Why Ukraine is winning the war
Russia has failed to achieve its core aim — the destruction of the Ukrainian nation
Yuval Noah Harari
© Ann KiernanContrary to the narrative pushed by Russian propaganda, Ukraine has so far been winning the war.
Even US President Donald Trump, who in February 2025 lectured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that he must cave in to Russian demands because “you don’t have the cards”, has this week declared that “Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, is in a position to fight and WIN”.
When the conflict began in 2014, Ukraine seemed completely helpless in the face of Russian aggression, and the Russians easily conquered Crimea and other parts of eastern Ukraine.
The war entered a more intense phase on February 24 2022, when Russia mounted an all-out assault, aiming to subdue the whole of Ukraine and end its existence as an independent nation.
At the time, the Russian leadership and many observers throughout the world expected Russia to conquer Kyiv and defeat the Ukrainian army decisively within a few days.
Even Ukraine’s western backers were so unsure of Ukraine’s chances of resistance that they offered to evacuate President Zelenskyy and his team and help them set up a government in exile.
But Zelenskyy chose to stay in Kyiv and fight, reportedly telling the Americans, “I need ammunition, not a ride”.
The outgunned Ukrainian forces stunned the world by repelling the Russian assault on Kyiv.
The Ukrainian army then counter-attacked in the late summer of 2022, won two major victories in the regions of Kharkiv and Kherson, and liberated much of the territory conquered by the Russians in the first phase of their invasion.
Since then, notwithstanding limited gains by both sides, the frontline hasn’t moved much.
The Russians are trying to create the impression that they are relentlessly advancing, but the fact is that, since the spring of 2022, they have failed to conquer any target of major strategic importance such as the cities of Kyiv, Kharkiv or Kherson.
In 2025, at a cost of around 200,000 to 300,000 soldiers killed and injured, the Russian army has so far managed to capture just a thin sliver of frontier zone amounting, according to the most reliable sources, to around 0.6 per cent of Ukraine’s total territory.
At the rate they have been going in 2025, it would theoretically take the Russians around 100 years and tens of millions of casualties to conquer the rest of Ukraine.
In fact, in August 2025, Russia controlled less of Ukraine’s territory than it did in August 2022.
The situation is reminiscent of the western front in the first world war, when ruthless generals sacrificed tens of thousands of soldiers to gain a few kilometres of muddy ruins.
Patriotic newspapers often hid the magnitude of such follies by printing maps that purported to show major advances.
But the most important data in these maps was their scale.
As the historian Toby Thacker noted, first world war newspapers often used a deliberately large scale “which made the ‘advances’ appear superficially impressive, but any astute reader could have seen that . . . they were insignificant.
In many newspapers, the accurate geographical detail flatly contradicted the constant reporting of ‘gains’ and ‘advances’”.
It is the same with the latest Russian advances.
For Ukraine it makes good military sense to make tactical retreats and preserve its strength and the lives of its soldiers, while letting the Russians bleed themselves to exhaustion by mounting costly attacks for insignificant gains.
The truth is that Ukraine has managed to fight Russia to a standstill.
As the retired Australian Major General Mick Ryan wrote recently, it is as if more than three years after invading Iraq in 2003, the US had only managed to capture 20 per cent of the country while sustaining 1 million casualties in the process.
Would anyone view this as an American victory?
At sea, the Ukrainian achievement has been equally impressive.
On February 24, 2022, the Russian Black Sea Fleet had complete naval superiority, and it seemed that Ukraine had no means to counter it.
One of the most famous incidents that day occurred on Snake Island.
The flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the cruiser Moskva, sent a radio message to the small garrison, saying “I am a Russian warship.
I suggest you lay down your arms and surrender to avoid bloodshed and unnecessary casualties”.
In reply, the garrison sent the message “Russian warship, go fuck yourself”.
Though Snake Island was swiftly conquered by the Russians, at the end of June 2022 the Ukrainians recaptured the island.
By then, the Moskva and numerous other Russian vessels were at the bottom of the Black Sea.
By making innovative use of missiles and drones, the Ukrainians managed to neutralise Russia’s naval superiority, changed the very nature of naval warfare, and drove what remained of the Russian Black Sea Fleet to seek shelter in safe harbours far from the front.
In the air, too, Russia has failed.
