Frozen conflicts beyond label

Debates about Ukraine’s future often use the term ‘frozen conflict’, but usually as a journalistic shortcut rather than an analytical category. The label is typically borrowed from post–Cold War cases like Bosnia, Kosovo, Transnistria, South Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Nagorno-Karabakh, but the metaphor has always been misleading. Nothing was ever literally frozen.Footnote ¹⁰ In fact, frozen conflicts often cycle dynamically through diplomatic attempts to resolve the conflict and periods of resurgent violence.Footnote ¹¹ Treating ‘frozenness’ as stasis obscures the mechanisms that sustain conflict and shape its endings.

Following the recent conceptual unpacking that is increasingly used in the literature on frozen conflicts, I use the term ‘frozen conflict’ as an analytical lens for dynamic post-war settings that lack stable peace.Footnote ¹² In these settings, unresolved core issues dominate relations and create a recurrent risk of renewed violence, including major escalations. Episodes of fighting, even full-scale wars, remain phases of the same ‘frozen conflict’ until those core issues are durably settled. Klosek et al. build on this conceptualisation in their cross-regional frozen conflict dataset (FCD), which shows that frozen conflicts rarely end with militarily irreversible victories, but rather through diplomacy.Footnote ¹³ This perspective is particularly useful for the Russia–Ukraine case because it highlights the mechanisms of durable resolutions – namely, the acceptance of irreversibility and the resolution of core political issues – rather than assuming that operational success automatically translates to peace. The dataset also provides clear scope conditions for drawing lessons: prior war without stable peace, persistent core issues, and recurrent risks of violent escalation.

Ukraine meets these conditions. After Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the War in Donbas in 2014–15, violence diminished but did not end. An estimated 14,000 died before the Russian invasion in 2022.Footnote ¹⁴ The Minsk II agreement from February 2015 reduced hostilities below the 1,000 dead per year levels that international relations literature typically requires for war and created a de-escalatory framework, but the core issues – the status of Crimea and Donbas and Ukraine’s alignment with the West – remained unresolved.Footnote ¹⁵ The following years displayed the hallmark dynamism of a frozen conflict. Periodic diplomacy under the Normandy Format persisted, but so did intermittent escalations around key sectors, leaving hundreds dead every year, with the significant reduction of violence coming only after Zelensky’s election in 2019. This was neither peace nor a stable stalemate, but a frozen conflict with recurring violent thaws.Footnote ¹⁶

Replication of the dataset’s coding logic confirms this categorisation. Klosek et al. include cases where post-1946 wars surpassed 500 battle-related deaths, ended without stable peace, experienced at least four militarised interstate disputes (MIDs) during twenty or fewer years after their initial war, and sustained recognisable unresolved issues that carried risks of violent renewal.Footnote ¹⁷ If extended beyond 2011, the Russia–Ukraine conflict would clearly qualify: the 2014–15 war exceeded the fatality threshold, Minsk II produced neither peace nor resolution, and repeated escalations kept the conflict active until the 2022 invasion.

Admittedly, the scale and duration of Russia’s full-scale invasion make Ukraine an unusually intense case within the broader frozen conflict category, but this does not undermine the utility of the lens; rather, it highlights how the same underlying dynamics can manifest in larger, more globally consequential wars. Other cases in the dataset show similar dynamics. The Egypt–Israeli rivalry encompassed both periods of frozen confrontation, high-intensity wars in 1956, 1967, and 1973, and a lower-intensity War of Attrition in 1967–70, not dissimilar to the lower-intensity warfare in Donbas in 2015–19. India and Pakistan repeatedly cycled from armed clashes to protracted deadlock until another war broke out. Likewise, Armenia and Azerbaijan’s 1990s war settled into a frozen conflict that reignited in 2020 and again in 2023. These examples underscore that major renewed wars are not inconsistent with the frozen conflict category but part of its dynamics. While the scale and global entanglement of the 2022 invasion are exceptional and must be treated as moderators shaping specific outcomes, they reinforce rather than negate the analytical value of the frozen conflict lens. The absence of stable peace, persistence of unresolved core issues, and recurrent escalation risks – all present since 2015 – remain the defining features of the Russia–Ukraine conflict.

The core issues

Resolving a conflict requires identifying its core issues and how they manifest in behaviour. In frozen conflicts, material disputes are often intertwined with identity, norms, and conceptions of role. States respond to threats based on identity and a sense of belonging. Policy choices are shaped by shared values and meanings.Footnote ¹⁸ International norms both constrain and legitimise action, and national identity and role conceptions shape foreign policy options.Footnote ¹⁹

The first and arguably deepest issue fuelling the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is Russia’s refusal to accept Ukraine’s growing alignment with the West. The Kremlin has framed Ukraine’s Western trajectory as not only a security problem but also a challenge to Russia’s role as a great power and to its self-conception as a distinct civilisational pole.Footnote ²⁰ Explaining the occupation of Crimea, Vladimir Putin argued in his 4 December 2014 address to the Federal Assembly that ‘Crimea is where our people live, and the peninsula is of strategic importance for Russia as the spiritual source of the development of a multifaceted but solid Russian nation and a centralised Russian state’.Footnote ²¹ In his 12 July 2021 essay, ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians’, Putin wrote that ‘true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia’ and that Russia would not allow ‘our historical territories and people living there to be used against Russia’.Footnote ²² These statements indicate a position rooted in narratives of identity, sovereignty, and spheres of influence as well as strategic calculations.

