How Badly Has the War Doomed Ukraine's Future?

the war in Ukraine the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II has now entered into its fourth year of Devastation and after all of this time since the Russian army first launched its all-out Invasion Ukraine now stands in the most precarious position it's been in since the war's early opening days following an explosive meeting between Donald Trump and vomir zilinsky in the white house at the end of February Trump instructed the United States to temporarily sever all of its military aid and intelligence sharing with the ukrainians as an apparent pressure tactic to try and force Ukraine into accepting some kind of a peace settlement with Russia after Ukraine then indicated that it was open to a temporary 30-day ceasefire agreement with Russia a few days later the US military aid and intelligence sharing was restored again but the Trump Administration also showed the ukrainians that for the next four years of this Administration the United States will no longer be as reliable of a partner as they used to be and that their aid and intelligence sharing could always be withdrawn again in the future over some other issue during those 6 days when American intelligence sharing to Ukraine was halted the Russians and their North Korean allies managed to make enormous tactical breakthroughs against Ukraine's occupied area in Russia's kers Province threatening to encircle around 10,000 of Ukraine's most elite soldiers in the KK theater of the process and prompting highlevel calls within the Ukrainian military to abandon the kers operation before it became too late if the worst indeed comes to pass for Ukraine and they are forced to abandon their hold and curse because of this those 6 days of halted American intelligence sharing with Ukraine may have just cost them their biggest bargaining ship that they had acquired during the entire War because Ukraine had been hoping to exchange their occupied territory and cursed for Russian occupy a territory in Ukraine if they end up losing all of it Ukraine will be placed into an even worse negotiating position than they were in beforehand with no occupied Russian territory left to exchange for any occupied Ukrainian territory the past 3 years of Total War resisting Russia's Invasion have R absolutely horrific costs upon Ukrainian Society near the three-year anniversary Mark of the invasion in February of 2025 president zalinski himself claimed that more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed in action since the invasion began an almost certainly optimistic count the Wall Street Journal published a claim in September of 2024 that as many as 80,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed during the war and another 400,000 others wounded while The Economist published a similar report in November of 2024 which concluded somewhere between 60,000 and 100,000 killed and 400,000 wounded if those reports from the Wall Street Journal and The Economist are even remotely accurate it indicates that nearly one in every 20 finding age men in Ukraine have been either killed or wounded during The Invasion over the past 3 years an absolutely Grizzly statistic Russia's human losses during the war are believed to be numerically worse but Russia also has a much higher population and is better able to absorb the damage media though an independent Russian outlet has collaborated with BBC Russia in a massive project to try and confirm through open- Source data the names of Fallen Russian soldiers during the war by the end of February of 2025 their project had confirmed the names of more than 90,000 Russian soldiers who have been killed during the war since 2022 but they believe that the total number of Russian soldiers killed when including so far unconfirmed deaths is more likely around 170,000 with another 500 50,000 more or so wounded that adds up to an astonishing total of around 720,000 Russian military casualties suffered during the past 3 years of war against Ukraine about the same number of casualties as the United Kingdom suffered throughout the entire 6 years of their experience in World War II about 750,000 but proportionally speaking Russia Still Remains in better shape than Ukraine does because of their much larger Manpower pool the specialty numbers for Russia suggest that roughly 1 in 30 fighting age men in the country have been killed or wounded during the war compared with a one in 20 fighting age Ukrainian men the fighting in the war has also consistently been getting more violent and intense with every passing year despite little territorial changes along the front line making headlines across 2022 it's estimated that around 20,000 Russian soldiers were killed in action across 2023 another 50,000 more and across 2024 Russia is estimated by the media Zona and BBC Russia report to have suffered around a 100,000 soldiers killed in action and more than 300,000 others wounded just to capture an amount of land in Ukraine about the equivalent size of the US state of Rhode Island across the Eastern front but in addition to Russia's losses being proportionately fewer than Ukraine's losses Russia has also made up for a lot of its own losses by gaining control over new population territory and resources in Ukraine as well while even further exacerbating Ukraine's military casualties Ukraine has lost about 11% of its territory since the Russian invasion began in 2022 in addition to the previous 7% of their territory that was occupied by Russia and Russian back separatists before that