Opinion: After Its Heroic Resistance, Is This the End for Ukraine, and for Europe?

Pietro Slongo
Nov 26
4 min read

Over the course of its war of independence against Russian aggression, Ukraine has defied all odds.

In Vladimir Putin’s vision, Russian tanks were meant to enter Kyiv within days, “liberating” the population from their democratically elected president Volodymyr Zelensky, who, in 2019, had based his campaign, among other things, on finding a diplomatic solution to the conflict that Russia had sparked in the Donbas five years earlier.

Yet, for all his willingness to negotiate, President Zelensky would never sacrifice his people’s independence and sovereignty. Not only because of his Churchillian determination, but because in a democracy the president is accountable only to the people, and to no one else.

Since 2014, the obstacle Vladimir Putin has refused to confront has never been Ukraine’s presidents - whether Poroshenko or Zelensky, but the Ukrainian people themselves. Faced with the concrete threat of losing their freedom once again, ordinary Ukrainians rose from the ashes and built, with their own hands, one of the most remarkable resistance movements in modern history.

This movement was never bound to a single man but to an ideal: that only Ukraine, as an independent nation, can decide its place on the international stage. Their struggle has always been about more than land. It is about belonging: choosing a future defined by liberty, transparency, and human dignity. Only through this lens can one truly understand their enduring and defiant spirit against anyone who stands between them and their future.

However, recent corruption scandals involving political elites close to President Zelensky have shaken the public opinion. Exploiting this discontent, Vladimir Putin has cynically maneuvered Donald Trump into proposing a “peace deal” that would amount to Ukraine’s capitulation, a shameful and disgraceful settlement in all but name. It’s a cynical bargain that would redraw Europe’s borders by blackmail and signal to every dictator that Western resolve ends where political convenience begins.

Despite his army’s inability to seize more than 1% of Ukraine’s territory in the past 1,000 days, Putin now finds an ally in Trump, who acts as his intermediary by pushing a scheme that would hand a dynamic Ukraine back to Russia and return Eastern Europe to Moscow’s orbit following a possible American withdrawal from European countries geographically close to Russia.

At this pivotal moment, pressure on Zelensky has never been greater. With little else to rely on, Zelensky now finds himself cornered and can hardly count on his European allies. Since February 24, 2022, Europe has been remarkably short-sighted, leaning far too heavily on American leadership. Instead of preparing for the very real possibility of a second Trump term, European leaders have clung to President Biden’s cautious foreign policy, supporting Ukraine only as long as Russia was not “provoked.”

But deterrence requires resolve. Aggressors must be decisively punished, not merely tolerated, if future wars are to be prevented.

Even after the 2024 U.S. elections, Europe has continued to watch passively from the sidelines. No major initiative, such as seizing the €140 billion in frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s reconstruction, has materialized.

President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to extend France’s nuclear deterrence to cover the European Union was swiftly dismissed, out of fear that even discussing military readiness might feed populist or anti-establishment narratives. Yet, this very hesitation has allowed those same movements to thrive, capitalizing on the insecurity created by leaders’ inaction.

A few countries, mostly in Eastern Europe, understand the stakes because they’ve lived under Moscow’s rule. The rest, even when they pledge aid, give too little to matter. Italy, for example, despite all the grand rhetoric, has contributed only about 0.1% of its GDP to Ukraine’s defense.

If the West loses Ukraine, it won’t be because Ukrainians stopped fighting. It will be because Europe stopped believing. In the end, the only real power left lies with the people. Ukrainians showed that courage and conviction can move history. Europeans must now show the same and push their leaders to act before the values they claim to defend become just another memory from a freer time.

As Winston Churchill once reminded us:

“The destiny of mankind is not decided by material computation. When great causes are on the move in the world, stirring all men's souls, drawing them from their firesides, casting aside comfort, wealth and the pursuit of happiness in response to impulses at once awe-striking and irresistible, we learn that we are spirits, not animals, and that something is going on in space and time, and beyond space and time, which, whether we like it or not, spells duty.”

That sense of duty is now Europe’s to reclaim, before history once again reminds us of its cost.