The war in Ukraine is still not stalemated. Ukraine can regain strategically vital ground. But the Russians can also still win if the West’s will to continue supporting Ukraine falters.

Some people, including in the Biden administration, are saying that Russia has already lost. Not so. The war’s outcome still rests heavily on our shoulders.

Letting Russia take all of Ukraine would be disastrous for the US. Russian victory would give Vladimir Putin vast new resources, bring Russian forces to the NATO border, and let the Russian military rebuild quickly.

The US and NATO would have to race to meet that challenge, which would cost far more money than helping Ukraine now does — and that could cost American lives if deterrence fails.

The situation in Ukraine remains grave and unstable. Putin took advantage of the long delay in the provision of new US military assistance to launch devastating air attacks throughout Ukraine. The Russians have also been pressing forward on the ground all along the 600-mile front line. Their gains have been small but relatively steady.

The Russians are committing reserves they’d massed for months to keep the pressure on. The situation will remain serious for weeks to come.

Russian losses have been staggering — tens of thousands killed and wounded for advances of a few miles. But Ukrainian losses are also high, their forces are stretched thin.

US aid is arriving, finally, but too slowly and in amounts that are too small to make a sudden change.

Holding back ‘meat assaults’

The Russians are continuing to advance in Donetsk Oblast around the important town of Chasiv Yar and northwest of the gains they made in Avdiivka earlier this year.

Ukraine has stopped the Russian drive into Kharkiv Oblast, but at the cost of tying up some of Ukraine’s limited available reserves and pulling Ukrainian units from elsewhere on the line.

The Russians have launched a new effort around the town of Toretsk and, most recently, have conducted several large mechanized attacks in areas west and southwest of Donetsk City. The Russian mechanized assaults have failed, and Russian gains elsewhere are slow, grinding, and very costly.

But they are still gains, and the pressure keeps Ukrainian forces largely pinned all along the line.

The Russians continue to improve important technologies. Electronic warfare helps them temporarily hinder the operation of Ukraine’s short-range drones to help Russian forces advance. Long-range drones have helped keep the pressure on Ukraine’s limited air defense systems and make the Russian air campaign more effective.

Russian ground tactics remain poor and their “meat assaults” abhorrent — but we mustn’t underestimate Russian military capabilities overall.

The Russians continue to learn and adapt in ways that will increase pressure on Ukraine over time and, eventually, pose a meaningful threat to NATO.

The Ukrainians are also learning and adapting, however, and therein lies the reason for confidence in Ukraine’s ultimate success.

Ukrainian technological innovation is faster and more adaptive than the Russian, particularly in their use of short-range drones to destroy Russian tanks.

Ukrainian forces are pioneering a new way of fighting modern war that should shape the way the US, NATO, and our other allies and partners prepare for future conflict.

Don’t go for big offensive

Ukrainian forces, properly supplied with Western systems integrated with their own domestically produced drones and other weapons, can stop Russian advances and start pushing the Russians back sometime in 2025.

F-16s are arriving in Ukraine right now and, although they will not transform the war, they will give Ukraine important advantages in air defense and in the general conduct of air operations against Russian ground forces.

Ukraine has formed a number of new combat brigades that are awaiting Western equipment. When that equipment belatedly arrives, they will be able to use those units and, hopefully, others that will come behind them, to begin to regain momentum.

We should not expect or press the Ukrainians to accumulate a large mass of troops and equipment for some decisive, war-winning blow.

Future Ukrainian counteroffensives should not look like improved versions of the one they launched in 2023. That effort was too ambitious and reflected a desire to strike a single decisive blow against a powerful and well-prepared enemy.

A better approach is outlined in a paper forthcoming from the Institute for the Study of War — Ukraine should focus on planning and conducting a series of smaller counteroffensive operations in sequence.

Each operation should be designed to capitalize on whatever  technological advantage Ukrainian innovators can generate, while integrating long-range weapons and ground operations more closely than Ukrainian forces have previously done.

The Ukrainians have shown incredible skill and courage over the last nine months, fighting off increasing Russian pressure even as Ukrainian ammunition depots ran dry and as air defenders ran out of missiles.

They will be able to turn that skill and courage back to making important battlefield gains as the full weight of promised Western aid continues to arrive.

Russian retreat from Black Sea

Ukrainian innovation has already produced important tangible results even during this difficult period.

