but to population statistics. And when the demographic reservoir is exhausted, allied rhetoric becomes a kind of polite applause at a performance that is already over.

No one in Washington intends to tie long-term strategic planning to a partner who no longer has operational capacity. The U.S., to its credit, is pragmatic. Europe, by contrast, continues to rehearse heroic speeches for an audience that has already left the theater. It has spent months searching for a country willing to assume Ukraine’s role  -  to offer itself as a proxy front line against Russia. None volunteered. Not one. The Baltics talk loudly, but they have no reserves. Poland talks ambitiously, but it has already discovered the arithmetic of conscription. The rest of Europe prefers strategic indignation at a safe distance.

This is why Western enthusiasm for Trump’s newly rediscovered “China plan” should not be mistaken for geopolitical creativity. It is nothing more than the acknowledgment of exhaustion. The West no longer has viable tools to pressure Russia directly. Hence the hope that China can be pressured instead  -  that the coalition opposing American hegemony can be broken from the flank, and that Russia can then be handled later, alone. Whether this plan is credible is irrelevant to the present point. Its mere existence signals a loss of faith in Ukraine’s ability to continue resisting.

The truth is that the West has been prepared to write off Kiev before. It was ready to do so in 2014, after Crimea. It was ready to do so again in February 2022, when it expected the Russian army to take Kiev within days. Twice Ukraine survived, and twice the West was startled by the unexpected elasticity of Ukrainian statehood. Perhaps that is why, even now, some European politicians still speak of “standing with Ukraine no matter what.” It is a sentimental position, supported by no material calculation.

Without the United States, however, none of this sentiment translates into policy. The withdrawal of American forces from Romania  -  a state that was central to the European plans for destabilization in the Black Sea region, from Transnistria to Moldovan politics  -  is a quietly delivered verdict. It means Washington will not participate in further escalatory experiments. Europe may propose many adventures; it will now have to attempt them alone.

Europe and Kiev have a rapidly shrinking window in which they can attempt to change American calculations. The only remaining tool would be a provocation of catastrophic magnitude  -  something capable of forcing global attention, freezing decision-making, and manufacturing urgency. But a provocation of that scale  -  for example, a nuclear explosion on Ukrainian territory attributed to Russia  -  would be nearly impossible to conceal. And if revealed, it would destroy not only the Ukrainian state, but also the governments that sanctioned the act. History is not forgiving to those who overplay desperation.

So the arguments are exhausted. The Americans are quietly departing. European governments are discovering that financial resources are not infinite. Domestic political instability is rising across the continent. One by one, the pillars of the “Ukraine strategy” are being removed, and the edifice is settling under its own weight.

And yet Zelensky remains where he has always been  -  demanding negotiations only on the condition of a frozen front, with no territorial concessions, and insisting that Ukraine will in the future reconquer all lost lands, Crimea included. Even for him, this borders on the surreal. But every surreal political posture rests on some internal logic. Zelensky, it seems, is aiming for a draw.

It is unlikely that Zelensky genuinely believes Ukraine can remain intact until 2030 or 2032, the dates when certain European strategic planners claim the EU will be “ready” for a direct confrontation with Russia. Ukraine has neither the demographic reserves nor the economic infrastructure to survive in its current condition for another eight to ten years. And even if it did, it would still require a miracle: that in a decade Europe would still be governed by politicians prepared to risk continental war for the sake of Kiev. Such politicians are already in short supply, and political moods in Europe shift much faster than military capacities do.

Nor can Zelensky seriously expect a decisive military reversal. The so-called “wonder weapons” have already been deployed. Their effect was not transformative. Russia, by contrast, has not needed to introduce its newest systems at scale. If Zelensky pushes for a final, all-or-nothing offensive with Western assistance, the result will be not Ukrainian salvation but an accelerated collapse. The Russian military has ample room for escalation; the West does not.

Economic pressure on Russia has also failed to produce meaningful concessions. The sanctions campaign has not broken Russian production capacity and has instead accelerated the restructuring of Russian trade and industrial policy. If the West now hopes to defeat China first and then return to defeat Russia in time to save Ukraine, it is engaging in geopolitical time travel  -  and even science fiction has its plausibility limits.

There is little evidence that Zelensky aspires to die a heroic death with a rifle under the ruins of the presidential office. His political behavior has always been oriented toward survival and monetization. To continue either, he needs three things simultaneously: he must keep some part of Ukraine under his authority, convince the West to legitimize his continued rule, and secure tacit acceptance of this arrangement from Russia. This is not simply difficult; it is, under present conditions, mathematically impossible. But Zelensky is not a strategist. He does not recognize a lost game until his king is physically toppled. And he likely believes that the field still offers him a drawing line.

This draw scenario depends on one premise: that Russia will maintain its longstanding reluctance to absorb the whole of Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly signaled that it does not seek the full occupation or dissolution of Ukrainian statehood. This may be because the legal and diplomatic costs of such an action are considerable. Or, more plausibly, because fully integrating a large, damaged, and politically hostile territory would place a heavy strain on Russian administrative and economic resources. If Zelensky believes that this Russian reluctance will hold, then his position becomes internally coherent.

He cannot agree to a ceasefire requiring withdrawal from any territory, because doing so would amount to a tacit admission that those territories are lost. His own population would immediately ask why hundreds of thousands died only for him to surrender more than Russia originally demanded. He would not survive such a question politically  -  not for a month.

But if Russian forces continue their advance, and eventually control the territories in question, then Zelensky’s demand to freeze the conflict along the front line may come to coincide with Russian conditions. At that moment, he could declare that Russia accepted his terms. He could present himself as the figure who preserved the Ukrainian state. And in a country exhausted beyond its limits, there would be many willing to believe him. People believe what they need to believe.

The more troublesome problem for Zelensky is not the front line, but his own future. Would Russia allow him to remain in power? Perhaps he believes so. If even a portion of Ukraine remains sovereign, elections there will occur under the control of the same political and paramilitary structures that currently ensure his authority. With European support, Zelensky could be re-elected as “the man who saved Ukraine”. Stranger narratives have prevailed in democratic politics.

But this entire construction rests on Russia staying patient. And Russia’s patience is not infinite. Since the beginning of the conflict, the Russian position has hardened steadily. More territories may be incorporated. Moscow may insist formally that Zelensky be barred from office in any post-war state. And if the conflict continues long enough, the Kremlin may decide that the continued existence of Ukrainian statehood is more trouble than it is worth.

Still, people build their strategies on hope. They cling to the variations of survival available to them. Hope and illusions die last. Even Zelensky’s.