The 2014 Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity intensified this clash. For Ukrainians, deeper integration with the EU and NATO became a symbol of self-determination, identity, and emancipation from Russia’s sphere of influence.Footnote ²³ For Moscow, Ukraine’s pro-Western shift signalled a dual loss: the loss of a buffer zone that was central to Russia’s security identity, and the loss of a hegemonic role in the post-Soviet region. Russia’s response to the Ukrainian Revolution in 2014 and the occupation of Crimea and parts of Donbas did not solve the problem but rather alleviated it. Ukraine doubled down on its alignment with the West as both the electoral base of ‘Eastern parties’ and the vision ‘skeptical of anti-Russian and pro-Western Ukraine weakened’.Footnote ²⁴

The second core issue is territorial. Russia’s annexation of Crimea and control over parts of Donbas created a complex issue involving material and identity that must be resolved for the conflict between Ukraine and Russia to end. For Moscow, Crimea is a strategically important naval base and a symbolically foundational place. For Kyiv, sovereignty over Crimea and Donbas is tied to national survival and the rejection of imperial subordination. These perspectives, reinforced domestically and securitised in political discourse, make compromise exceedingly costly. Surveys and expert polls underscore this salience. In the 2022 survey among experts who published about the Russia–Ukraine conflict in leading policy journals, more than three-quarters of experts rated Crimea as ‘extremely important’ to Russia and 29.41 per cent rated the parts of Donetsk and Luhansk Russia control through its agents before 2022 as ‘extremely important’ to Russia, while 44.12 per cent saw this territory as ‘very important’ for Russia. The perception of the importance of this region to Ukraine almost mirrored these figures (30.30 per cent ‘extremely important’, 30.30 per cent ‘very important’). Meanwhile, Ukrainian political discourse and public opinion consistently treat the loss of these territories as unacceptable.Footnote ²⁵

Overall, the existing evidence indicates that each side has a hierarchy of concerns. For Russia: (1) Ukraine’s long-term alignment with the West (i.e., the NATO/EU path) as a status/role and security problem, (2) the status of Crimea (which is both sacralised and politically non-negotiable), and (3) Donbas, which was initially a lever over Kyiv’s foreign policy and is increasingly being used to justify the heavy wartime casualties. Powerful constituencies – nationalist networks, segments of the security services, and the military – enforce these priorities, raising audience costs for concessions.Footnote ²⁶ For Ukraine, the priorities are nearly the same: (1) identity through closer alignment with the West, (2) sovereignty and territorial integrity, though not necessarily territorial control of ‘Ukraine’s land’, and (3) the domestic political costs of making concessions after mass mobilisation and high casualties. Various veterans’ organisations and civil society often serve as key veto players, enforcing these as red lines and limiting the Ukrainian government’s room for manoeuvre.Footnote ²⁷ These preferences are hard to reconcile. Russia treats the NATO trajectory and Crimea as non-negotiable, while Ukraine treats sovereignty and Western anchoring as non-negotiable.

The failure of the Minsk II framework illustrates the core challenge. Its provisions – a ceasefire, heavy-weapons withdrawal, and the sequencing of autonomy and border control – left unresolved Ukraine’s external alignment, an issue the format was never equipped to adjudicate. At the same time, it entrenched ambiguity over the ‘special status’ of Donbas, allowing incompatible interpretations to take hold. For Kyiv, it was a reversible local accommodation, while for Moscow and local elites, it was a durable veto over Ukraine’s foreign policy.Footnote ²⁸ The outcome was asymmetric implementation and a gradual collision of expectations rather than de-escalation. This experience underscores a broader pattern: unless a settlement addresses both Ukraine’s external alignment and the status of Crimea and Donbas in ways that key domestic audiences can accept as permanent, any shift achieved on the battlefield or at the negotiating table will be viewed as provisional – and therefore reversible.

Analytical framework for ending frozen conflicts

To systematically assess the viability of Ukraine’s victory-oriented approach, this article adopts the analytical framework derived from Klosek et al.’s dataset of frozen conflicts, utilising the dataset’s comparative record in a mechanism-generating rather than templating manner.Footnote ²⁹ The dataset shows that out of forty-two frozen conflict dyads that existed between 1945 and 2011, nineteen ended by 2011. Both diplomacy and war ended frozen conflicts, but without movement on the underlying core issues, neither path was durable. Diplomacy has been the most common way of resolving frozen conflicts. Eleven out of nineteen ended with diplomacy. Among these are some of the best-known diplomatic breakthroughs of the twentieth century, like Israel’s peace deal with Egypt and the US–China rapprochement in the 1970s.Footnote ³⁰ These diplomatic solutions to frozen conflicts were often controversial domestically, required changes in the international environment, and bore significant political risk for the leaders on both sides.

Military solutions to frozen conflicts have been comparatively rare. Klosek et al.’s dataset of post-1945 frozen conflicts contains only one instance where a frozen conflict between two states ended with a military victory – the 2003 invasion of Iraq, in which the US and the UK toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime and effectively established a new polity on the same territory.Footnote ³¹ Two more frozen conflicts that ended with a military victory occurred between a state and a de facto state. The Second Chechnya War of 1999–2003 concluded the conflict between Russia and Chechnya, and the Fourth Eelam War of 2006–9 ended the conflict between Sri Lanka and Tamil Eelam. In both cases, victory ended not only the conflict but also the existence of a de facto state. In a more recent example, Azerbaijan’s military victory in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023 eliminated the de facto state Republic of Artsakh, while the subsequent Armenia–Azerbaijan peace treaty in 2025 regularised interstate relations. If the FCD were extended to 2025, this sequence would likely unfold as a violent thaw ending the state–de facto state conflict, followed by a peaceful thawing of the interstate rivalry, underscoring that ‘military victory’ can resolve one layer of a frozen conflict but may require diplomatic follow-up at another level.Footnote ³²

