Can Ukraine survive without US military aid? Could Kyiv’s European partners potentially fill the gap in weapons deliveries? Policymakers, analysts, and commentators around the world have been wrestling with these questions in recent weeks as they come to terms with US President Donald Trump’s foreign policy pivot away from Europe and his administration’s overtures toward Russia.
While the urgency and importance of this debate cannot be overstated, there has been a tendency to overlook Ukraine’s own agency and the country’s ability to defend itself. It is true that the Ukrainian war effort since 2022 has relied heavily on Western support, but Ukraine’s military has also evolved dramatically over the past three years to become by far Europe’s biggest and most effective fighting force.
Ukraine currently has approximately one million people in arms defending the country against Russia’s invasion. This makes the Ukrainian Armed Forces more than four times larger than Europe’s next biggest military. Ukraine’s troops are also battle-hardened and have unmatched knowledge of the twenty-first century battlefield. Indeed, in many areas, they are now setting the standards for others to follow.
Crucially, Ukraine’s army is backed by a highly innovative and rapidly expanding domestic military-industrial complex that is harnessing the excellence of Ukraine’s prewar tech sector and reviving long neglected Soviet era capabilities. Any discussion on the likely future course of the war against Russia and the terms of any peace deal must therefore take into account the fact that Ukraine is a now major military power in its own right.
For the past year, international media coverage of Russia’s invasion has tended to create the impression that Putin’s army is slowly but surely grinding forward toward a costly but inevitable victory. The reality is less straightforward.
Russian troops reclaimed the battlefield initiative in early 2024 and have been advancing fairly steadily ever since, but they have only achieved relatively modest territorial gains while suffering record casualties. Analysts estimate that at the current pace, it would take Russia almost a century to complete the conquest of Ukraine.
Viewed from a broader perspective encompassing the entire full-scale invasion, Ukraine’s military performance becomes even more impressive. Since spring 2022, The Ukrainian Armed Forces have succeeded in liberating around half of all the territory seized by the Russian army, and have won a series of key battles in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson regions. Russia has been unable to capture and hold a single Ukrainian regional capital, and is still struggling to force Ukrainian troops out of Russia itself following Kyiv’s bold August 2024 cross-border incursion into the Kursk region.
Far beyond the battlefield, Ukraine has also overachieved. In the Black Sea, Ukrainian marine 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, long-range Ukrainian drones strike at military assets, logistical hubs, and energy infrastructure with growing frequency.
Ukraine’s resilience owes much to the international military assistance the country has received. However, this support has often been subject to delays and has frequently fallen victim to political considerations that have cost Ukraine dearly. In order to minimize these vulnerabilities, the Ukrainian authorities have prioritized the development of the country’s domestic defense industry.
The results have been striking. In 2025, the overall capacity of Ukraine’s defense industry is expected to reach a new high of $35 billion, up from just $1 billion at the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion. While this capacity is not yet being fully utilized due to defense budget limitations, Ukraine now produces around one-third of all weapons, ammunition, and equipment used by the country’s armed forces. In critical areas such as drone production, the figure is now close to one hundred percent.
Meanwhile, Kyiv is encouraging international partners to invest in Ukrainian defense sector companies and finance weapons production in Ukraine. A number of countries have already responded by committing large sums and promoting joint projects within the Ukrainian defense industry. This trend is expected to gain pace during 2025 as the US pivot away from Europe fuels increased defense spending across the continent.
Ukraine’s biggest defense industry success has been the development of the domestic drone manufacturing sector. On the eve of the full-scale invasion, the country boasted only a handful of drone producers. The sector has now mushroomed to include over 200 businesses producing millions of drones annually, with output expected to treble during the current year. In order to harness this rapidly growing strike potential and maximize battlefield impact, Ukraine last year established a special branch of the armed forces dedicated to drone warfare.
Ukraine’s emergence as a drone warfare superpower owes much to the country’s strong tech traditions and entrepreneurial spirit. Since 2022, Ukrainian drone developers have proved highly innovative and are now recognized internationally as world leaders in military drone technologies. “Foreign models are like Toyotas now, while Ukrainian drones are Mercedes. Ours are just leagues ahead,” one Ukrainian commander told Ukrainska Pravda recently.
Ukraine now has a formidable arsenal of drones for use on the battlefield, at sea, and for long-range attacks against targets across Russia. The country also has a growing collection of hybrid missile-drones and missiles. President Zelenskyy recently confirmed that Ukraine had carried out an attack with the domestically produced Long Neptune cruise missile for the first time, underlining the country’s growing potential to strike back at Russia. Further innovations are in the pipeline, with domestic missile production expected to increase in the coming months if Kyiv is able to secure the necessary additional funding.
The Ukrainian military still faces a range of major challenges. The biggest issue remains manpower shortages. So far, Kyiv has sought to address mobilization problems by updating training and offering recruits the opportunity to choose the unit they will serve in, but shortfalls persist. A new initiative aimed at potential recruits between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five was launched in February 2025, featuring attractive enlistment packages and one-year service contracts.
There is also no escaping the fact that Ukraine remains dependent on Western support in order to maintain the country’s war effort. While officials in Kyiv have spoken of increasing the share of domestically produced war materials to fifty percent, Ukraine cannot realistically expect to match Russia’s overwhelming advantages in manpower, firepower, industrial capacity, and financing without continued assistance from the West.
Despite these limitations, Ukraine’s growing military strength must be taken into consideration during coming negotiations over a potential compromise peace deal with Russia. While nobody in Kyiv would relish the grim prospect of fighting on without Western assistance, the country is far from defenseless and will not accept a bad peace that places Ukrainian statehood in jeopardy.
Russia made the mistake of underestimating Ukraine in 2022, and has since paid a terrible price. Three years on, there can be little 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 deal. It should also guarantee Ukraine’s place at the heart of Europe’s changing security system as the continent adjusts to the new geopolitical realities of an isolationist United States and an expansionist Russia.
Serhii Kuzan is Chairman of the Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center (USCC). He formerly served as an adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (2022-2023) and advisor to the Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council (2014).
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