Whereas in its 12-day war against Iran in June 2025 Israel won control of the Iranian sky within about 36 hours without losing a single manned aircraft, Russia has so far failed to gain control of Ukraine’s sky.
The Russian air force has sustained crippling losses — not least in the Ukrainian strike on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet in June.
Russia has reacted by relying on long-range missiles and drones to terrorise Ukrainian cities.
Ukraine has refrained from replying in kind, and largely avoids hitting civilian targets in Russia, but Ukrainian drones have shown considerable ability to hit airfields and infrastructure, especially oil refineries, hundreds of kilometres within Russia.
The Ukrainians have achieved all this without any direct military intervention from outside.
So far, the only third party that has intervened directly in the war is North Korea, which has sent more than 10,000 soldiers to fight for Russia.
Nato countries have provided Ukraine with massive support in weapons and other resources, but no Nato troops have been formally involved in the actual fighting.
It should also be noted that prior to February 24, 2022 and for a long time afterwards, Nato countries refused to provide Ukraine with many types of more sophisticated heavy weapons and restricted the use of others.
Some of these restrictions are still in force.
Consequently, in 2022 the Ukrainians won the victories at Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson with only limited weaponry.
If they had been given full support from the beginning, they might well have won the war by late 2022 or the summer of 2023, before Russia could rebuild its army and war economy.
In 2025, the weakest link in Ukraine’s defences still lies in the minds of its western friends.
As Russia has failed to gain air and naval superiority or to break through the Ukrainian defences on land, Russian strategy seeks to outflank the Ukrainian position by attacking the will of the Americans and Europeans.
By spreading propaganda that Russian victory is inevitable, the Russians hope the Americans and Europeans will lose heart, withdraw their support from Ukraine and force it to surrender.
Succumbing to this propaganda will be a disaster not only for Ukraine, but for Nato countries that would lose much of their credibility, as well as their best defence against growing Russian threats.
As Russia continues to expand its military and its war economy, Europe is scrambling to re-arm, but in the meantime the biggest and most experienced fighting force standing between the Russian army and Warsaw, Berlin or Paris is the Ukrainian army.
The Polish, German and French armies each have around 200,000 soldiers, most of whom have never seen combat.
The Ukrainian army, in contrast, has approximately 1 million soldiers, most of whom are seasoned veterans.
After two weeks that have seen Russian jet incursions into Estonia and Russian drones over Poland and Romania (and perhaps also Denmark), Europeans should reflect on the fact that if Russia attacks Europe tomorrow, and the US chooses to stay out of the fight, Europe’s biggest military asset will be the Ukrainian army.
The US military, too, has much to learn from Ukraine’s battlefield experience and cutting-edge weapons industry.
Particularly in the field of drone warfare, Ukraine’s innovations and trove of data make it a world leader.
This is probably part of the reason President Trump has lately become more supportive of Ukraine.
He likes to back winners.
It is impossible to tell how the war will develop, since it depends on future decisions.
But in one crucial respect, the Ukrainian victory is already decisive and irreversible.
War is the continuation of politics by other means.
War is not won by the side that conquers more land, destroys more cities, or kills more people.
War is won by the side that achieves its political aims.
And in Ukraine, it is already clear that Putin has failed to achieve his chief war aim — the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.
In many of his speeches and essays, Putin has argued that Ukraine was never a real nation.
This, for example, was the main message of his lengthy essay titled “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, which he published in July 2021.
According to Putin, Ukraine was a fake entity, encouraged by foreign powers as a ploy to weaken Russia.
Putin launched the war to prove to the world that the Ukrainian nation doesn’t exist, that Ukrainians are actually Russians, and that, given half a chance, the Ukrainians would joyfully be absorbed into Mother Russia.
Nobody knows how many more people will die because of Putin’s delusions and ambitions, but one thing that has been made abundantly clear to the entire world is that Ukraine is a very real nation, and that millions of Ukrainians are willing to fight tooth and nail to remain independent of Russia.
Nations aren’t made of clumps of earth or of drops of blood.
They are made of stories, images and memories in people’s minds.
No matter how the war unfolds in the coming months, the memory of the Russian invasion, of Russian atrocities and of Ukrainian sacrifices, will continue to sustain Ukrainian patriotism for generations to come.
The writer is a historian, philosopher and author
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