Recent research on frozen conflicts shows that many factors can undermine conflict resolution. For example, local violent non-state actors who benefit from the conflict economy, public opposition in India to conciliatory approaches, and deep-seated mistrust between Pakistan’s political and military leadership all hinder conflict resolution in Kashmir.Footnote ³³ Third-party support from the French, Americans, and Algerians fuels the conflict in Western Sahara.Footnote ³⁴ In Armenia, the revolutionary nature of the government sabotaged possible compromise even at the point when Armenia’s defeat in a war seemed virtually certain. Such a defeat occurred when Azerbaijani forces conquered Nagorno-Karabakh, ending the existence of an Armenian-controlled Republic of Artsakh, as well as the conflict between the Republic of Artsakh and Azerbaijan, but notably not between Armenia and Azerbaijan.Footnote ³⁵ The 2025 treaty subsequently addressed the interstate layer, reinforcing the article’s broader claim that violent ends to frozen conflicts are uncommon and, when they do occur, typically require complementary diplomatic settlements to prove durable.

What criteria for effective frozen conflict termination by military victory can be distilled from history and theory? History and theory indicate that the effective termination of a frozen conflict by military victory requires the fulfilment of five critical criteria that can be categorised under military and political factors. Militarily, it requires (1) a decisive defeat of the enemy, involving extensive operations that collapse the enemy’s ability to wage war, and (2) the acceptance of defeat as grounded in structural long-term factors and thus irreversible by the defeated. Politically, it involves (3) replacing the existing government with a new regime to prevent a return to previous antagonistic policies, (4) achieving a permanent change in the political landscape through significant changes in borders, governance, or alliances, and (5) addressing the core issues that sparked the conflict to resolve the underlying grievances.

Assessing the military criteria: Can Ukraine win by enough of a margin?

How viable was Ukraine’s victory-oriented approach against the criteria of decisive military defeat and acceptance of defeat as irreversible by the vanquished? This section applies the first part of the analytical framework by examining the military factors that determine the feasibility of Ukraine achieving a decisive victory over Russia in 2022–4 when Ukraine embraced a victory-oriented approach to conflict termination. It assesses Ukraine’s military performance, considering both its successes and limitations, and shows that two important factors limited Ukraine’s ability to end the existing frozen conflict with Russia with a decisive military victory in the war. First, Ukraine’s battlefield successes shine best against the bleak pre-war expectations. Second, the Kremlin significantly contributed to Ukraine’s initial successes with several strategic mistakes.

Vladimir Putin planned the invasion as a special military operation more akin to a coup than a war against a large and populous country that had spent years preparing for a confrontation. Reportedly, Putin entrusted the FSB, not the military, with the planning of the invasion and prioritised secrecy over effectiveness.Footnote ³⁶ Consequently, Russian forces entered Ukraine with an unsuitable military plan. Russian troops entering Ukraine learned about their mission at the last moment and did not have time for coordination, the most essential part of modern warfare. To illustrate, Russian logistics barely worked and lacked proper protection, Russian air defence shot at Russian aircraft, Russia’s feared electronic warfare capabilities jammed Russia’s own electronics, and Russian troops were successfully attacked by the now-famous Bayraktar unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) even though Russian air defence was perfectly capable of eliminating this threat.Footnote ³⁷ As the war progressed, it became evident that many of the Russian military’s shortcomings were not long-term structural flaws but were instead contextual and temporary. Russia largely fixed the aforementioned mistakes and might have very likely avoided many of them had it been given time to plan for war appropriately. However, stuck on the outskirts of Kyiv, the Russian generals were unable to restore the coordination in the field and had to withdraw in order to regroup, restore order, and start fighting the war as a war.

By that point, Russia had suffered enormous casualties, which were disproportionately distributed among its best units. Meanwhile, Ukraine mobilised. From spring until fall 2022, Kyiv enjoyed a significant advantage in available manpower. In contrast, the Russian military was left with insufficient manpower to man the frontlines. With inadequate force-to-space ratios, the Russian army could have chosen from two sensible military options: abandon Kherson, use the Dnieper as a natural defensive line, shorten the frontlines and improve the force-to-space ratio, or bring more troops to the war with mobilisation. Putin, however, refused both options, enabling the Ukrainian breakthrough of Russian lines in the Kharkiv oblast.Footnote ³⁸

Ukraine certainly achieved more than most experts expected, but Ukraine’s armed forces lost as many battles as they won. Ukraine successfully defended Kyiv and Kharkiv, but Russian forces quickly captured Kherson in the south. Ukraine inflicted staggering costs on the Russian military during the battles for Mariupol and Severodonetsk, but to many in the West, this often obscured the fact that Russia eventually prevailed in those battles. When Ukraine liberated Kherson in November 2022, the operation was more a slow battle of attrition than a decisive blitzkrieg.Footnote ³⁹ The operation culminated with Russian forces slipping out of the difficult situation on the right bank of the Dnieper with a textbook combat withdrawal, demonstrating the Russian army’s considerable skill.