Ukrainian air and maritime drones combined with Ukrainian-produced and Western-provided missiles have done something unprecedented in history — they’ve allowed a state with no navy to defeat the Russian Black Sea Fleet.

The Black Sea Fleet, based in illegally occupied Crimea, had been supporting Russia’s missile campaign against Ukraine but, more importantly, letting Russia cut off the supply of Ukrainian grain to the world.

The de facto Russian blockade of Ukraine’s ports cost Kyiv much-needed cash even as it deprived poor people around the world of food. The Black Sea Fleet patrolled the western Black Sea, laid mines, and threatened air and missile attacks on ships carrying Ukrainian grain.

The Ukrainians figured out how to use combinations of long-range aerial drones and missiles first to destroy Russia’s modern air defense systems and then to start sinking Russian naval vessels in port.

Over time, Ukraine developed maritime drones able to hit Russian ships at sea and in port, badly damaging or even sinking them.

The Russians have basically given up, pulling almost the entire remaining Black Sea Fleet away from Crimea back to ports on the eastern shores of the Black Sea and allowing Ukraine to reopen and keep open the vital grain corridor.

This impressive Ukrainian success is an indication of what Ukrainian innovation advantages can bring.

Ukraine’s weaknesses

Ukraine nevertheless suffers from serious disadvantages. The Russian population is 3-4 times the size of Ukraine’s and Russia’s economy is an order of magnitude larger.

Ukraine is struggling in particular to generate the military manpower needed to stabilize the front lines and permit Ukrainian forces to begin liberating strategically vital territory over time. Part of the challenge is internal — Kyiv must balance the competing priorities of getting soldiers to the front, having people in factories and innovation centers, and educating and preparing a rising generation to keep the country going over time.

The internal challenge is complicated by the fact that Ukraine is a free, democratic country, unlike Russia. Men of draft age are prohibited from leaving, but Ukraine’s borders are otherwise open.

If Kyiv drafts a hundred thousand young men today, but a hundred thousand families with sons nearly at draft age leave tomorrow, the results will be devastating.

Ukrainians are prepared to fight and die for their country and have been doing so since the first Russian invasion in 2014. They fought before they had received any Western assistance and they fought as US assistance dried up.

But it takes more than brave young men and women to fight. Soldiers need equipment, and Ukraine does not have enough to equip the units it’s already forming.

The West and the US in particular must accelerate its delivery of tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery vehicles, and the other systems that a modern army must have — and that only the US has in enough quantity to matter in the short term.

What we need to do

The US must also lift the absurd restrictions on Ukraine’s ability to use American-provided systems to strike legitimate military targets inside Russia. Current restrictions give sanctuary to all the major airbases in the Russian Federation from which the Russian Air Force conducts daily strikes on Ukrainian front-line troops and cities.

Russian military headquarters oversee ground operations in Ukraine from safety within Russia. Russian ground forces concentrate in Russia unhindered and then attack Ukraine. All because the White House prevents Ukraine from using weapons the US has provided that could severely disrupt all these Russian activities.

This policy makes no sense and must change at once.

The US must also continue to lead its European and Asian allies and partners in committing to help defeat Russia over the long term.

European states have collectively already pledged more to support Ukraine than has the US. And our Asian partners recognize that a Russian victory is also a Chinese and North Korean victory.

But the US is the leader of our alliances. We are the wealthiest and most powerful state in the world. We are still the country to whom the free peoples of the world look when things get tough. Leaders lead. The more we lead, the more they will follow. And all will benefit.

If we stop leading, however, if we step back, abandon our own interests, and tell our allies they’re on their own, then it is Americans who will ultimately suffer. Our self-declared enemies in Moscow, Pyongyang, and Tehran — and, yes, Beijing —will see in our withdrawal not prudent restraint but weakness.

Their aims are not local or limited. They are very grand.

They seek to remake the world as they desire it to be — a world of violence, chaos, dictatorship, and, above all, a world in which America counts for nothing and benefits from nothing.

What we do in Ukraine today and in the coming years will profoundly shape the course of history. If we get it right, then we have a chance to restore an era of peace and prosperity.

If we get it wrong, we will almost certainly find ourselves at best living in a world at war and, at worst, losing to some of the most brutal authoritarian regimes the world has seen in nearly a century. The choice should be clear.

Jack Keane, a retired four-star general, is a former Army vice chief of staff and current chairman at the Institute for the Study of War. Contributing to the article are Frederick W. Kagan, George Barros, Karolina Hird and Kateryna Stepanenko.