since 2014 across this 18% of Ukraine currently under Russian military occupation live around 5 million people who are nominally Ukrainian citizens but whom Russia is currently trying to incorporate as their own citizens Putin has demanded that all of these 5 million people within the occupied territories must renounce their Ukrainian citizenship and accept Russian citizenship instead or face deportation if most of them accept then Russia's already gained around 5 million citizens for the losses of 170,000 soldiers and another 650,000 or so Russians who have immigrated abroad since the start of the invasion coming out well ahead with a net positive of millions of people gained Ukraine UK meanwhile has not only lost around 880,000 of their soldiers probably killed in action and one in 20 of all of their fighting age men killed or wounded but they've also lost around 5 million more people to Russian occupation behind the front lines and they've lost another 6 million other people who fled the country as refugees since the invasion began and have yet to return because of these astonishing losses The Wall Street Journal has recently reported that the total population that's still remaining under Ukrainian control today could be as few as only 26 or 27 million people a massive decline from their pre-invasion population of around 41 million and only about half of Ukraine's population at the time of their independence in 1991 of just over 50 million and in addition to their catastrophic losses in people and territory Ukraine has suffered enormous blows to their infrastructure as well on the occasion of the 3year anniversary of the beginning of the invasion the United Nations released an updated report rep that concluded that the cost of rebuilding Ukraine and Reviving its economy after the war concluded now stands at approximately 524 billion us nearly three times greater than Ukraine's entire economic output for 2024 it will simply be impossible for Ukraine to ever rebuild itself and to ever recover from this catastrophic War without massive outside support and without firm outside security guarantees to deter the Russians from ever attacking ATT in the country again but with further American support for Ukraine seeming shaky now the question has to be raised how badly has this war doomed Ukraine's future and does Ukraine even have any chance at becoming a viable prosperous State going forward for starters up until the Trump Administration ordered the temporary Halt and Aid in intelligence sharing the Ukraine the United States and Europe had been providing roughly equal amounts of military aid to Ukraine in lock step with each other according to the Keel Institution for the world economy a German company that traps International Aid to Ukraine the US had provided Ukraine with about $67 billion worth of military aid while Europe including the UK had provided them with about $65 billion worth if the US under the Trump Administration eventually ends their Military Support to Ukraine permanently it'll effectively blow up what's historically been half of Ukraine's outside Military Support in the process in many ways though that won't actually be as catastrophic for Ukraine as it might initially sound European artillery production for one thing has dramatically ramped up in scale since the start of the invasion and is now high enough to nearly match all of Ukraine's wartime needs according to data from the center for strategic and International Studies Europe is on track to produce about 2 million artillery shells for Ukraine this year through 2025 while the US is expected to only produce about 850,000 shells European artillery production is at this point already more important to Ukraine than American artillery production and yet even still European and American artillery production combined is still lower than Russian Artillery production because Russia is projected to produce about 4 million artillery shells through 2025 double what the Europeans are collectively producing American artillery would help of course but it will not be as decisive as European artillery is now moreover the most important weapon in this war has evolved away from artillery in the opening days to drones today and Ukraine is almost entirely self-sufficient in drones down by some estimates explosive firstperson viewer fpv drones now account for around 70% of Russian casualties on the battlefield and more than 90% of the drones the Ukraine is currently deploying on the front lines are being built domestically within Ukraine by hundreds of state and private manufacturers in 2024 the ukrainians built 1. 2 million of their own drones for use in the war and in 2025 they're currently on track to produce around another 4 million more drones all on their own the Europeans can also help aid Ukraine's drone production even further by offering to help them with manufacturing engines for long range and bigger payload capacity drones at a much higher rate so here again the Halton US military aid would not be especially catastrophic for Ukraine's drone War but one major piece of US military aid that would be effectively impossible for Ukraine and Europe to replace is America's Advanced anti-air systems especially their Patriot surfac to- a missile system the Patriot system is uniquely suited to shooting down Russian long range missiles they're extremely Advanced complicated and expensive to produce each one costs around $1 billion to build and can take up to two years to manufacture and only the US produces the Interceptor missiles that the