Somewhere in the Donbas region, Ukrainian soldier Artem Bondarenko says he hasn’t slept through the night in months as he defends Eastern Ukraine. Explosions won’t let him. He is dodging drones and fighting in the freezing trenches in a war that turns four years old today. At the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion many experts gave Ukraine’s government a few days, maybe weeks, to survive. They predicted Russia’s military would roll into Kyiv, a puppet government would be installed, and the world would be left to decide how to respond to a fait accompli.
Instead, the war became the longest and deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II, and as of this anniversary, there’s no end in sight.
Where things stand on the ground. The 750-mile front line in eastern Ukraine has barely moved in months. Russia has made incremental gains in the strategically important eastern Donetsk region, expanding its control by less than 1% of Ukrainian territory in 2025. It has come at an extraordinary cost. Casualty figures are staggering, with estimates of over 1.5 million killed and wounded on both sides. Meanwhile, soldiers describe being stalked by drones and brutal trench warfare, but a defensive line holding.
“People are, without a doubt, exhausted,” says Mark Kreynovich, executive director of the humanitarian aid foundation Mission for Ukraine, who spoke to GZERO from inside the country. The constant barrage of drones overhead has added a deadly psychological toll to daily life, he says. One of the first questions Ukrainians ask each other when meeting is what floor they live on to assess how much danger they are in, in case of an attack. “You wake up in the morning, you read the news, you look at the photos,” Kreynovich says, “and you’re zooming in, trying to make out: does someone in my family live here? Does one of my friends live here? Who should I text?”
This exhaustion is exacerbated by daily power outages. Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been severely damaged during its coldest winter in more than a decade. Available generating capacity has fallen by more than three quarters since 2022, leaving millions of Ukrainians facing unreliable heat and electricity every day. The government has been riddled with scandals involving embezzlement in the energy sector, leading President Vladimir Zelensky to replace many in his inner circle.
The diplomatic stalemate. Just last week, US-brokered talks wrapped up in Geneva, the third round of direct negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian envoys. Both sides described the talks as “difficult,” with no sign of a breakthrough. Ukraine is resistant to giving up territory without iron-clad security guarantees. Russia, on the other hand, showed no signs of relenting in its maximalist demands: that Ukraine hand over 20% of the eastern Donetsk region it still holds, recognize Russia’s territorial annexations, and accept neutrality without meaningful security guarantees.
Kurt Volker, who served as US special representative during President Donald Trump’s first term and ambassador to NATO under former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, is blunt about why the gridlock persists. The Trump administration's strategy of pressuring Ukraine to give up land, rather than pushing Russia for a ceasefire, is “backwards,” he says. “Trump seems to believe that if Ukraine gives up territory, it'll end the war. That is simply not true.”
Still, Volker credits the current Trump administration with shifting from the “as long as it takes” approach under President Joe Biden to ending the war. “He’s done a lot of things,” Volker said. “But the thing he has not done is put pressure on Vladimir Putin to end the war. So everything else is ready, except that piece is missing.”
America is in the talks, but not the fight. The most consequential shift of the past year may not have been on the battlefield, but in the US retreating from military assistance – even as it leads negotiations – and Europe’s move to fill the void. In 2025, European military assistance rose by 67% above the 2022-2024 average. Olena Halushka, Head of the International Center for Ukrainian Victory, who coordinates with the European governments on Ukraine’s behalf, says there is a “growing understanding in many European countries that in case Russia attacks them directly, they will be left alone defending.” Halushka believes Ukraine’s war with Russia has shown their combat experience, and the military tech industry “are priceless assets” for Europeans.
On the ground, the disillusionment with Washington runs deep. Kreynovich says Ukrainians haven’t written off the US, but the reverence has curdled into something more complicated. In 2025, just 16% of Ukrainians viewed US leadership favorably, compared to 66% in 2022. “People understand that without the United States, we would not have gotten to this point,” says Kreynovich. “But people are extremely disillusioned.”
What comes next? The fourth anniversary happens to fall on Trump’s State of the Union address, a moment for the president to tout his wins and lay out what he hopes to still accomplish in front of a large audience. Volker says the president should seize the moment, call for an immediate ceasefire by a certain date, and make clear that failure to comply will trigger secondary sanctions, oil market pressure, and the lifting of weapons restrictions on Ukraine.
The US, he notes, still wields significant leverage over Russia. Russia’s oil revenues last month hit their lowest level in five years, and Urals oil, Russia’s flagship crude, is trading at its widest discount since 2023. Secondary US sanctions could crush Russia’s budget. “He should make clear that he’s given Vladimir Putin a year to end the war,” since Putin “has rejected him every step of the way,” says Volker.
With little progress in negotiations, the war in Ukraine is steadily rolling into its fifth year with no end in sight.
But inside Ukraine, the mood is neither defeatist nor triumphalist; it’s something more stubborn than anything else. Kreynovich is clear that while more Ukrainians may now be open to more compromise than before, nobody envisions simply laying down arms and moving on. The soldiers in the trenches, he says, aren’t fighting because Zelensky orders them to. “This is the will of the people, both those who have died and those who are sensitive about giving up their sacrifice in vain.”
