End Game Ukraine
October 4th, 2026
Overall, some 323.75 sq. km gained, in one spot the enemy pushed back 7.56 km.
I was asked an interesting question the other day from one of my correspondents: what is the end game and is there a strategy to get there? That’s a very hard question.
The answer, of course, begins with another hard question: what is Ukraine trying to achieve, what is the goal?
It’s easy to say “Independent Ukraine.” All well and good but how do you define Ukraine? Is Ukraine the country inside the 1991 borders, including, obviously, Crimea? Or Ukraine less Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk blasts? Or something else? Clearly, in their hearts, Ukrainians want the first answer: Ukraine as defined in 1991.
There are, as I see it, three possible goals for the Ukraine - West coalition; there are obviously a whole host of other possible goals, but most are dangerous or foolish:
1) Survival of the nation of Ukraine
2) The bleeding of Russia
3) Holding off the end of the war until a concrete and readily executable answer makes itself known
In looking at these, we need to remember that the problem is framed on all sides by Ukrainian demographics and the Ukrainian economy. The population is shrinking and any solution has to account for the capacity to survive with a population of less than 20 million (current population is 32 million, population in 2022 was 43 million, population in 1991 was 52 million; population projected for 2055 is “less than 15 million”), and an economy smaller than the current - badly mauled - GDP. Economically, the country exists because the West is paying for it. The potential real GDP will, in all likelihood not be able to support a comprehensive defense of the entire country, so a follow-on alliance, and a quite extensive one, will be required to survive as an independent nation. If that isn't in the cards, then the war is already lost.
As for possible goals…
The first goal has two versions: A) the survival of Ukraine as it was defined in 1991, to include all of eastern Ukraine and Crimea. That case is, for all intents and purposes, impossible without a tremendous investment - outside investment, from Europe and the US; Europe could not do it alone in its current condition, it is not "healthy" enough economically, politically or militarily.
Or
B) the survival of a lesser Ukraine. This would (or should) mean the survival of an Ukraine that is defendable. This means the de facto ceding of some portion of eastern Ukraine. The question is: "What portion?" My answer to that is that you have to take a very hard look at the terrain and identify - as the Russians already have in the parts they occupy, the defendable terrain, and build real defenses and fall back in on those lines. Failure to do so will simply slow down the long term collapse. Russia might stop fighting, but they would probably restart. It needs to be made "too hard.” That line may well be the Dnepr River, but whatever it is, there needs to be the hard decision to build the necessary defenses based on that line.
And, any "defendable" Ukraine has to work within the construct of a Ukraine with a population of, perhaps, 20 million (or less), which means a professional military of perhaps 250,000, universal conscription, very highly automated and robotic, and... very expensive. That means, one supported by the West. At this point this seems to be the only possible future for a survivable Ukraine, even though a de facto smaller Ukraine.
The second goal is Machiavellian in the extreme, and dangerous. This path really translates into "fight 'till the last Ukrainian." To want to do this is to say “I don't care how many Ukrainians die, or are displaced or forced to flee their country, as long as Russians die.” It is horribly amoral. And, it runs two very real risks: attrition finally breaks Ukraine and then there is no Ukraine - and Russia occupies all of it, or, the real risk that at a certain point Russia says "enough," and uses other means - to include nuclear weapons - to end the war. Either way, this is a dangerously escalatory plan.
And despite what some may say about Russian casualties, Ukraine's casualty numbers are of the same raw magnitude, and the damaging of Russia is causing far worse proportional damage to Ukraine.
The third goal - which is perhaps really where we are, as Europe does not have a cohesive strategy - is to hold on and wait for the "deus ex machina" solution. This “strategy” also runs the risk of the war eventually escalating out of control, even as Europe slowly bleeds its own weapons stockpiles and continues to struggle with its own political survival. This can easily be called "Hope as a plan," and is, perhaps the most dangerous because it really has no definable end except an amorphous Ukraine survival, because we won't define which Ukraine survives, or explain the acceptance of the likely destroyed Ukraine that will remain in the wake of the war, and how that partial, badly damaged Ukraine will, in fact, survive in the long term.
