In the event of a peace settlement dividing Ukraine in two, the nations of the West have a critical interest in strengthening the western half—both as a bulwark against Russian encroachment and as a beacon of European values.
Only months ago, U.S. officials stood firmly behind Ukraine, determined to make Russia and President Vladimir Putin—whom President Biden called a “murderous dictator”—pay for their aggression. Since then, the tide has shifted. Unlike his predecessor, President Trump appears less inclined to sustain the conflict, signaling a desire for a swift resolution.
For those eager to see an end to the war, this might seem promising. Yet without continued U.S. support, Ukraine’s ability to fight remains uncertain. As Washington recalibrates its stance, Kyiv faces the grim reality that its goal of reclaiming lost territory may be slipping away. Indeed, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s assertion that restoring Ukraine’s pre-war borders is an “illusory goal” only reinforces this sobering assessment.
Adding to Ukraine’s concerns, President Trump held a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 12 to discuss the war. This was followed by direct U.S.-Russia talks in Riyadh on February 18—and a heated exchange between Zelensky and Trump at the White House on February 28. These diplomatic maneuvers were more than symbolic. In contrast to the Biden administration’s insistence on “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine,” Trump’s moves signaled a major shift in U.S. policy, indicating that Washington and Moscow would begin negotiating Ukraine’s fate with minimal input from Kyiv.
And as diplomatic momentum shifts against Ukraine, the battlefield offers little reprieve. Nearly two years since launching its counteroffensive, Ukraine has made some gains, particularly in Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia—but so has Russia, leaving the overall trajectory of the war largely unchanged.
This stalemate reflects the inherent asymmetry of the conflict, where Russia holds structural advantages in manpower and industrial capacity. In 2024, Russian forces seized 4,168 square kilometers from Ukraine (including areas in Russia’s own Kursk Oblast). While Moscow’s advances have been incremental, its forces gained 593 square kilometers in December alone—an average of 18.1 square kilometers per day. These gains have come at steep costs in manpower and equipment, but so far these losses have appeared sustainable for the Kremlin.
Despite these setbacks, Ukraine has not lost its ability to reclaim territory. However, neither prolonging the war nor continued Western aid guarantees success in this phase of the conflict. What remains certain is that regardless of the outcome, Ukraine and Russia will remain neighbors—one an expansionist power, the other a pro-Western state advocating liberal democracy and increasingly shaped by Western influence over its military and economy.
No matter how Trump approaches the end of the war, the major concerns behind it—U.S.-Ukraine relations, Kyiv’s ambitions to join NATO, and the geopolitical struggle between the West and Russia—will long outlast his administration. In this new era, post-war Ukraine could emerge as a successor to Cold War-era West Germany: a frontline state whose strategic significance in the decades to come may ultimately prove as consequential as its current wartime struggle.
Russia’s Unending Aggression
In 1945, the Anglo-American alliance in the Potsdam Conference gave its de facto blessing to Soviet dominance over Eastern Europe. This concession failed to satisfy Soviet leader Joseph Stalin’s ambitions, culminating in the detonation of the RDS-1 nuclear bomb, Moscow’s support for North Korea in the Korean War (1950–1953), and Soviet hostility to the West throughout the course of the Cold War.
The pursuit of power is intrinsic to Russia’s state behavior. The Kremlin’s pattern of aggression, ranging from the 2008 invasion of Georgia to the 2014 annexation of Crimea and its ongoing invasion of Ukraine, suggests that Moscow’s current offensive is unlikely to be its last attempt to reclaim the global stature it once held under the Soviet Union.
At the same time, Russia’s covert actions across Europe, particularly in the Balkans, mirror its historical playbook of hybrid warfare. In 2021, Moldovan media exposed a Kremlin-backed “strategic roadmap” aiming to bring Chisinau under Russian influence by 2030. Meanwhile, European sources have documented a persistent Russian disinformation campaign in the Balkans designed to sway public opinion in Moscow’s favor. These maneuvers closely resemble the covert operations that preceded Russia’s full-scale invasions of Georgia and Ukraine—and raise the specter of further destabilization efforts beyond Ukraine’s borders.