system fires seven Patriot systems have been gifted to Ukraine since the invasion began at least two of which are believed to have been destroyed the remaining five are completely indispensable for safeguarding Ukraine's largest cities like Kev and Har that are home to millions of people from Russia's largest and most advanced missiles Ukraine uses a complex mish mash of various different anti-air systems to intercept missiles rockets and drones but it's only the Patriot system that is so routinely capable of shooting down the most advanced of Russia's missiles Europe has their own anti-air systems that they could Supply to Ukraine of course but none of them are considered be as capable or as advanced as the Patriot system is if the US permanently halted the flow of military aid to Ukraine this would probably be the biggest consequence without resupplies of the Patriots Interceptor missiles Ukraine's surviving Patriot systems will eventually run out of them and that'll expose Ukraine's major cities and infrastructure to Russian missile attacks in a way that they haven't really been before in this war which could end up leading to further ukrainians deciding on leaving the country and exacerbating Ukraine's demographic and economic problems even further in the event that the US eventually does permanently abandon Ukraine's war effort or severely reduces support European leaders have promised that they will be up to the challenge of continuing on supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes only hours after Trump ordered the temporary halt on US military aid to Ukraine the European commission president Ursula VLAN proposed a massive plan to mobilize 800 billion EUR to radically improve Europe's defensive capabilities and to continue providing huge Military Support to Ukraine but as it stands now the proposal is still exactly that a proposal and since previous European rearmament plans have fallen well short of their expectations it's plausible that this plan will too as the European nations remain pulled between domestic spending priorities and increased military spending despite the strong words and the grand plans that are coming out of Europe Europe remains deeply conflicted on Ukraine beneath the surface the EU for example after more than 3 years of total war in Ukraine is still somehow buying more energy resources from the Russians than the value of the aid that they're giving to Ukraine throughout the third year of the war between February of 2024 and February of 2025 the EU still purchased 21. 9 billion euros worth of Russian oil and gas filling up the kremlin's war chest while they only provided Ukraine with1 18.

7 billion worth of financial aid in the same time frame effectively providing Russia with one6 more cash as they provided to Ukraine a study conducted by yugov as recently as December of 2024 showed that while most Europeans feel the Ukraine isn't getting enough Western support to stop a Russian Victory from happening only a minority of Europeans in every country measured believed that it was their country's responsibility to be the ones to actually increase the support to Ukraine further many European nations with large and competent militaries like Poland and Germany have publics that appear to be very opposed to sending any troops to Ukraine as peacekeepers a recent poll conducted in Poland a Frontline State highly concerned with their own security against Russia found that an overwhelming 86. 5% of the Polish public are opposed to sending any of their troops into Ukraine while the German government has likewise said that Berlin is opposed to sending any of their peacekeepers to Ukraine either without direct American involvement which seems highly unlikely under the Trump Administration that eliminates two out of Europe's top five military Spenders from any peacekeeping duties in Ukraine leaving really only the UK and France who have publicly stated that they would be willing to contribute to a Ukraine peacekeeping Force after the war is concluded but even with their declared willingness to do so though they may all yet be empty promises because Russia Ria has categorically rejected the idea of any NATO member State deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine at all the Russian position has been clear that any NATO States deploying peacekeepers to Ukraine after a ceasefire or peace settlement would be interpreted by the Kremlin as an act of war and they're probably not going to back down from that position so would the UK and France still be willing to send their troops to Ukraine as peacekeepers if the Russians seriously threatened to immediately attack them the moment that they arrived would Russia ever even agree to a ceasefire in the first place if Europe insisted on French and British peacekeepers being there afterwards regardless Ukraine's number one biggest problem and their greatest obstacle to surviving as a nation after this war are their own atrocious demographics even before the start of the current War Ukraine's demographic profile was already arguably the most troubled in the entire world after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 in Ukraine's Independence the chaos of the transition led to a complete collapse in Ukraine's fertility rate the number of children born per woman in the country by 2001 the Ukrainian fertility rate had plunged to become what was at the time the lowest in the entire world at only around 1. 1 children being born per woman well well below the natural population replacement level of 2.