Despite much hope in the West, Ukraine’s 2023 summer offensive confirmed the aforementioned observations. Ukraine’s attempted armoured breakthroughs stalled in Russia’s well-prepared defensive lines with considerable losses.Footnote ⁴⁰ Russian and Ukrainian formations exhibited similar vulnerabilities, ultimately achieving similar outcomes: rapid attrition and failure to secure a breakout. Some supporters of Ukraine were quick to blame these setbacks on the lack or sluggishness of Western support. Allegedly, a lack of airpower and the time Russia had to build up its defences caused Ukraine’s setbacks. However, this is half true at best. Airpower is neither sufficient nor necessary to achieve an armoured breakthrough, and static defences like those Russia had built up are but a minor problem for competent attackers unless those defences are manned by competent defenders.Footnote ⁴¹ The Arab armies prepared their defensive positions well before the war in 1967, yet these caused little trouble to Israel’s determined attackers because the Arab soldiers remained in static positions and failed to manoeuvre when needed.Footnote ⁴² In contrast, the Russian army demonstrated considerable competence in defence. Unlike the Arab troops in 1967, the Russian units regularly employed a more elastic defence, benefiting from prepared positions but also withdrawing and counter-attacking.Footnote ⁴³

In comparable conditions of dense minefields covered by artillery, drones, and ATGM fire, both sides suffered when attempting armoured penetrations. Two representative unit-level assaults in 2023 illustrate this pattern. During the Russian offensive operations in Vuhledar in the spring of 2023, the elite 155th Naval Infantry Brigade sent an armoured column to encircle Ukrainian positions. However, the column was soon detected in the open terrain and came under drone and artillery fire, losing thirty-one armoured vehicles without achieving its objectives.Footnote ⁴⁴ A few months later, on 8–9 June 2023, near Mala Tokmachka, elements of Ukraine’s 47th Mechanised Brigade lost a mixed column of Leopard 2 tanks and M2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) within minutes of entering uncleared minefields covered by drone and artillery fire, losing twenty-five vehicles.Footnote ⁴⁵ Both cases were widely debated as individual failures, but they were actually representative of structural changes on the Ukrainian battlefield, pointing in the same direction. When defences were adequately prepared and networked, large-scale armoured assaults were vulnerable. By 2025, both sides had largely abandoned concentrated armoured assaults, which had dominated conventional warfare since World War II, and shifted towards smaller, more dispersed, and infantry-heavy assault groups. For both sides, this change in tactics conserves resources, but it is unlikely to result in a successful breakthrough.

Like the accounts of the aforementioned battles, which occurred at a time when Ukraine’s troops enjoyed a relatively advantageous situation, the estimates of casualties show that the war has been far from one-sided in 2022–4. Western estimates suggest casualty ratios favoured Ukraine two to one at best.Footnote ⁴⁶ This was still a genuine achievement, considering Russian troops enjoyed significant advantages in protection and firepower, but were far from the loss exchange ratios of one-sided wars. In the Six-Day War of 1967, Israel defeated its Arab neighbours with a loss exchange ratio of roughly ten to one. Even in the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Israel achieved a loss exchange ratio of more than three to one, and the war is generally considered to have been a near disaster for Israel. The United States campaign against Iraq in 2003, an example of victory that ended a frozen conflict between internationally recognised states, featured a loss exchange ratio of roughly a hundred to one.

Could more Western aid have made a difference?

A sober assessment of 2022–3 operations suggests that Ukraine’s successes were far from what has historically been required to terminate a frozen conflict. Ukraine’s and the West’s focus on conflict termination through victory in the first two years of the war certainly suffered from a significant mismatch between objectives and resources. However, could more Western aid alleviate this problem and allow Ukraine to defeat Russia decisively and irreversibly? To answer this question, I develop two analytical counterfactual scenarios inspired by Levy’s approach to the use of counterfactuals in historical analysis.Footnote ⁴⁷ The first ‘quick aid’ scenario explores the possibility of less sluggish support, hypothetically assuming the same level of Western aid but with quicker decisions to provide it. The second ‘double aid’ scenario builds upon the first but discusses the potential increases in military aid and primarily aims to identify approximate limits of materially feasible and its impact on Ukraine’s ability to achieve a decisive victory.

A quick decision to provide aid would, in theory, allow Ukraine to concentrate forces and increase the possibility of breaking through the Russian lines even without a need to provide more weapons. This would have been especially useful at two critical junctures of the conflict: during the 2022 fall counter-offensive, which liberated the Kharkiv oblast, and during the 2023 failed counter-offensive. To shed light on how more timely Western aid could have enhanced Ukraine’s military capabilities at critical junctures, I examined the timelines of key heavy weapons supplied by Western countries. Specifically, I looked up when the decisions were made to provide the following major systems: M777 howitzers, HIMARS multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), Leopard 2 tanks, M2 Bradley IFVs, Marder IFVs, M1A1 Abrams tanks, and F-16 fighter jets, as well as when these systems were first operationally deployed by Ukrainian forces. While some dates should be taken as approximate, this analysis allows calculation of the reasonably accurate integration times – the periods between the decision to supply each weapon and its effective use on the battlefield by Ukraine (see Table 1).

Table 1.

Integration times of key weapon systems supplied to Ukraine.

See the appendix for the list of sources.

The findings indicate that artillery systems like the M777 howitzers and HIMARS MLRS had relatively short integration times of approximately three to four weeks. This swift deployment was facilitated by the systems’ relative ease of use and compatibility with Ukraine’s existing artillery training and infrastructure. Armoured vehicles such as the Leopard 2 tanks, Bradley IFVs, and Marder IFVs required longer integration periods of about four to five months. These systems necessitated extensive training for Ukrainian personnel and adjustments in maintenance and logistics chains. The most sophisticated equipment, namely the M1A1 Abrams tanks and F-16 fighter jets, had the longest integration times. The Abrams tanks took approximately eight to ten months from the decision to provide them to their arrival in Ukraine, with operational deployment extending this period further due to the need for specialised training and logistical support. The F-16 fighter jets, with the first batch arriving in Ukraine in August 2024, had an integration time of about fifteen months from the decision to provide them in May 2023 to their operational deployment.