Russian covert and hybrid operations are not confined to tactical issues or their immediate neighborhood. In recent years, Russia has actively engaged in ‘hybrid warfare’ operations against NATO. Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’ is widely assumed to have severed the undersea power cable connecting Finland to Estonia in December 2024. Similar cables linking Scandinavia, the Baltic states, and Western and Central Europe have also come under mysterious attack. In late October, Polish prosecutors announced the arrest of four individuals after an investigation into a fire caused by an exploding parcel at a courier firm near Warsaw. Even earlier in 2024, the Swedish Security Service revealed that a newly built Russian Orthodox church in Västerås, located near Swedish critical infrastructure, had been linked to Russian intelligence operations.
Nor are Russia’s attacks constrained to the physical realm. The Kremlin has launched cyberattacks targeting Germany’s defense and aerospace industries, alongside disinformation campaigns in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Romania, efforts aimed at undermining the European Union and fostering divisions among European nations.
Simply put, Russia’s hybrid warfare operates independently of the situation in Ukraine—and there is no reason to expect that it will cease as part of any settlement ending the conflict there. Russia’s actions signal that it is preparing for a new era of great power competition, in which it appears increasingly determined to reclaim Soviet-era levels of influence over European politics.
The West Needs a Strong Ukraine
The Kremlin’s actions make it clear that a ceasefire or peace deal leaving it in possession of eastern Ukraine will not curb its fundamental desire to reshape the global order. Rather than seeking a permanent settlement to the Ukraine issue that satisfies Russia’s expansionist drive, Western policymakers should instead seek to solidify Ukraine as the front line of a hypothetical future contest with Moscow—much as West Germany once was during the Cold War. In this context, sooner or later, NATO must provide Ukraine with the necessary resources and support to develop an armed force similar to the West German Bundeswehr—establishing Kyiv as a friendly buffer zone between Russia and the nations of southeastern Europe.
Seven decades ago, the recognition of Western Europe and West Germany’s vulnerability to the communist threat convinced the United States to lead the effort to rearm West Germany—establishing the Bundeswehr as both a defensive force and a militarized buffer against Soviet expansion. In 1955, West Germany joined NATO, transforming it from a buffer state to NATO’s front line of defense against the Eastern Bloc.
Ukraine has both the potential and the prospects to undergo a similar transformation. The current administration in Washington opposes its accession to NATO, but administrations change—as do security imperatives. Notably, Ukraine’s future in NATO has been repeatedly reaffirmed by the United States and its allies since 2008. While Ukraine’s progress towards NATO membership appears suspended for the duration of Trump’s second term, it is far from off the table. Notably, the United States also opposed West Germany’s rearmament in the postwar era, but changed its position as Cold War realities set in. Ukraine’s path may follow a similar trajectory.
Kyiv’s Economic Recovery Is Paramount
The future of Western relations with Ukraine will extend beyond military and defense collaboration into the realm of economic cooperation. The war has devastated Ukraine’s economy. Since the invasion, one-third of the country’s GDP has been wiped out, economic growth has contracted by 22.6%, Kyiv’s budget deficit has soared to 20.4%, and the hryvnia, Ukraine’s national currency, has lost 27% of its value. As a result of the war, 14.6 million Ukrainians require humanitarian assistance, 3.4 million are internally displaced, and 6.8 million have sought refuge abroad—primarily in European countries such as Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic.
Addressing the Ukrainian refugee crisis and supporting the country’s economic recovery will require significant financial assistance. Rebuilding Ukraine’s infrastructure is not only vital for stabilizing the country, but also essential for preventing further waves of displacement and ensuring long-term regional stability.
Here again is a parallel with the postwar era. In the late 1940s, the United States reasoned that a stable and prosperous Europe would lead to greater stability, create economic opportunities for the United States, and decrease the chances of another war. Accordingly, the United States launched the “Marshall Plan,” providing generous financial aid to rebuilding European economies—most notably West Germany. The plan had a transformational effect on the German economy, facilitating rapid economic growth and recovery and leading to the phenomenon known as the “Wirtschaftswunder” or “Miracle on the Rhine.”
