Ukraine, Russia and Europe after four years of war

Four years into the Russia-Ukraine war, the core problem is no longer who says they want negotiations, but who is structurally able to negotiate. Any serious deal would have to settle issues that are not technical details but pillars of the European security order: territory, Ukraine’s neutrality or alignment, and the future shape and limits of Ukraine’s armed forces. On these points, the positions remain fundamentally incompatible because each side reads compromise as political defeat.
    Europe sits inside a paradox. It is often treated as marginal in the most consequential diplomatic channels, yet it carries a large and growing share of the economic, budgetary, and political burden of sustaining the war. At the same time, European leaders publicly embrace a narrative of endurance: keep pressure high until Russia breaks. The problem is that endurance is not a slogan, it is a balance sheet. Russia’s economy is strained, but not collapsing. If Moscow can keep funding the war, the “wait for exhaustion” strategy risks turning into a long, expensive stalemate where the costs are European while the leverage is limited.
    On the battlefield, the dominant logic is attrition conducted as a system strategy. The target is not only units in the trenches, but the enabling architecture of a modern army: energy, logistics, railways, repair hubs, command nodes, depots. Striking electricity is not symbolic. It slows industry, disrupts communications, reduces mobility, and undermines the capacity to rotate forces. The cumulative effect is to compress Ukraine’s operational freedom: fewer reserves, harder movements, slower replacement of losses, more fragile command continuity.
    The decisive variable is manpower. When personnel shortages grow, rotation becomes impossible, training is shortened, cohesion weakens, and counterattacks become local and sporadic. An army can survive losing a weapons system. It struggles to survive the simultaneous erosion of people, power supply, and logistics. Over time, defence turns into permanent emergency management: which sector to reinforce first when every sector is under pressure.
    The southern axis highlights the fusion of military and economic warfare. Pressure on ports and maritime terminals is not only about geography; it is about revenue and survival. Sea access is an economic artery: exports, foreign currency, insurance, supply flows. When port capacity is degraded, the damage reaches beyond the front line into fiscal stability, production chains, and national resilience. If the war expands its operational horizon toward critical transport nodes, it becomes a campaign against the country’s economic oxygen as much as its armed forces.
    Three economic scenarios emerge.
    First, Russia sustains a war equilibrium. It accepts slower growth and higher domestic distortion while prioritising the military budget, adapting trade routes, and keeping industrial output aligned with wartime needs. This is not painless, but it can be durable if the political objective is clear and the state apparatus remains coherent.
    Second, Europe enters strategic fatigue. Stockpiles thin, production remains too slow, budgets strain, and public opinion fragments under inflationary pressures and competing domestic demands. The cost becomes institutional: the longer the war lasts, the more the EU’s internal divisions and strategic dependency are exposed.
    Third, Ukraine risks becoming structurally dependent. Weapons deliveries can keep defences alive, but a country also needs stable energy, repair capacity, export routes, and long-term economic visibility. Without these, support functions like a medical drip: it sustains, but it does not rebuild.
    The geopolitical conclusion is uncomfortable. Between Washington and Moscow, Europe often looks less like an actor and more like a stake: a rear base, a payer, a political stage, but not the table where the decisive terms are set. When policy becomes maximalist rhetoric, it stops being policy and turns into posture.
    Geo-economics is unforgiving. A long war means pressure on energy costs, industry, public finances, competitiveness, and social cohesion. It also deepens bloc dynamics, where every military decision carries industrial, technological, and financial dependency. In that framework, “forever war” is not a strategy; it is a trap.
    A peace that resembles surrender is politically impossible. A war without horizon is materially corrosive. Between the two lies a narrow corridor: a hard, imperfect settlement built on a realistic assessment of forces rather than on hope. Until Europe aligns its political narrative with the realities of endurance, it risks remaining in the worst position imaginable: outside the decision room, but at the centre of the bill. •

* Giuseppe Gagliano is an Italian journalist, geopolitical expert, and philosopher specialising in economic espionage, conflict analysis, and strategic studies, who writes for various Italian and international media. He is president and founder of the Centro Studi Strategici Carlo De Cristoforis, Cestudec, in Como and also teaches at the University of Calabria and the Istituto Alti Studi Strategici e Politici, IASSP, in Milan. He has published numerous articles on economic warfare and the role of intelligence agencies in modern politics.