1 children per woman while Ukraine's fertility rate has modestly recovered since then it has never increased to even more than 1. 5 children per woman since then and the last time in history the Ukraine's fertility rate was ever at or above the replacement rate was all the way back in 1964 more than 60 years ago now in literally every single year since the start of Ukraine's Independence in 1991 more people have died or left the country than have been born in it which has led to Ukraine steadily losing population every single year without pause ever since now during the chaos of War this demographic do enveloping Ukraine has gotten even worse the fertility rate has now fallen beneath one child per woman in the country for the first time according to data from the UN population Fund in 2024 while Ukraine now simultaneously experiences the unfortunate distinction of having both the world's lowest birth rate and the world's highest mortality rate with three times as many deaths taking place in Ukraine through 2024's births as a result of this Ukraine's population pyramid today looks something like like this with a Chasm of young people between their late teens and 30s who were born in the 1990s and the early 2000s this is why the Ukrainian government has always resisted calls to lower the conscription age to include this demographic at the onset of the war Ukraine refused to expand the military conscription age to men younger than the age of 27 and they only reluctantly reduced the conscription age down to 25 years old in 2024 throughout the entire War Ukraine has never forcibly conscripted from the Manpower pool that would normally provide the nation with its very best soldiers young men between 18 and 24 because they are literally the smallest age cohort in Ukraine today to call them all up for war on mass would risk annihilating Ukraine's considerably smaller younger generation which could Doom Ukraine's ability to ever recover from the war permanently Ukraine has thus been faced with an almost impossible choice to make ever since the invasion began cons see territorial and sovereignty losses to Russia and spare their youth's future or commit their youth to the war to gamble on a better outcome and risk destroying their future for good if the gamble goes badly to make matters even worse for Ukraine's demographic future the vast majority of the estimated 6 million ukrainians who have left the country since the invasion began were women of childbearing age and children themselves the majority of whom now do not have plans to ever return with the loss of 5 million ukrainians behind the front lines and the losses of tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians at a minimum Ukraine's future will be incredibly challenging if they fail to attract most of the 6 million refugees outside of the country to return back after the war is over without most of them returning Ukraine's economic Redevelopment will be permanently stunted by chronic labor shortages and a smaller Manpower base for the Army to defend against another Russian attack in the future this is Ukraine's single biggest problem for its future and the issue from which all other problems stem the country will only have a very narrow window of opportunity provided to it after the war is over to attract most of its diaspora back or else it'll probably experience stagnation or even further decline for decades as evidenced by the example of Bosnia Bosnia was torn apart by a horrendous Civil War in the early 1990s that saw around 1 million people fleeing the country as refugees or just over 20% of the country's pre-war population well most of these people eventually did end up returning back to Bosnia after the end of the war the country has still struggled with its labor force and its population growth ever since younger and more educated bosnians have remained more likely to immigrate away from the country ever since which has led to a chronic brain drain and skill Gap affecting the country's economy leading to almost constant economic stagnation in Bosnia after 2010 15 years after the war had ended the immigration rate out of Bosnia has actually steadily increased and a survey in the country as recently as 2019 showed that more than a third of bosnians still wanted to permanently leave the country for good as a result Bosnia initially began recovering some of its population after the end of the war until it started sputtering and stagnating in the later 2000s and it's been faced with continuous population decline every year since 2009 now if Ukraine fails to attract back most of its refugees after the war is concluded it might be doomed to follow a similar long-term trajectory of St Nation as Bosnia has after the end of its war and in order to do that Ukraine will need to be stable with security guarantees from outside powers that will help give most of the refugees confidence that another War won't explode again shortly after they return but so far nobody has appeared willing to truly give Ukraine those Ironclad security guarantees and that's why Ukraine is so eager to go about and try and acquire them they know that without them they stand little chance at attracting most of their diaspora Refugee population from ever returning again and with that little hope of ever recovering their economy and building a better future much has also been made about Ukraine's supposed resource wealth contributing to the country's reconstruction after the war as well but there's a lot of problems here beneath the surface that most people aren't really talking about right now Ukraine claims to supposedly have nearly 15 trillion dollar were the valuable mineral resources within their internationally recognized borders including what they claim to be the largest deposits of lithium titanium and uranium that can be found in Europe Ukraine claims that their country is home to about 5% of the world's total mineral resources including major deposits of 23 out of the 50 materials that the US government deems to be critical the government claims that the country is homeed to about 6% of all the world's graphite reserves and that they have enough titanium reserves to provide all of the US and eu's demand for a quarter Century these claims have attracted the notable attention of the Trump administ ministration which has sought to secure some kind of a minerals deal with Ukraine in exchange for further US military and intelligence support and maybe even reconstruction support but notably absolutely