As Marshall predicted, economic stability led to political stability. Within a decade of Hitler’s fall from power, West Germany became a successful model of liberal democracy. The West German economic boom not only garnered international admiration but also spurred significant migration from East Germany, ultimately forcing the Soviets to take extreme steps—most notably the construction of the infamous Berlin Wall—in an attempt to stem the exodus. The construction and ongoing operation of the Berlin Wall came at an extreme cost to the Soviet Union and its East German puppet state, functioning as an object lesson on the bankrupt nature of communist ideology and the immense value of freedom.
What lessons can Western policymakers draw from this? First, the conditions in Germany in 1945 resemble those in eastern Ukraine in 2025. A second “Marshall Plan” devoted to rebuilding Ukraine will enable the country to achieve economic stability, reconstruction, and democratic consolidation, reinforcing its role as a European state.
In such a scenario, a developed Ukraine would likely stand in stark contrast to Russia. Moscow’s economy has been cut off from the world; it has been isolated by international sanctions, including restrictions on access to payment services and financial telecommunications services such as SWIFT. While Moscow has managed.) to mitigate some of the effects of Western sanctions by expanding its relations with East Asia and BRICS nations, these measures have not closed the widening gap between Russia and the vast ocean of global finance.
More broadly, the fundamentals of the Russian economy are deeply unsound. Though the days of Soviet-era central planning are over, Russia is regularly characterized as the most corrupt country in Europe, with oligarchs exercising total control over various sectors of the economy. Oil and gas revenues contribute to the state budget, but do little to help ordinary Russians. Attempts at genuine economic reform are further complicated by the country’s authoritarian political system, meaning that these problems are likely to endure for the foreseeable future.
If an EU-led redevelopment of Ukraine is successful, it would create a shining alternative for the Russians living in dismal conditions across the new border. And much as West Germany inspired a desire for democracy among East Germans, a prosperous and democratic post-war Ukraine could foster a similar inclination for democracy among both Russians and Belarusians. The transformative impact of Ukraine could even surpass that of West Germany, given the deep linguistic and cultural ties among Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian communities.
East Germany, Redux
At this point, it appears likely that Ukraine will be unable to recover its lost territories in the east—and that any potential diplomatic settlement to the conflict will involve Kyiv surrendering the areas that Russia has already conquered. This will likely result in a divide between a relatively free, pro-Western Ukraine and a Novorossiya (eastern Ukraine) under the authoritarian rule of the Kremlin.
This situation will likely mirror the disparities that once existed between West and East Germany—disparities that played a crucial role in motivating East Germans to strive for liberty. The economic success of a democratic Ukraine, and the likely continued stagnation inside Russia, could also discourage Russian-speaking minorities in the east and south from pro-Kremlin sympathies and help to strengthen Ukrainian patriotism.
On a larger scale, much as the economic disparity between West and East Germany played a crucial role in undermining Soviet propaganda, a robust post-war recovery in Ukraine could significantly counteract Russia’s active measures to extend its influence into the West. In pursuing its aims, the Kremlin often invokes “identity warfare”: playing up the “Russian-ness” of Russian-speaking minorities in neighboring countries and promising prosperity and progress under the unified “Russkiy Mir” (Russian World). In Abkhazia in 2008 and Crimea in 2014, such promises had merit, given the then-economic stagnation in Georgia and Ukraine and Russia’s rapid oil-fueled economic growth. But in the case of a prosperous, Western-oriented Ukraine, the Kremlin’s promises would ring hollow—particularly as ordinary Russians continue to face extreme hardships under the Putin regime.
It is essential to keep in mind that the current military confrontation in Ukraine is not an isolated clash. It is one episode in a long-standing conflict with Russia, where the state of post-war Ukraine will significantly influence the West’s strategy. The end of the current war does not mean that the “issue of Ukraine” ceases to be of strategic importance for the West. Instead, it marks a transition to a new phase where, like West Germany during the Cold War, Ukraine will serve as the front line between the West and Russia. In this context, it is crucial for the West to be prepared—and as it continues to plan for the coming months of war, it must also plan for the coming years of peace.
Arman Mahmoudian holds a PhD in Politics and International Affairs. He is a researcher at the USF Global and National Security Institute, and an adjunct faculty member at the University of South Florida’s Judy Genshaft Honors College. Follow him on X at@MahmoudianArman.
Image: Valua Vitaly / Shutterstock.