When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Washington and Europe expected a quick Russian victory. Russia’s population was more than three times that of Ukraine, its military four times larger and gross domestic product 10 times bigger. The power imbalance was just too great. That Russia was entirely in the wrong meant little. Any realist would tell you Ukraine would fall.
Then President Volodymyr Zelenskyy refused to flee, and Russia couldn’t take Kyiv. Observers decided that Ukraine just might be able to stave off defeat, as long as generous U.S. military assistance kept coming. Ukraine faced steep losses but stayed in the fight.
Then Donald Trump returned to the U.S. presidency in January 2025. He had spent years blaming Ukraine for being invaded and covering for Vladimir Putin’s war crimes, so it now seemed inevitable that U.S. support would end and Ukraine would lose. U.S. assistance nearly dried up, and Trump pressed Zelenskyy to accept Putin’s terms. Observers in Washington and European capitals began to debate exactly how much territory Ukraine would have to surrender to sue for peace.
And yet, 18 months into Trump’s second term and four years into Russia’s full-scale war, Ukraine still hasn’t fallen. In fact, it’s beginning to gain the upper hand. April was the first month in nearly two years that Russia had a net loss in territory. In a year full of bad news stories, Ukraine is offering hope that the good guys just might win.
How has Ukraine defied expectations? To be sure, Europe stepped up its aid to help fill the gap caused by reduced U.S. assistance. But that aid had never been enough to bring Ukraine victory. It had merely helped keep Ukraine from losing outright.
Ukraine is turning the tide with Ukrainian resolve and innovation. Should it manage to end this war with its independence intact and its territory defensible, that won’t only make for a sweeter victory, but the country that emerges will be stronger for it too.
Ukraine couldn’t outdo Russia in force, so it had to in ingenuity and collective commitment. The Ukrainian public mobilized to resist. Some civilians joined volunteer battalions or were drafted to join the military, while others contributed in different ways, from intelligence gathering and crowd-sourcing funding to food and medical distribution networks and critical infrastructure repair.
The civilian contribution most consequential to the fight, however, has been the rapid advances in the home-grown defense industry. Ukrainian professionals who once worked in finance, information technology, construction, game design and architecture have turned their civilian capabilities to military means. The results have been staggering.
Ukraine is rapidly producing cheap drones that impede Russia’s advances. It has short-range drones for the battlefield, midrange drones that are disrupting Russia’s logistics resupply and troop rotation and long-range drones that can strike targets deep within Russian territory, eroding Putin’s sense of security back home. Its unmanned ground vehicles are conducting reconnaissance, evacuations and logistical missions. Combat robots are even recapturing territory without putting soldiers at risk. Ukraine faces a foe that also has access to cheap drones, so perhaps its most important development has been artificial intelligence-powered drone interceptors, which have impeded at low cost Russia’s ability to inflict heavy losses.
Ukrainian technology is now in high demand from countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia that need similar defenses against inexpensive but deadly drones. After all, the drones Russia is using are Iranian-made Shaheds.
Ukraine’s defense industry is now producing this technology at scale. As of early 2026, its companies were producing up to 1,000 interceptor drones a day. More than 500 companies are now manufacturing drones inside the country, producing millions each year. Most of these companies didn’t exist before 2022.
And the innovation keeps coming. Engineers are working directly with combat units to enable real-time feedback that drives constant improvements and adjustments as new technology is battlefield-tested. These are the kinds of heroic developments that only a crisis makes possible. Necessity is the mother of invention, after all.
Undoubtedly, Putin still has the capacity and will to inflict serious damage on Ukraine’s people and infrastructure. It is unlikely this war will end absent some kind of diplomatic resolution. But Ukraine looks more and more likely to be entering the next round of negotiations with a strong upper hand.
The importance of this today goes far beyond Ukraine. The rules-based international order was established in the wake of World War II to deter wars of aggression and provide an alternative to the long-standing global reality of might makes right. That order has been faltering, flouted repeatedly by the powerful who have faced no consequences for aggression, leaving the world overall more dangerous for everyone else.
But Ukraine is fighting back against that bleak reality. In a clear battle between right and wrong, the bully may lose. Ukraine may ultimately prevail through grit, determination and imagination.
War is unpredictable, and the tide may well change again. But, for now, it’s good to see the good guys take the lead.
Elizabeth Shackelford is a senior adviser with the Institute for Global Affairs at Eurasia Group and a foreign affairs columnist for the Chicago Tribune. She is also a distinguished lecturer with the Dickey Center at Dartmouth College. She was previously a U.S. diplomat and is the author of “The Dissent Channel: American Diplomacy in a Dishonest Age.”
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