FOREIGN AFFAIRS TELLS THE TRUTH: Ukraine Is Shedding the Struggle – JP

With Moscow Pressing Its Advantage, Kyiv Should Trade Land for Peace

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Four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Trump administration is pressing Kyiv to agree to painful territorial concessions as the price for peace. In a draft peace agreement first reported by Axios in November, the administration proposed that the entire regions of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk be recognized as de facto Russian territory and that Russia retain control of the parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia its forces now occupy. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is pushing back, refusing to do anything that would violate his country’s territorial integrity. Yet the realities of the battlefield are not on his side.

Ukraine has been putting up valiant resistance, but its determination cannot disguise the fact that it is losing the war. Russia controls a large swath of Ukrainian territory, and Kyiv has little chance of dislodging it, as Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive in 2023 demonstrated. To be sure, recent Russian gains have come very slowly and at significant cost; over the last three years, Russia has taken a mere one percent of additional Ukrainian territory. But that does not change the reality that Russia now holds almost a fifth of the land within Ukraine’s 1991 borders—or that Russia’s greater resources and population mean that Moscow can fight on for years to come. Overcoming those Russian advantages and clawing back lost land on the battlefield would require time and investment that Ukraine doesn’t have. Current circumstances are therefore pushing Kyiv toward a compromise peace—one that will necessarily include the surrender of Ukrainian territory.

FALLING BEHIND

Judging by sheer numbers, the trajectory of the war does not favor Ukraine. The rates of battlefield losses on each side are one example. The Russian media outlet Mediazona tracks Russian military deaths using social media, obituaries, and official government notices and provides the most reliable estimates. (Estimates by Western intelligence agencies vary dramatically and often correlate with government policy preferences.) As of the end of 2025, Mediazona’s analysts identified 156,151 Russians who have been killed in the war and, because not every death is publicly reported, used population data to estimate a total of 219,000 dead. The Ukrainian nongovernmental organization UA Losses, employing a similar methodology, has reported 87,045 Ukrainians killed in action and 85,906 missing in action, a figure that likely includes unacknowledged deaths and desertions.

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