Ukraine’s battlefield prospects against Russia clearly dimmed when the Trump administration took office. Trump has consistently signaled that, at the very least, military aid resembling anything close to that the Biden administration bankrolled would not be forthcoming. Ukraine’s route to a secure and sovereign future thus became much narrower—so much so that a dark pessimism descended on many European observers.
But the excessive gloom is uncalled for—and counterproductive. Ukraine already produces the world’s most advanced front-line weaponry and innovates with cunning on the battlefield. It has already routed Russia in the Black Sea theater and, recently, pulled off another bombastic coup in Operation Spider Web, targeting 41 aircraft with drone strikes deep into Russia and likely destroying at least 10 of them with drone strikes deep into Russia. As long as the Ukrainians’ determination to fight on is undiminished, there are strategies available to help them win—even without U.S. support at the levels to which they have become accustomed.
Many attendees at last week’s Black Sea Security Forum in Odesa, Ukraine, were engaged in the wishful thinking that U.S. President Donald Trump will eventually come around on Ukraine and embrace the country as an ally deserving of tens of billions of dollars of continued support once he grasps that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been playing him all along, betraying his duplicity in several rounds of cease-fire talks.
But a far more likely outcome is that Trump blames both Moscow and Kyiv for failing to do as he instructs and withdraws from active involvement in diplomacy while also discontinuing U.S. arms supplies to Kyiv.
But crucially, the Trump administration will not abandon Ukraine completely. U.S. policymakers—among them a majority of Republicans—realize that there is too much for Washington to lose from a potential Ukrainian collapse. The United States can, and probably will, extend offers similar to previous support where it doesn’t cost the Washington excessively.
Washington insiders who deal with the Trump administration on Ukraine say that it will not suspend Ukraine’s access to the U.S. satellite intelligence, which has been crucial for Ukraine’s battlefield targeting. This advanced satellite imagery is absolutely key for Ukraine: It is its eyes and ears.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has lent Ukraine access to a commercial satellite imagery platform that uses high-resolution radar imagery to track Russian troop movements, which the Ukrainian military uses to plan counteroffensives. As the New York Times reported, the Ukrainian military depends overwhelmingly on coordinates from U.S. intelligence for most of its operations involving long-range strikes.
Critically, this is one of the few pieces of technology that neither the Ukrainians nor their European allies can substitute. Without it, as Ukraine was for about a week in March—when the Trump administration was roughing up Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—Kyiv would find itself at an ominous disadvantage. But this won’t happen, because continued Ukrainian access enables the United States to have a finger in the war rather than stand on the sidelines as a useless observer—and, since it’s already in place, costs very little.
Intelligence sharing aside, Ukraine’s victory now hinges on Europe stepping up as its dominant ally and benefactor—and there is every sign that it is doing just that, if slowly. Europe’s leading powers—France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Poland—are in the process of asserting leadership in the Russia-Ukraine war, and to that end, together with EU institutions, they have made prodigious sums available to weaponize Ukraine and cover its bills. The European Union already has a package of stiffer sanctions against Russia in progress.
The Europeans’ pledges of support are more than just lip service: They understand the centrality of this war to long-term European security, so much so that it is now their top priority. There has been a flurry of diplomatic activity since Friedrich Merz took the Germany chancellery on May 6, and that activity amounts to more than mere words. With an economy nine times greater than Russia’s, the European Union is already in the process of replacing—and it has the potential to surpass—the United States as Ukraine’s chief supplier of armaments and financial aid.
From 2021 to 2024, EU members’ defense budgets jumped from 218 billion euros ($248 billion) to 326 billion euros ($372 billion), and a further increase of at least 100 billion euros ($114 billion) is projected by 2027. The EU institutions are now involved on an entirely new level: The European Commission is bolstering the European Defense Union, which will help build out the bloc’s defense industry and stimulate ammunition production.
In March, the program that was originally titled ReArm Europe was recast as European Readiness 2030, with the aspiration to leverage 800 billion euros ($912 billion) for defense spending over five years. So, too, have individual countries reached deeply into their pockets, well aware that they are on their own now.
In March, for example, Merz—then the incoming German chancellor—created a 500 billion euro ($570 billion) debt pool for defense expenditures and German infrastructure. This year, two non-EU members—the U.K. and Norway, both part of the “coalition of the willing” that was launched by France and the U.K. after the Munich Security Conference in February—pledged an additional 450 million British pounds (about $600 million) of military support to Kyiv.
Germany’s IWF Kiel calculates that in order to offset U.S. aid to Ukraine—both military and fiscal—Europe needs to double its expenditures. The recently announced new monies are more than enough to do this: Since February 2022, U.S. aid has totaled about $66.9 billion in military assistance to as well as more than $50 billion in nonmilitary financial aid. (Nota bene: The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that 90 percent of that military aid is paid out within the United States to contractors to build new weapons or to replenish arms sent to Ukraine from American stockpiles.)
Certainly, Europe will be at pains to replace some of the U.S. hardware—in particular, air defenses. Currently, Washington provides the lion’s share of rocket launchers such as HIMARS systems and ATACMS missiles, howitzer ammunition, and long-range anti-aircraft systems such as Patriots. (Europe already does the heavy lifting in terms of howitzers and battle tanks.)
“European missile defense systems can help defend Ukraine against Russian cruise missile strikes,” researchers argued in a May Center for Strategic and International Studies report, “but the U.S. Patriot is the only NATO system that can defend against Russian ballistic missile attacks.” In addition to the investment in their own arms industries to manufacture this until-now-donated U.S. hardware, the Europeans can simply purchase these systems from the United States. That’s a deal that Trump has said interests him. And there are other potential sellers, too, such as South Korea and Isreal.
The new ace in the hole is Ukraine’s superlative defense sector, which has blossomed into one of Europe’s most ingenuous and advanced arms industries—and produces much of what its military requires (including roughly 40 percent of all weaponry) at a fraction of the cost and twice as fast. For every billion that the United States has paid out to its own industry, the Europeans can get several times as much from the Ukrainians—and without the same transfer headaches and costs. In addition to its hailed drone production, Ukraine reports that it produces more howitzers and artillery systems than all of Europe combined. The Ukrainians know exactly what they need and are constantly tweaking their hardware to conditions on the battlefield.
The Danes have paved the way in purchasing weapons for the Armed Forces of Ukraine directly from Ukrainian manufacturers. The so-called Danish model appears to be a hit: This year, Denmark, Sweden, Canada, Norway, and Iceland will fork out a combined 1.3 billion euros for Ukrainian artillery, strike drones, missiles, and anti-tank weapons that were created in Ukraine. About 830 million euros of this sum stems from the EU, which is drawing on the windfall profits of frozen Russian assets—an overdue and highly fortuitous move.
Ukrainians are understandably worn down from the war and eager for a return to normalcy. But Putin’s strategy to destroy morale by bombing civilians is not working. It is the Russians who have to worry about morale as ever more troops die and sanctions choke the country’s economy. The Ukrainians—and Europe can thank them for it—are showing a resourcefulness and resilience that earns them the West’s support. If the United States is not going to be there for them, then Europe must—and it can. In fact, it’s in the process of happening now.