By understanding these integration times, I can assess how earlier decisions to supply these weapons – without necessarily increasing the quantity – could have allowed Ukraine to deploy them at critical moments. For instance, if Western countries had decided to provide Leopard 2 tanks and Bradley IFVs in May 2022 instead of January 2023, these systems might have been operational by September 2022, in time for the fall counter-offensive in the Kharkiv oblast. In contrast, even earlier commitments of Abrams tanks would not make them available for the fall 2022 counter-offensive, but only for the 2023 offensive. Similarly, even the initiation of pilot training for F-16s in March 2022, immediately after the Russian invasion, would only make the aircraft available in summer 2023.

Accelerated deployment of these weapons could have enhanced Ukraine’s ability to concentrate forces and increase the likelihood of breaking through Russian lines at these pivotal junctures. While the less sluggish scenario would not change Ukraine’s chances much in summer 2023, a decision to provide the eventually committed volumes of aid taken in spring 2022 could have made a major difference during the 2022 counter-offensive. Had Ukraine been able to employ twelve more brigades, the number built for the 2023 counter-offensive, already in 2022, she might have well managed to press its Kharkiv offensive further into the Luhansk oblast with major second-echelon forces. As Ukraine lacked these second-echelon forces, Russia stopped its momentum with an influx of freshly mobilised troops and redeployed troops from the Kherson region at the Svatove–Kreminna line.Footnote ⁴⁸ With twelve more brigades, Ukraine might have also added a further axis to its 2022 counter-offensive, striking Russian lines in Zaporizhia and advancing towards Tokmak and Melitopol as envisaged and tried during the 2023 counter-offensive. Considering the acute lack of manpower Russia faced in the fall of 2022, it is quite feasible that Ukraine might have indeed succeeded in cutting the Russian forces in half and even liberating territories lost in 2022, even though the capture of Crimea and relatively defensible urban centres of Donetsk and Luhansk appears less certain.

Notably, the less sluggish aid scenario appears materially feasible because it only involves systems that were eventually delivered, integrated, and effectively used by Ukraine even though limitations such as Ukraine’s capacity to assimilate multiple systems rapidly and Western logistical constraints would have likely slowed down delivery and integration in comparison to the known timespans. However, even with weapons quickly provided by the West and still successfully integrated by Ukraine, the operational success would still also depend on Russia’s inability to factor increased Western aid into its planning. For instance, had the West committed most of its aid in spring 2022, Russia might have countered with defensive preparations in summer 2022, withdrawing from right bank positions in Kherson to improve its force-to-space ratio or calling for earlier mobilisation.

Building upon the first scenario, the second scenario explores the potential impact of not only accelerated but also significantly increased Western military aid to Ukraine. First, I calculate the extra requirements to equip twelve additional mechanised brigades with major weapons systems. This would double the number of brigades Ukraine built for the 2023 summer counter-offensive. To simplify, I assume that a typical Ukrainian mechanised brigade comprising one tank battalion, three mechanised infantry battalions, an artillery battalion, and an air defence battalion, plus other supporting units, would require thirty-one tanks (MBTs), ninety IFVs or armoured personnel carriers (APCs), eighteen howitzers (self-propelled or towed), six Multiple Rocket Launchers (MRLs), and six to twelve air defence vehicles/systems.Footnote ⁴⁹ To equip twelve brigades would thus require 372 MBTs, 1080 IFVs and APCs, 216 pieces of tube artillery, 72 MRLs, and 72–144 air defence systems.

With these requirements identified, the second scenario helps uncover the limits of increased aid. To illustrate, according to the industry-standard IISS Military Balance, in 2021, the combined armed forces of the UK, France, and Germany deployed only 694 MBTs, 5,773 IFVs and APCs, 444 pieces of artillery, and 89 MRLs; thus, equipping twelve more Ukrainian mechanised brigades would require quantities equal to 53 per cent of their tanks, 19 per cent of their IFVs and APCs, 49 per cent of their artillery, and 80 per cent of their MLRS inventories. For Western countries, it would still probably be possible to provide the bulk of such extra aid, but only if the US tapped into its substantial reserves. In 2021, the US Army stored 3,700 M1 Abrams MBTs, 2,000 M2 Bradley IFVs, 8,000 M114 APCs, and 500 M109 howitzers, more than enough to meet the needs of twelve extra brigades.

However, while major systems could, in theory, be available, the ‘double aid’ scenario would face significant constraints. First, as demonstrated in the aftermath of Ukraine’s 2023 counter-offensive, there would have been a major shortage of artillery ammunition for major extra effort. Similarly, there would likely be a shortage of air defence, making extra brigades vulnerable to Russian air operations.Footnote ⁵⁰ Second, Ukraine would need some 30,000 to 40,000 soldiers to man the extra brigades and the corresponding increase in supporting units. Ukraine has struggled to mobilise extra manpower past what was available for the 2023 counter-offensive.Footnote ⁵¹ Theoretically, it would be able to provide manpower for an extra twelve mechanised brigades by transferring personnel from lightly armed territorial defence brigades, but the fairest overall assessment of Ukraine’s ability to train and man twelve extra brigades would be ‘possible but problematic’.

