With such divergent political positions between Kiev and Moscow, the end of the war in Ukraine has become a labyrinth. Donald Trump's intervention and his chaotic peace process have not stopped the violence but rather amplified it: the dialogue table has whitewashed the Kremlin while its missiles destroy Ukrainian cities from a distance and pulverize its energy infrastructure. Attacks on Ukrainian cities have increased by 26% since the magnate returned to the White House. Vladimir Putin's regime, along with its propagandists, has done everything possible to contradict its words about peace with bellicose actions.
Faced with the current failure of the U.S. president's initiative, the Russian stalemate on the battlefield and the gradual degradation of its economy, European leaders (especially from Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom) have outlined a strategy agreed with Kiev: continue to wear down Moscow's finances until forcing its leaders to sit at the negotiation table, perhaps after the summer or by the end of it, this time with a sincere intention to achieve peace and not delay it.
EU diplomatic sources in Kiev reveal to this newspaper that "no one wants to step down from the current Trump initiative," but they are clear that "it is destined to fail due to Putin's maximalist attitude." It is also a peace plan in which Europe plays no part and whose final agreement is far from satisfactory. Faced with this stubborn reality, Kiev and Brussels have been preparing for at least two more years, although they hope that the Russian economy will begin to show signs of implosion or irreversible degradation long before.
"Russian President Vladimir Putin's unwavering determination to conquer more Ukrainian territory and gain total political control over Ukraine is seriously degrading Russia's military and economy at the expense of the Russian population, and Russia will increasingly have to deal with this degradation in the coming year," reports the Institute for the Study of War.
In the challenging situation in Ukraine, there is also some good news for Kiev: according to the Kiel Institute, which has been monitoring the delivery of Western weapons since the beginning of the invasion, "Europe has almost managed to compensate for all the weapons that the U.S. used to send to Ukraine during the Biden era, and then Trump stopped sending." Additionally, the EU agreed to finance Ukraine with a ¤90 billion loan through common European debt, a measure that Viktor Orban has currently blocked, but Brussels hopes to unblock it again in the coming weeks.
With that money, the Ukrainian state would resist for at least two more years, even with a critical situation in some cities suffering massive blackouts, which are lethal for the industry and businesses struggling to survive. This is why the exodus of Ukrainians to Europe has increased this winter.
What is this plan based on? Analyst Alexandra Porkopenko writes in The Economist that "the Russian economy has not collapsed, but it has entered the death zone," where "climbers begin to die without oxygen." According to her, Russia is "surviving by consuming its own future". Data confirms this view: since late 2025, Moscow's finances have shown increasing signs of stagnation and structural deterioration, although the numbers provided by its central bank are not very credible and seem to be manipulated: according to this institution, GDP growth remained around 1% in 2025 and is expected to turn negative in 2026 and 2027.
Inflation, which dropped to around 5.6% in 2025, rose in January 2026 to 6% year-on-year after the VAT increase and continues to pressure food and service prices, in some cases by 20% in two months. At the beginning of 2026, there is a drastic drop in oil revenues (the main fiscal source) almost halved year-on-year, putting the budget at risk. Private consumption has weakened significantly: restaurants and cafes are closing on a large scale, and household spending is at multi-year lows in major cities, reflecting a contraction in domestic consumption. For many Russians unaffected by the war, the battlefield is now their wallet.
The overall context is a business climate of depression, high interest rates despite recent cuts, pressure on state financing, widening budget deficits, and depleted national wealth reserves, all in an environment of persistent sanctions and lower energy revenues.
Furthermore, after months of pleading with the United States for an unspecified number of Tomahawk missiles (and Trump's refusal), Ukraine has successfully developed its own cruise missile, the Flamingo, capable of reaching Russian missile factories, as evidenced by the attack on the Votkinsk plant last weekend, where the Kremlin manufactures Iskander ballistic missiles, over 1,000 kilometers from the front.
Its armaments industry, funded by Europe, produces all types of drones used by its soldiers on the battlefield. With the current context of war robotization, Ukraine hopes to rely less on a slow and complicated mobilization, and increasingly opt for ground drones to defend positions, instead of sacrificing its suffering and diminished infantry for months without rotation. With this model, Ukraine could endure much longer.
The current negotiation framework, with Trump pressuring Zelensky to hand over Donbas to Russia and call for elections (which he would likely win again), only benefits Russia and businesses around the blonde president, but would grant Putin a victory he is far from achieving. Even then, the Kremlin may not accept a ceasefire, convinced that it can win a war that Ukraine can no longer win, but that Russia lost long ago.