Within days, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy faces the ultimate choice as he sizes up US President Donald Trump’s peace plan for his country.
The US leader views the Ukraine conflict as not his war, and he is determined to bring it to a close. Highwire talks in Geneva have, at last, given the Europeans a seat at the table as national security advisers from Ukraine and its main allies try to shape Washington’s plan.
It is necessary to remember that whatever the course of the negotiations over the next few days, Ukraine’s importance to Europe has reached an unparalleled point.
The battle for Ukraine has introduced new levels of electronic warfare. The Ukrainians had a flourishing technology industry before the war began, and they have channelled this genius into the battlefield.
One of the surprises at the outset of the fighting was that Russia could not establish air supremacy over Ukraine. This resulted in a conflict that saw First World War-style trench warfare and hardly moving frontlines, but also something new.
The reliance of the Russians on Iran’s Shahed drones and its missile force for daily impact in the conflict has seen the Ukrainians build their own weapons industry. The outcome is that the Ukrainian armed forces are among the most innovative in the world.
With the shift to hybrid threats to the European defence space, the Ukrainians are now able to teach the countries of Nato what works in this evolving type of warfare.
It is operating in Mildenhall, a town in England that was once one of the leading bases for the US air force in Europe, and has offered to hire workers being laid off from the car maker Lotus. This is not just a one-off.
At the Dubai Airshow last week, the stand of the Ukrainian manufacturer SkyFall attracted worldwide attention. Among its offerings is the P1-Sun Interceptor Drone, which has developed advantages that previously only missile shield technology could deliver.
SkyFall can take out the Shahed drones and some the incoming Russian missiles that are attacking Ukraine’s energy and communications infrastructure for strategic effect.
The ability to produce drones small and large is causing headaches for all sorts of areas of war fighting. For example, helicopters, tanks and even missile commands no longer have the impact that commanders have relied on for years.
The lessons for cash-strapped Europe are hard to absorb, but there is an acknowledgment that they must be taken onboard. Generals in France, Germany and the UK have been heard to say that, while their own countries are no longer truly at peace, they may not yet be in a full-scale war.
Look to the Black Sea where another of Ukraine’s early achievements was to ensure that the Russian fleet could not establish its supremacy either. This was especially cherished in Kyiv because of the lessons from 2014, when Russia was able to take Crimea and annex it shortly thereafter.
The UK announced last week that it was backing the German drone-maker Helsing to make an underwater drone system that would use AI-controlled autonomous swarms to detect and tackle subsurface threats. This was something that was barely conceived before Ukraine’s counter-offensive in the Black Sea.
The digital edge sweeping the European defence sphere is lucrative as well as far-reaching. Bank of America looked at the German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall this month and predicted that “tech stacks” and digital offerings would deliver between €8 billion ($9 billion) and €10 billion in sales by 2030, with margins of almost 20 per cent.
Ukraine has not been able to rely on the security guarantees it received from Russia, the US and UK in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 for giving up its nuclear arsenal. That has been evident since the Russian invasion began, despite hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of support from Kyiv's American and European partners.
Mr Trump has brought a new attitude to this support to the White House, and his team is following his directive to bring the war to a close. It may not have happened within the one day that he promised on the campaign trail, but there can be no doubt that is what he is driving to bring about. The next step should be a ceasefire that allows his plan to coalesce into an agreement between the parties.
Even as the fourth anniversary of the war looms in February, Ukraine’s strategic importance to Europe has reached its moment of truth. Kyiv has forged a defence economy that has much to offer the whole continent; that’s not going to be reversed.
Negotiators would be well advised to consider how much the situation has changed since 2022 – never mind 2014 or 1994 – for a country now facing hard but necessary choices.