While necessarily imprecise, the ‘double aid’ scenario suggests that more aid could have been provided by the West and accommodated by Ukraine’s military. However, shortages in critical areas such as artillery ammunition and air defence systems would pose significant limitations to the effectiveness of these forces. While major weapon systems could, in theory, be supplied, providing the vast quantities of ammunition required for sustained artillery operations would be challenging. Similarly, a scarcity of additional air defence assets would leave these extra brigades vulnerable to Russian air operations. Moreover, Ukraine’s capacity to train and integrate 30,000 to 40,000 additional soldiers into mechanised brigades is constrained by limited training facilities and resources. Although Ukraine might have reassigned personnel from lightly armed territorial defence units to partially meet this manpower requirement, scaling up beyond an extra twelve brigades would likely be impractical. In summary, while more aid could have been provided and partially absorbed, significant shortages in ammunition, air defence, and training capacities suggest that Ukraine might have fielded an additional twelve brigades – perhaps slightly fewer or more – but certainly not many more.

The ‘double aid’ scenario’s impact on the battlefield would undoubtedly enhance Ukraine’s capabilities, but the improvement in outcomes would likely be marginal compared to the ‘quick aid’ scenario. The additional heavy weapons and equipment could not have been delivered and integrated swiftly enough to support the 2022 counter-offensive, a period when Russian forces were most vulnerable due to initial logistical challenges and disorganised defences. By the time the extra aid could be effectively deployed in the 2023 counter-offensive, the structural conditions on the battlefield had significantly changed. Russia had fortified its positions, improved force-to-space ratios, and established layered defensive lines that favoured the defender. Under these circumstances, even with doubled aid, Ukraine would have faced similar challenges in breaking through Russian defences. The nature of modern warfare, where well-prepared defences can neutralise numerical advantages, means that Ukraine would have been compelled to adopt attritional strategies akin to those used by Russia. Consequently, while the additional aid might have allowed Ukraine to make incremental advances and capture more territory, it would unlikely have led to a decisive breakthrough of Russian lines. The increased resources would have been consumed in protracted engagements, resulting in higher attrition without fundamentally altering the strategic stalemate.Footnote ⁵²

In summary, while Ukraine’s military has performed admirably and exceeded initial expectations, the prospect of achieving a decisive military victory over Russia remains unlikely – even when considering the counterfactual scenarios of accelerated or increased Western aid. The ‘quick aid’ scenario suggests that if Western heavy weaponry had been provided and integrated more rapidly, Ukraine might have increased its chances of liberating additional occupied territories during the 2022 counter-offensive. However, this improved outcome hinges on the assumption that Russia would not adapt its strategies in response to enhanced Ukrainian capabilities despite being able to do it, as demonstrated in the aftermath of the 2022 mobilisation. The ‘double aid’ scenario further indicates that, despite potentially receiving more substantial support, Ukraine would still face material and logistical constraints, and the changed structural conditions on the battlefield by 2023 would limit the effectiveness of additional forces. Given Russia’s structural and enduring material advantages – including greater resources, manpower, and the ability to sustain prolonged mobilisation – Ukraine’s victory-oriented approach appears unfeasible in terms of delivering a decisive defeat that Russia would accept as irreversible. Therefore, even with accelerated or increased aid, when assessed against the military criteria of my analytical framework, Ukraine’s strategy has been unlikely to compel Russia into conceding, indicating that a victory-oriented approach has always had little chance to resolve the frozen conflict.

Assessing the political criteria: Irreversible outcome?

Moving to the political factors in the analytical framework, this section evaluates whether a Ukraine liberation of occupied territories, however improbable, could have led to the political conditions required for a lasting resolution. By analysing domestic sentiments within Russia, historical examples of regime change, and the entrenched strategic interests at play, it assesses the likelihood of achieving political outcomes through military means alone. To provide the hardest possible test to the sceptical view of the victory-oriented approach, this section assumes the best possible military outcome identified in the above-explored scenarios and accesses its likely political consequences. Consequently, this section assesses the prospects for regime change in Russia, the potential for permanent alterations in the political landscape, and the possibility of addressing the core issues that underpin the conflict had Ukraine managed to liberate occupied territories due to quick and enhanced Western aid, which Russia would fail to counter with mobilisation of resources, fortified defences, and adjustments of tactics.

This assessment of the viability of a victory-oriented approach vis-à-vis the political criteria of regime change, a permanent change in the political landscape, and the resolution of core issues outlines problems in the victory-oriented approach that should have been well visible since 2022. Even if Ukraine’s forces liberated the occupied territories, the liberation would be unlikely to bring a lasting solution to the frozen conflict. To resolve the conflict, both sides would have to consider the outcome of the war as a better alternative to the continuation of the conflict. This can happen when both sides consider the outcome of the war ‘good enough’ or when one side prevails so decisively that the other loses any hope that the outcome might change in the future. Unfortunately, even Ukraine’s liberation of occupied territories could hardly resolve the underlying core issues that drive conflict between Moscow and Kyiv to the satisfaction of both. To Russia, such an outcome would likely appear unsatisfactory but not irreversible.

