Every summer, the leaders of NATO member countries sit down and talk shop about the state of the world and what reforms the alliance should enact to make it a more capable force.
Before Donald Trump became president, the meeting was a boring affair, with scripted public chitchats and platitudes about transatlantic solidarity. Trump has replaced the sitcom with a reality show that, more often than not, leaves the European leaders with ulcers.
At this week’s NATO summit, Trump, per usual, will blast many of his European colleagues for penny-pinching on their defense budgets, notwithstanding the alliance increasing its collective non-U.S. defense budget by 20% from last year. If NATO delegates left last year’s summit on a relatively upbeat note, the participants will be lucky to escape this year without a tongue-lashing. Trump is still peeved at Europe’s unwillingness to support a war in Iran.
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One constant between this year and the last is the war in Ukraine, which is grinding on with no end in sight. According to a draft NATO summit communique leaked last week, the organization is set to announce $80 billion in new military support to the Ukrainian army this year and “at least equivalent levels” of funding for 2027. This will be music to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s ears, who is in desperate need of air defense interceptors as Russian President Vladimir Putin orders increasingly lethal missile barrages against the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
Trump, Zelenskyy and Putin all want the war to end, but the problem is that each wants that to happen on their own terms. Despite the Ukrainian advancements in drone warfare against Russian targets and Putin’s ongoing military offensive, neither has shown much inclination toward a middle ground. This was the case when President Joe Biden was in office.
Even as the combatants remain stubbornly opposed to compromise, the war itself is changing. The full frontal assaults that characterized the conflict’s first two years have been replaced by the use of stand-off weapons launched beyond the front line, which is not so much a front in the traditional sense of the word but rather a 15- to 20-mile block of territory between the two sides where any movement is quickly neutralized by attack drones. The Russians now send small teams of two to three men to pierce Ukrainian defenses and, assuming it works, destabilize Ukrainian-controlled towns and cities until reinforcements arrive.
Putin is also relying more on large-scale airstrikes against Ukraine’s biggest population centers. Last week, Russia attacked Kyiv for about 12 hours, killing 31 people. On Monday morning, Kyiv was hit yet again, with 12 people killed and at least 15 buildings damaged. The objective is to make the Ukrainian people’s lives so miserable that they become disillusioned with the war effort and press the Zelenskyy administration to negotiate a peace on Moscow’s terms. Yet that bet is about as delusional as Putin’s public boasts about nonstop progress, which in turn are about as ridiculous as his protestations that Ukrainians are eager to be a part of the Russian Federation.
On Ukraine’s side, the tactics have shifted as well. Back in 2023, the Ukrainian army bet that a large-scale, U.S.-supported counteroffensive would push the Russian army out of the country or pressure Putin into taking diplomacy seriously. Neither of those things happened; much of the Russian army may have been composed of mercenaries and criminals, but their defensive preparations were able to ground Kyiv’s offensive into dust. The Ukrainians lost thousands of men, the lines barely moved and the entire operation was halted after Ukrainian commanders concluded the cost was too great.
Today, Ukraine is fighting smarter. Ukrainian troops, who are a precious commodity at this point in the war, are no longer being ordered to go headfirst into Russian lines. Instead, the Ukrainian army is leveraging its technological prowess and mastery in drone warfare to strike Russian targets beyond the immediate battlefield. Ukraine has expanded the war to new terrain deep into Russia by hitting oil refineries, gas turbines and the energy infrastructure that the Kremlin needs to produce gas for its own industry. Russian refineries have been hit at least 194 times this year, an 11-fold spike from the same period in 2025. Crimea, the crown jewel of Putin’s imperial fantasies, is being especially hard-hit at the moment.
Ukraine’s decision to take the war to Russia is also confronting Putin with an enormous political problem. Up until this year, Russian civilians were largely insulated from the war. The Kremlin’s calculation was to ensure that Moscow and St. Petersburg, where Russia’s elite lives, were kept as far away from the war’s consequences as possible. Yet Ukraine’s deep-strike capabilities have torn this asunder, and Russian officials are now forced to admit that the country is actually experiencing difficulties. Long lines at gas stations, once a rarity in one of the world’s biggest producers of fossil fuels, are now common. Putin’s political position remains secure, but every dark cloud hovering over Moscow as a result of a Ukrainian strike on a refinery is making the Kremlin’s goal of keeping ordinary Russians fat and happy more difficult.
Will any of this make a diplomatic settlement to the war more likely? Don’t bet on it. Putin has treated every Ukrainian tactical success as a reason to escalate. And with the ongoing military support Ukraine is receiving from Europe, Zelenskyy doesn’t have an incentive to compromise either. The war will continue throughout the year.
And Trump, who once viewed the conflict as his best chance to get a Nobel Peace Prize, will get bored of bashing his head against the wall — if he hasn’t already.
Daniel DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a foreign affairs columnist for the Tribune.
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