Ukraine’s Demands for Guarantees Collide With Reality on the Battlefield
By Jaffa Levy — 27 August 2025
Kyiv continues to press Western capitals for “security guarantees.” President Zelensky has raised the issue repeatedly in Washington, insisting that without binding assurances Ukraine will face another war. Yet talk of guarantees is premature: no guarantee can exist until hostilities end, and Moscow has made it plain that it will not stop until its objectives are secured.
Guarantees Without Power
Those objectives are unambiguous: demilitarisation, reducing Ukraine’s NATO-trained army from hundreds of thousands to a far smaller defensive force; de-Nazification, removing ultra-nationalist ideology and its political sponsors; and neutrality, with no future NATO alignment. Until those conditions are met, Russia sees no basis for ending the operation.
The Western Constraint
Europe lacks the military capacity to deploy and sustain significant forces inside Ukraine without American backing. The United States, meanwhile, is not prepared to fight Russia directly. Washington’s earlier ambition of using the conflict to impose a “strategic defeat” on Moscow has failed: sanctions did not collapse the Russian economy, political unrest never materialised, and the Russian state has expanded arms production while keeping society stable.
Any paper promise from Brussels or Washington is therefore unenforceable. The only credible settlement must be one Moscow recognises as legitimate — which means neutrality and structural change in Kyiv.
The War of Attrition
On the battlefield, the war is no longer about “big arrows” on maps but a grinding attritional struggle. Ukraine is being consumed at a faster rate than Russia. Recent fighting around Kupyansk and Pokrovsk revealed Ukrainian panic and local collapses. Although Kyiv counter-attacks and occasional terrain changes are reported, the overall trajectory is negative.
Russia commits forces methodically, confident in ammunition supply, tactics, and command. Commanders in the field express not despair but determination. They believe victory is inevitable — not in sudden breakthroughs, but in the steady erosion of Ukraine’s ability to sustain the fight.
Public Opinion Shifts
Inside Ukraine, the public mood reflects exhaustion. In 2022, only about a fifth of Ukrainians favoured negotiations; most were determined to fight until victory. By 2025, that number has flipped: barely a quarter still want to fight on, while around 70 percent now favour a negotiated end. This shift mirrors the battlefield reality: the war has become a war of attrition Ukraine cannot win, and society senses it.
What “Victory” Means
Victory, from Moscow’s standpoint, is defined terms:
- Ukraine stripped of NATO alignment,
- its military reduced to a limited defensive force,
- ultra-nationalist structures dismantled,
- neutrality imposed and codified.
This is not speculation but stated policy. Until those aims are met, the special military operation will continue. Guarantees written by Western capitals that deny this reality are branding exercises, not enforceable security.
The Hard Truth
Ukraine can insist on guarantees, but it no longer controls its destiny. By turning itself into a Western proxy, Kyiv forfeited independent decision-making. The decisive choice lies not in Kyiv but in Washington and Moscow — and Washington is losing interest in prolonging what it now sees as a lost cause.
A durable end will not come from “guarantees” but from recognising neutrality and the new balance of power on the ground. Anything less is rhetoric.