Many supporters of Ukraine had hoped that a victory would bring peace, as it would topple Vladimir Putin’s regime. Yet even Russian opposition figures often embraced in the West are divided on Crimea. Prominent émigré opponents, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, have proposed delayed or internationally supervised solutions rather than unconditional return, and only a minority, like Garry Kasparov, has demanded outright, immediate reversal.Footnote ⁵³ Moreover, the positions of exiled elites, dependent on Western audiences, can diverge from domestic sentiment and should be weighed with caution. Those inside Russia, such as Alexei Navalny, have long treated immediate return as politically explosive.Footnote ⁵⁴ Russia’s ‘systemic opposition’ has even turned to strong support of the war.Footnote ⁵⁵ Furthermore, those who so far posed the most serious danger to the regime in the Kremlin likely came from Russian nationalists or the military, constituencies even less likely to accept the loss of Crimea than Vladimir Putin.Footnote ⁵⁶

Experience from other frozen conflicts offers a cautionary note. Governments that lost wars often fell, but such a change is not enough to bring a solution to the frozen conflict. To illustrate, the then-Pakistani leaders lost power after unsuccessful wars with India in 1965, 1971, and 1999, yet the leaders who replaced them continued the conflict.Footnote ⁵⁷ This should be an important warning to those hoping that Ukraine’s victory will end the conflict because a Russian loss will bring down Putin’s regime.

Elites in Moscow will likely accept a reintegration of Crimea and Donbas into Ukraine if they believe that Ukraine’s victory is irreversible. However, the history and theory of frozen conflicts show that the bar for believing victory is irreversible remains very high. In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israeli forces crushed Arab armies and occupied Sinai, the West Bank, and the Golan Heights. In just six days, Egypt suffered 10–15,000 casualties, its ground forces lost 80 per cent of their equipment, and its air force almost ceased to exist as a force to be reckoned with.Footnote ⁵⁸ The defeat was not only crushing; it was also the third major consecutive defeat Israel inflicted on Egypt. However, instead of accepting the futility of fighting, Egypt decided to rearm and fight the exhausting War of Attrition from 1967 to 1970. Israel’s 1967 victory is just one illustration from a rich history of frozen conflicts, but it provides an important warning. Even a one-sided outcome on the battlefield does not guarantee an end to a frozen conflict. Even in the optimistic scenario with quick and enhanced aid, Ukraine would have been unlikely to defeat Russia in the spectacular way Israel defeated the Arab states in 1967. Even more importantly, Ukraine would have never been able to conquer Moscow, occupy Russia, and prevent it from rearming for a possible reversal of battlefield outcomes in the future. The remaining question, then, is whether a military outcome would settle the identity-laden claims at the heart of the dispute.

This is where the status of Crimea and, to a lesser extent, Donbas becomes decisive. While the Russian annexation of the peninsula was illegal, most Russians consider it a part of Russia. A poll taken in May 2023 by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and the Levada Center, a Russian independent polling organisation, shows 82 per cent of Russians consider returning Crimea to Ukraine unacceptable.Footnote ⁵⁹ This is particularly important because the poll took place during the culminating Ukrainian build-up before the eventually unsuccessful 2023 counter-offensive, thus when the loss of Crimea appeared a real possibility to Russia. Likewise, the 2022 survey among experts who published about the Russia–Ukraine conflict in leading policy journals shows an overwhelming majority (76.47 per cent) perceived Crimea as extremely important to Russia.Footnote ⁶⁰ A similar problem would have emerged with the Donbas. Compared to Crimea, fewer Russians consider Donbas part of Russia, but 62 per cent still refused to return it to Ukraine in exchange for peace, even in the May 2023 poll. Furthermore, the local elites in Donbas have been integrated into Russia.Footnote ⁶¹ Similarly, the identities of the local population have shifted significantly, with many being bitter, resentful, and suspicious of the government in Kyiv.Footnote ⁶² The West usually saw the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as mere puppets controlled by Moscow, but the elites in breakaway regions have agency on their own and were likely to oppose reintegration into Ukraine.

The identity of the local population in the regions occupied since 2015 has shifted significantly towards Russia, but international norms make both Ukraine and the international community understandably reluctant to tolerate any violent border changes and reward Russia for the aggression. The addition of territorial issues to the Russia–Ukraine conflict thus not only made conflict resolution more difficult but also increased the likelihood that the conflict would flare up again, even if the violence was brought to a halt in the immediate term. Territorial disputes impact national sovereignty and security, aggravate conflicts, and increase the likelihood of war.Footnote ⁶³ Evidence shows territorial conflicts are more likely to escalate into warfare and have a greater chance of leading to armed conflict compared to other types of disputes.

Furthermore, the liberation of Ukraine’s occupied territories would not have resolved the most crucial factor behind Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine in February 2022, which was Ukraine’s alignment with the West. To end the conflict, a vision for Ukraine’s long-term alignment with the West must be articulated. The 2008 Bucharest Summit placed Ukraine in a permanent waiting room. Ukraine has become increasingly aligned with the West, yet not formally allied. Russia deems this situation unacceptable yet not irreversible.Footnote ⁶⁴

The war has demonstrated Ukraine’s desire to belong to the West, and the West has offered Kyiv extraordinary support. However, no level of Ukrainian victory could settle the issue of Ukraine’s relations with the West on its own. While Ukraine has expressed its desire to join, the West is divided on whether and how Ukraine should join.Footnote ⁶⁵ The European countries, often led by Eastern member states, spearheaded the provision of material assistance, while the EU as a whole offered candidate status and opened negotiations, which are vital practical steps towards integration.Footnote ⁶⁶ However, prospects for NATO membership remain unclear. At the Vilnius Summit, NATO largely reaffirmed its previous position of keeping the door open while postponing the difficult decision of when Ukraine can enter to an uncertain moment in the future. This occurred even though the summit took place under the Biden administration, which was favourable to Ukraine. Under the Trump administration, US commitments became more politically volatile, making Ukraine’s membership of the alliance increasingly unlikely and complicating alternative Western security arrangements that would still require some level of US military involvement in enabling roles, even if Europe were to take on most of the operational burden.

