A flurry of diplomatic activity around the war in Ukraine masks a deeper problem: hope is increasingly substituting for strategy among all major actors. Ukraine hopes for better battlefield conditions and renewed US support, even as internal political turmoil, corruption scandals, manpower shortages, and underfunded weapons production weaken its position. Europe hopes the United States will remain committed while it struggles to rearm and resolve issues like frozen Russian assets. The Trump administration hopes a politically weakened President Zelensky will accept any deal that allows Washington to declare peace. Meanwhile, Russia has expanded its production of missiles and drones and sustained troop levels despite losses. Without a shift in the military or economic balance, future peace proposals will look much like current ones, explains Dmytro Kuleba of The New York Times. Kubela writes:

You’d be forgiven for being completely lost amid the flurry of diplomatic meetings and plans to try to end the war in Ukraine that have taken place over the last few weeks — another, between Ukrainian and U.S. delegations, took place in Florida last weekend; on Monday, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was in Paris to meet with President Emmanuel Macron of France; and Steve Witkoff, President Trump’s special envoy, was scheduled to travel to Moscow, where the Kremlin said he would meet with President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

But there is a quick way to catch up. Because whichever multiple-point plan emerges next, the takeaway remains the same: Hope is being allowed to stand in for strategy. […]

Many have tried to define the war in Ukraine as one of attrition. It is not. It is a war of will. Victory will belong not to the side with more resources (the West being demonstrably more resource-rich than Russia), but to the side with the stronger, more adaptive and unyielding will to win. Today, neither Ukraine nor Europe nor the United States can claim that advantage. […]

This is not an argument against hope. Hope has its place. Ukrainians live by it every day: They hope that their families will be safe, their country will survive and that Europe will finally treat their country as its own.

But hope cannot be a strategy. In today’s wartime politics, it is doing far too much of the work that weapons, sanctions and hard political choices should be doing instead.

Read more here.