Securing Ukraine’s Future: Adapting to New Realities After Four Years of War

The United States and Europe are confronting vast and complex challenges in how to respond to threats posed by Russia four years after its invasion of Ukraine. Six experts offer their recommendations across the critical dimensions of these challenges—spanning security, economics, diplomacy, and the humanitarian response—to chart a path toward a stable and secure Europe.

Ukraine’s Defense Industrial Base Could Become an Anchor for Europe’s Security

Heidi Crebo-Rediker is a senior fellow in the Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

Ukraine’s defense industrial base (DIB) has evolved from improvised wartime production into a core pillar of Europe’s future security and Ukraine’s postwar economy. Wartime necessity created a rapid-innovation ecosystem—especially in drones, autonomy, electronic warfare, and battlefield software—initially financed by grants and angel investors, and now increasingly supported by platforms like Brave1 and growing venture capital interest. As Ukrainian output has scaled to millions of drones annually, the emerging challenge has become how to scale Ukrainian firms beyond Ukraine. While the potential is clear, realizing it will require capital, certification, and integration into European and NATO procurement ecosystems.

Venture investment in Ukraine’s so-called mil-tech valley remains extremely modest compared to European state funding, which currently underpins the sector’s expansion at scale. Denmark has moved from funding weapons production in Ukraine to directly financing Ukrainian-designed weapons manufactured in Denmark, while Germany is tying large-scale financing to joint ventures producing Ukrainian systems in Germany. Similar co-production models in Lithuania, Norway, and the United Kingdom diversify production away from Russian attack, embed Ukrainian designs in European supply chains, and create domestic industrial stakeholders invested in Ukraine’s success.

Ukraine offers Europe speed, adaptability, and cost-effectiveness in defense production at a time when European supply falls well short of demand. Supporting Ukraine’s DIB is not charity—it is a strategic investment in Europe’s own security.

Read the full Ukraine Policy Brief, “Securing Ukraine’s Future in Europe: Ukraine’s Defense Industrial—An Anchor for Economic Renewal and European Security.”

Defending Europe if Russia Steps Out of the Gray Zone

Liana Fix is a senior fellow for Europe at CFR. Benjamin Harris is a research associate for Europe and foreign policy at CFR.

As peace negotiations continue between Russia and Ukraine, Europe should prepare for Russia to step out of the “gray zone” of hybrid warfare activities toward more overt attacks as part of a pressure strategy on Europeans. With transatlantic trust at a historic low, Russia could use the window of opportunity and decide to conduct low-level conventional provocations against European states, for example by using military drones against civilian targets, to further undermine the alliance. Europe needs to prepare to manage such a crisis on its own, without (or with less of) its traditional U.S. backing.

In order to do so, her are five steps Europe can take:

The year 2026 will likely present a dangerous window wherein European states face Russian aggression beyond the gray zone without the traditional guarantees of its American ally. Taking these steps can equip them to deter Russia on their own, setting up a better security environment for Europe, enhancing the chances for durable peace in Ukraine, and laying the foundation for stable relations with both the United States and Russia. 

Read the full Ukraine Policy Brief, “Defending Europe if Russia Steps Out of the Gray Zone.”

Don’t Overestimate Russia: The Case for Deterrence and Dialogue

Thomas Graham is a distinguished fellow at CFR.

Europe fears Russia could launch another attack within five years. It has good reason for vigilance: Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly threatened countries that support Ukraine. The Kremlin’s anti-European vitriol is escalating. Hybrid attacks are raising alarms across the continent, and Russia’s long history of expansion only reinforces those concerns. Yet consideration of the domestic and foreign constraints Russia faces suggests that a deliberate attack is less likely than European leaders fear.

To be sure, the end of the Russia-Ukraine war will not eliminate the Kremlin’s efforts to divide European states and stoke discord within them. Weighing against a deliberate attack, however, are serious domestic and foreign challenges for Russia, including the need to revitalize the nonmilitary segment of its economy, increase investment in advanced technologies, reintegrate hundreds of thousands of veterans into civilian life, reconstruct the devastated Ukrainian land it has seized, and rebuild its position in the former Soviet space. The Kremlin’s desire to normalize relations with the United States to offset Russia’s excessive reliance on China makes a deliberate attack even less likely.