Assessing Ukraine’s victory-oriented approach against the political criteria reveals significant challenges to achieving a lasting resolution through military means alone. Even if Ukraine liberated all occupied territories, including Crimea and Donbas, the core issues driving the conflict – such as Russia’s refusal to accept Ukraine’s Western alignment and the contested status of key regions – would remain deeply entrenched. Most Russians consider Crimea an integral part of Russia, making its loss politically unacceptable. Additionally, local populations in the occupied areas have shifted their identities towards Russia and are likely to resist reintegration into Ukraine. Historical examples show that even significant military defeats and regime changes do not guarantee the end of conflicts, as successor governments may continue pursuing the same objectives. Furthermore, the West’s divided support for Ukraine’s full integration into institutions like NATO and the EU leaves Ukraine’s aspirations unfulfilled. Given these complexities, the likelihood of Russia accepting defeat as irreversible is minimal, and without addressing the fundamental political issues, the frozen conflict is likely to persist despite any military victories. Therefore, a purely military solution is insufficient to resolve the deep-rooted dimensions of the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

Conclusions and implications: Transforming the debate about victory

In conclusion, Ukraine’s victory-oriented approach, while appealing, did not offer a viable solution to the frozen conflict between Russia and Ukraine, even if the West provided significantly more military assistance in 2022–3, when battlefield realities seemed promising. As this article argues, the dichotomy between victory and frozen conflict has been a false one. Insights from frozen conflict literature show that wars in frozen conflicts typically end with a ‘victory and return to frozen conflict’ rather than a ‘victory and conflict resolution’. For Ukraine, the unfavourable outlook for a victory-oriented strategy for conflict termination was apparent from the outset of the war but was overshadowed by Ukraine’s unexpected battlefield successes, which led to an overestimation of the political capabilities of military victories. Both optimists and pessimists in the Western discourse can benefit from these insights.

Optimists advocating for a victory-oriented approach should recognise that victory and a frozen conflict are not mutually exclusive. Even if Ukraine achieves a hard-to-foresee victory, it will likely remain in a frozen conflict with Russia for the foreseeable future. Pessimists, who have been sceptical that victory is possible and argued that Kyiv needs to make some territorial concessions to Moscow, would also benefit from more nuanced insights into how frozen conflicts end. While diplomacy and painful compromises are indeed the most common way to end frozen conflicts, a frozen conflict can truly end only when all central issues are addressed, ensuring neither party seeks to overturn the resolution at a later date. While Ukraine might voluntarily cede some of its territory in the future, pressuring it into such concessions would be not only unjust but also ineffective in resolving the conflict. Lastly, those who justifiably warn that the war will likely be followed by a frozen conflict would benefit from articulating a vision of how the conflict could end.

Several additional theoretical and practical implications of this assessment of Ukraine’s victory-oriented approach, which has received strong political support from Western leaders until at least 2024, are worth discussing. First, for policy, a bold diplomatic compromise remains more promising than seeking a military solution, but it must be designed to produce permanence, not merely a pause. While the Biden administration and European countries failed to articulate their own vision for ending the conflict, instead embracing Ukraine’s victory-oriented approach, President Trump has explicitly prioritised a ceasefire-first diplomacy over a victory-oriented approach, pressuring Kyiv and Moscow to halt hostilities and engage in talks. This shifted Ukraine’s domestic calculus in 2025, and the previous position, which rejected a ceasefire as a prelude to Russian rearmament, gave way to signals of readiness to stabilise the line of contact, even tacitly accepting that some occupied areas might not be immediately recoverable.

Yet, while Trump’s steps have brought the parties to the negotiating table, current US initiatives do not articulate a durable settlement of Ukraine’s western alignment – the very issue Moscow frames as a ‘root cause’ – leaving core questions about NATO/EU anchoring unresolved. A workable deal, therefore, must pair territorial provisions with an agreed, credible long-term status for Ukraine’s Western alignment that Kyiv, Moscow, and Western capitals accept. Proposals range from trading some pre-2014 territory for NATO membership guarantees to offering neutrality in exchange for the return of occupied areas.Footnote ⁶⁷ These options are both politically and normatively challenging, but without a settlement that addresses both territorial and alignment issues, a ceasefire could merely shift the conflict from hot to cold rather than ending it.

Second, for scholarship, future research should examine why Ukraine and many Western actors have continued to advocate a victory-oriented approach despite its low viability. From a force-balance perspective, the probability of a decisive Ukrainian victory – and the limits of Western support – was always modest and largely knowable. Why, then, did victory-first preferences endure? Future work should investigate the pathways from military assessments to political decision-making, including the effects of optimistic bias, motivated reasoning, civil–military communication gaps, media dynamics, and the authority of epistemic communities. A particularly promising direction lies in exploring how domestic politics within both Ukraine and the West shape strategic preferences and constrain the range of acceptable outcomes.

Future research should also extend beyond the Russia–Ukraine case. While the literature on frozen conflicts offers valuable insights into single cases, it lacks comparative analyses that explain why states and their advocates sometimes persist in pursuing militarily improbable strategies despite having accessible evidence to the contrary. Approaches such as elite interviews, surveys, and archival analysis of decision briefs could illuminate how party systems, coalition incentives, audience costs, elite divisions, and diaspora or lobbying pressures redefine red lines and render certain settlements politically infeasible.