Can Ukraine survive without U.S. military aid? Could Kyiv’s European partners potentially fill the arms gap? Politicians, analysts, and commentators around the world have wrestled with these questions in recent weeks as they try to come to terms with U.S. President Donald Trump’s foreign policy pivot away from Europe and his administration’s overtures to Russia.
While the urgency and importance of this debate cannot be overstated, there is a tendency to ignore Ukraine’s own agency and the country’s ability to defend itself. It is true that Ukraine’s military efforts since 2022 have relied heavily on Western support, but the Ukrainian military has also evolved significantly over the past three years, becoming by far the largest and most effective fighting force in Europe.
Ukraine currently has about a million men in arms defending the country from Russian invasion. That makes the Ukrainian Armed Forces more than four times larger than Europe’s second-largest army. Ukrainian troops are also battle-hardened and have unrivaled knowledge of the twenty-first-century battlefield. Indeed, in many areas, they now set the standard for others to follow.
Crucially, Ukraine’s military is supported by a highly innovative and rapidly growing domestic military-industrial complex that is capitalizing on the superiority of Ukraine’s pre-war technology sector and reviving long-forgotten capabilities from the Soviet era. Any discussion of the likely future course of the war against Russia and the terms of any peace agreement must therefore take into account the fact that Ukraine is now a major military power in its own right.
Over the past year, international media coverage of Russia's invasion has tended to create the impression that Putin's army is slowly but surely advancing toward a costly but inevitable victory. The reality is less clear.
Russian forces regained the initiative on the battlefield in early 2024 and have been advancing steadily since, but they have made only relatively modest territorial gains while suffering record losses. Analysts estimate that at the current pace, it will take Russia almost a century to complete its conquest of Ukraine.
When viewed from a broader perspective that encompasses the entire full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s military performance becomes even more impressive. Since spring 2022, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have succeeded in liberating about half of all territory captured by the Russian army, and have won a number of key battles in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson regions. Russia has failed to capture and hold any of Ukraine’s regional capitals, and is still trying to push Ukrainian forces out of Russia itself after Kyiv’s bold August 2024 invasion of the Kursk region.
Far beyond the battlefield, Ukraine has also outdone itself. In the Black Sea, Ukrainian naval drones have revolutionized naval warfare and forced Putin to withdraw his fleet from Russian-occupied Crimea to the relative safety of Russian ports. Deep inside Russia, Ukrainian long-range drones are striking military installations, logistics hubs, and energy infrastructure with increasing frequency.
Ukraine’s resilience owes much to the international military assistance the country has received. However, this support has often been delayed and has often fallen victim to political considerations that have come at great cost to Ukraine. To minimize these vulnerabilities, Ukrainian authorities have prioritized the development of the country’s domestic defense industry.
The results have been astounding. In 2025, Ukraine’s total defense industry is expected to reach a new high of $35 billion, up from just $1 billion at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. While that volume is not yet fully utilized due to defense budget constraints, Ukraine currently produces about a third of all weapons, ammunition, and equipment used by the country’s armed forces. In critical areas such as drone production, that figure is now close to 100 percent.
Meanwhile, Kyiv is calling on international partners to invest in Ukrainian defense companies and finance weapons production in Ukraine. Several countries have already responded by providing large sums and promoting joint projects in the Ukrainian defense industry. This trend is expected to accelerate in 2025, as the U.S. shift away from Europe fuels increased defense spending across the continent.
The biggest success story for Ukraine’s defense industry has been the development of a domestic drone manufacturing sector. On the eve of the full-scale invasion, the country boasted only a handful of drone manufacturers. Today, the sector has grown to include more than 200 companies producing millions of drones annually, with production volumes expected to triple this year. To harness this rapidly growing strike potential and maximize its impact on the battlefield, Ukraine last year created a special branch of the military dedicated to drone warfare.
Ukraine’s rise to become a drone warfare superpower owes much to the country’s strong technological tradition and entrepreneurial spirit. Since 2022, Ukrainian drone developers have proven themselves highly innovative and are now internationally recognized as world leaders in military drone technology. “Foreign models are now like Toyota, and Ukrainian drones are Mercedes. Ours are leagues ahead,” one Ukrainian commander recently told Ukrayinska Pravda.
Ukraine now has a formidable arsenal of drones for use on the battlefield, at sea, and for long-range attacks on targets across Russia. The country also has a growing collection of hybrid drone missiles and rockets. President Zelenskyy recently confirmed that Ukraine carried out its first attack using a domestically produced Long Neptune cruise missile, underscoring the country’s growing capability to strike back at Russia. Further innovations are in the works, and domestic missile production is expected to increase in the coming months if Kyiv can secure the necessary additional funding.
The Ukrainian military still faces a number of serious problems. The biggest problem remains the shortage of personnel. Until now, Kyiv has tried to solve the mobilization problems by updating training and offering recruits the opportunity to choose the unit in which to serve, but the shortage persists. A new initiative aimed at potential recruits aged eighteen to twenty-five was launched in February 2025, offering attractive enlistment packages and one-year service contracts.
There is also no escaping the fact that Ukraine remains dependent on Western support to sustain the country’s war effort. While officials in Kyiv talk of increasing the share of domestic military material to fifty percent, Ukraine cannot realistically expect to match Russia’s overwhelming advantage in manpower, firepower, industrial capacity, and funding without continued Western assistance.
Despite these limitations, Ukraine’s growing military might must be taken into account in the upcoming negotiations on a potential compromise peace deal with Russia. While no one in Kyiv will rejoice at the grim prospect of continuing to fight without Western help, the country is far from defenseless and will not accept a bad peace that would threaten Ukrainian statehood.
Russia made the mistake of underestimating Ukraine in 2022, and has since paid a terrible price. Three years on, there can be no doubt that the Ukrainian army is now the most powerful fighting force in Europe. This military reality will help shape the contours of any future peace agreement. It should also ensure Ukraine’s place at the center of Europe’s changing security order, as the continent adjusts to the new geopolitical realities of an isolationist United States and an expansionist Russia.
Serhiy Kuzan is the Chairman of the Ukrainian Center for Security and Cooperation (UCSC). Previously, he served as an adviser to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine (2022-2023) and an adviser to the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (2014).
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