Those objective restraints should temper Putin’s ambitions, but they cannot eliminate the danger. Throughout the Ukraine conflict, he has grossly miscalculated the balance of power and exaggerated Russia’s capabilities. Yet Russia’s muted responses to recent challenges to its global standing—regime change in Syria, the U.S. bombing of Iran, and the U.S. capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—attest to a greater appreciation of the realities of power and a reduced willingness to run the risks that an invasion of Europe would entail.

Europe’s Russia policy should rest on two pillars: deterrence and dialogue. Deterrence demonstrates the political will and capability to counter Russian aggression. Dialogue helps ensure that Russia does not misread defensive steps as offensive intent and provides a channel to ease tensions. Europe needs to accelerate the buildup of its military capabilities and put its own house in order to blunt Russia’s hybrid attacks, all while seeking to open dialogue with Moscow. Washington can and should help Brussels in both areas. With sustained investment in deterrence and dialogue, and a clear-eyed understanding of the constraints Russia faces, Europe could use the next five years to consolidate a competitive, uneasy, but stable coexistence with Russia.

Read the full Ukraine Policy Brief, “Right-Sizing the Russian Threat.”

The Post-War Dangers Europe and NATO Are Not Ready For

Paul B. Stares is the General John W. Vessey senior fellow for conflict prevention and director of the Wachenheim Center for Peace and Security at CFR.

Even as peace in Ukraine remains uncertain, U.S. and European policymakers should begin preparing for the postwar challenges a settlement will likely bring. Any agreement will not diminish Russia’s threat to the continent—Moscow is expected to rebuild its military, continue hybrid attacks, and potentially test NATO’s resolve through limited incursions, resembling a new Cold War dynamic.

Three major challenges stand out. First, transatlantic tensions could intensify over various issues including additional economic and military support to Ukraine, competition over defense procurement, and divergent approaches to sanctions relief and the establishment of commercial relations with Russia. Second, intra-European divisions—particularly as a result of the disproportionate burden that northern and frontline states have carried in supporting Ukraine—could deepen once the unifying pressure of active conflict subsides. Third, the expanded NATO-Russia border creates heightened risks of unintended escalation or deliberate provocation.

To address these challenges, the United States and Europe should consider the following recommendations:

The overarching message is clear—proactive planning now is far preferable to improvising when peace unexpectedly arrives.

Read the full Ukraine Policy Brief, “Preparing for the Day After in Europe.”

The Case for a New Humanitarian Aid Model in Ukraine

Sam Vigersky is an international affairs fellow at CFR.

When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the humanitarian response was immediate and global. The UN system proved highly effective at mobilizing resources—raising $4.3 billion and covering 88 percent of assessed needs—but struggled to scale programs with speed and flexibility. Layers of bureaucratic approvals and rigid donor conditions are often at odds with dynamic needs in an active war zone. As of February, 3.7 million Ukrainians are internally displaced and 10.9 million are in need of humanitarian assistance. The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine documented a 30 percent increase in civilian casualties in 2025—the war’s highest to date—while intensified Russian attacks have caused a 21 percent increase in damage or destruction of Ukrainian energy infrastructure.

Ukraine revealed the actors capable of filling that gap—agile government programs, decentralized civil society organizations, and disciplined private-sector giving—but it also exposed the limits of relying on patchwork solutions. The absence of a fixed coordination mechanism to bridge the work of these non-traditional actors has limited the system’s ability to convert goodwill, capital, and expertise into sustained impact. The problem has become existential in a moment when the humanitarian architecture itself is under fiscal and political strain following the demolition of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and European funding cuts.

A new mechanism should be created, one that institutionalizes the fast and flexible small grant paradigm pioneered by USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), while integrating private-sector capabilities and local civil society into a coherent framework.

Such a model would rapidly deploy grants, cash, and technical assistance, matching corporate and philanthropic capabilities to verified local needs. It would channel funding efficiently to national nongovernmental organizations, which continue to provide the backbone of the humanitarian response in Ukraine. It would coordinate with UN operations—without replicating their structural constraints. Most of all, it would do what the moment demands: adapting to shifting frontlines and infrastructure disruption as the war continues and pivoting toward recovery and reconstruction if a ceasefire materializes.

Read the full Ukraine Policy Brief, “Beyond Conventional Aid: Institutionalizing Public-Private Partnership in Ukraine’s Humanitarian Response.”