The Ukraine War in a Nutshell

I have some longer stuff coming on the Ukraine conflict, as the debate on how to end it reaches a boiling point. It’s useful to summarize more briefly my view of the four big questions of this war: what each of the combatants are fighting for, why Americans should care, and what the endgame should be. All of these remain misunderstood and caricatured in too much of the debate, which too frequently descends into ad hominem attacks or spins off into domestic partisanship. As a point of personal privilege, I’ll submit that my assessment of the war, its aims, and its proper end has been fairly consistent based on what I wrote in March 2022, March 2023, April 2023, June 2023, July 2023, September 2023, April 2024, and February 2025 (also here).

What is Ukraine fighting for? Its survival as a sovereign state. Sure, there is a laundry list of other things important to the Ukrainians. They’d very much like all their land back. They’d like to join the EU, an economic window to the West. They’d like to join NATO, which would greatly increase their defensive security. But none of those things is essential, and as the record of the early peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia in spring 2022 appears to illustrate, all of them were negotiable to Ukraine at the outset of the war. One thing was a deal-breaker, and should be a deal-breaker: any settlement must preserve not just Ukraine’s survival at the end of this war but also its capacity to deter or repel future Russian invasions aimed at extinguishing it.

About the Author

Dan McLaughlin

Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review Online and a fellow at National Review Institute.

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I have some longer stuff coming on the Ukraine conflict, as the debate on how to end it reaches a boiling point. It’s useful to summarize more briefly my view of the four big questions of this war: what each of the combatants are fighting for, why Americans should care, and what the endgame should be. All of these remain misunderstood and caricatured in too much of the debate, which too frequently descends into ad hominem attacks or spins off into domestic partisanship. As a point of personal privilege, I’ll submit that my assessment of the war, its aims, and its proper end has been fairly consistent based on what I wrote in March 2022, March 2023, April 2023, June 2023, July 2023, September 2023, April 2024, and February 2025 (also here).

What is Ukraine fighting for? Its survival as a sovereign state. Sure, there is a laundry list of other things important to the Ukrainians. They’d very much like all their land back. They’d like to join the EU, an economic window to the West. They’d like to join NATO, which would greatly increase their defensive security. But none of those things is essential, and as the record of the early peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia in spring 2022 appears to illustrate, all of them were negotiable to Ukraine at the outset of the war. One thing was a deal-breaker, and should be a deal-breaker: any settlement must preserve not just Ukraine’s survival at the end of this war but also its capacity to deter or repel future Russian invasions aimed at extinguishing it.