There are, of course, other possible options: for example, Europe could always man-up, cobble together an army of 500,000 or more, push air forces and air defense forces forward into Ukraine, and fight the Russians alongside the Ukrainians. This is, in the end, the only way to fight and win the conventional - that is, non-nuclear - war. This would, of course, be massively escalatory and would be viewed by the Kremlin as a de facto invasion of Russia, with all the attendant risks (like nuclear exchange).
Meanwhile, there are a steady stream of upbeat stories of Ukrainian forces gaining on the ground, Ukrainian technology striking at the Russian army, Ukrainian improvisation again and again beating the Russians.
But there is an important caveat here: don’t confuse short-termed tactical success (and propaganda) with strategic outcomes. Tactics and technology win battles, but they don't win wars. See "Vietnam," or "Hannibal's Invasion of Italy," or a thousand wars in between. Include Iraq and Afghanistan and Somalia.
Daily reports talk about infiltrations and probes, and tell a story that isn’t clear: Have the Russians forces have actually moved forward into village X? Are counter attacks here and here really successful? Do the Russians not control town Y? And the Ukrainians may or may not control town Z? Then it’s noted that Ukrainian forces have, in the last 6 months, recovered 145.67 square kilometers of terrain, and in the last 4 weeks retook another 113.37 sq. km.
Are we sure it’s not 113.36? Maybe it’s 113.38 sq. km. As one of my boss’s used to say: we’re measuring with a micrometer and cutting with a chain saw. In fact, on any given day the front line is a “zone” that is several miles wide (at least) and neither side can readily move in it without getting “sniped” by FPV drones. Who controls what is a nebulous idea. It really is a “no mans land.”
In 2022 the Russians began this war with a monstrous strategic mistake based on a massively flawed assessment of what the Ukrainians would do if attacked. Remarkably - sadly - the Russians managed to recover from that mistake and began to refight the war. By the end of 2022 they instituted a war of attrition, a war not really designed to take land, but rather designed primarily to grind down Ukraine, to inflict casualties and destroy the country. That’s what they’re doing. There’s been some small, painfully slow taking of land, but in the end, that’s not the daily goal, the goal is to grind down Ukraine.
The casualty figures that are published on Russian losses (40,000+ per month) are both inflated, and conflated - killed, wounded, missing - all rolled together. What are they really? Hard to say, though Mediazone, the one meticulous open source number with merit, would place it in the neighborhood of perhaps 400,000 Russians killed in the entire war, currently running perhaps at 6-7,000 per month. And a similar number of severely wounded troops who will not return to duty. Add on top of that perhaps 15,000 other wounded per month. But here is the important point: Ukrainian casualties are of the same order of magnitude.
And while the strikes on Russian oil industry have gained notoriety in the news, Ukraine is being economically destroyed at a much higher rate.
Recent reporting on Ukraine’s Operation Vivaldi, which began at the start of the year, notes that it regained land north and east of the town of Lyman between mid August and the end of September, perhaps 125 sq km in a month of fighting, all in all a very small slice of land. The insistence is that the land is of tactical significance. Perhaps.
Or, perhaps what we have is this huge struggle going on and people are focused on tiny slices of land because there is nothing else. One source says Russian net gains for the first 9 months of 2026 equals 663 sq. km., one says Russia had a net loss of 108 sq. km., another says Russia had a net loss of 80.81 sq. km. To put this in perspective, Washington DC covers 158 sq km. In 9 months.
This is not winning, this is attrition warfare, attrition against an enemy with 5 times the population of Ukraine. Fighting for 9 months for pieces of farmland that add up to the size of Washington DC. That is at the heart of the discussion.
About those other numbers at the very top of the essay? A little perspective: those are from the Somme and Verdun, respectively.