no security guarantees there's a lot of people who think that Ukraine's mineral wealth will feature prominently in the country's reconstruction after the end of the war but there's so many problems with this plan that are generally being overlooked right now for one thing the exact extent of Ukraine's mineral resources is based on very limited data the last known an actual assessment of Ukraine's potential mineral resources that all of these claims are being based on today was conducted between the 1960s and the 1970s during the Soviet ERA with old outdated exploration techniques and Technologies Ukraine might not actually have as many valuable mineral resources as they claim to have even worse a very significant amount of these claimed resources are currently behind the front lines within Russian occupied territory it's been estimated that roughly 53% of all of Ukraine's potential mineral res resources surveyed during the Soviet era are currently within the Russian occupied parts of the country Which is far from a coincidence a major wartime objective of Russia has without a doubt been to seize as much of Ukraine's valuable resources as possible to further [ __ ] the country's future and to force them into bending the need of Moscow out of all of Ukraine's most valuable provinces in terms of potential mineral wealth concentration the donet province is the single most valuable one and the one that is not coincidentally experienced the most ferocious fighting of this entire war and while the Deno Petros province is the second most valuable in terms of potential minerals the Lans province is the third most potentially valuable which Russia's forces have almost entirely occupied as well moreover Russian forces have also managed to occupy more than 56% of Ukraine's hard coal reserves as well which are heavily concentrated within the industrial donbass region Ukraine's hard coal reserves before the war were the sixth largest in the world that heavily contributed to the country's energy profile but with more than half of those reserves lost now Russia has managed to increase the rone hard coil reserves to jump from Fifth Place globally into fourth place globally ahead of Australia while Ukraine has probably plummeted from sixth place globally down to 10th place with fewer hard coil reserves still remaining within their controlled territory than Poland Ukraine has also lost an estimated 20% of their potential natural gas fields and 11% of their potential oil fields to the Russians as well further restricting the resource that they'll have access to to recover after the war is over the Trump Administration has been attempting to bully themselves into some kind of American access to these potential Ukrainian minerals as a kind of after theact repayment for past and future US military and intelligence support but it's also not clear how much this potential deal is factoring in that most of those potential mineral resources are behind the Russian side of the front line currently Ukraine's potential minerals are also all almost entirely untapped right now due to years of certy over the conflict with Russia and a l of internal problems within Ukraine ranging from corruption to the aformentioned demographic issues starting up the minds to even begin extracting these potential mineral resources will be a massive project that will take years to accomplish in huge piles of capital to get going worldwide it takes an average time span of 18 years to actually develop a mine and it usually costs anywhere between 500 million and a billion dollars to do so then after all that time and money just to get it up and running a mine can then run for well over 50 years committing to building a mine therefore requires anyone to have a massive amount of confidence in the location's long-term stability since much of the remaining potential mineral resource location sites in Ukraine under Ukrainian control are so near to the existing front line in Ukraine and since the war between Russia and Ukraine is really been ongoing for 11 years now ever since 2014 even if a ceasefire has managed to be reached will any potential investors actually be that confident in going in to build out these Minds will anyone be confident enough in the war actually being over for good to risk billions of dollars in investment Ukraine's ability to actually fully exploit these potential minerals is further undermined by the country's probable labor shortages that it'll experience after the war because of their catastrophic demographic issues and then to still make the situation somehow even worse you have to realize that mining is also just an extremely energy-intensive activity to perform worldwide the mining industry alone takes up around 38% of global industrial energy usage every year while it further takes up about 15% of total Global electricity consumption and Ukraine's electricity infrastructure has been catastrophically damaged by this war Russian forces have carried out more than a thousand documented attacks against Ukraine's power grid since the invasion began with the attempt to destroy as much of it as possible while several of Ukraine's most important power and substations have also been directly occupied by the Russians as well the result is that Ukraine as it currently stands now has been left with only about 1third of its total pre-invasion power capacity still remaining and the vast majority of that remaining power capacity is all being provided by just three remaining nuclear energy complexes in the center and the far west of the country which the Russians have been reluctant to Target with attacks out of fear of triggering catastrophic nuclear meltdown scenarios as it stands now Ukraine doesn't have the energy capacity available to it to consider large-scale mining operations the entire country's energy infrastructure will have to be painstakingly rebuilt and upgraded at tremendous cost before mining operations can even be considered and then after you throw in all of the other complications from the mineral surveys being decades old and potentially unreliable to most of the potential minerals being in the Russian OCC occupation Zone anyway to the probable Ukrainian labor shortages to the fact that outside investors will be wary to actually put down the huge amounts of capital and time required to build out the mines and you're left with the probable reality that any Ukrainian minerals agreement with the United States will be based on unrealistic expectations hundreds of billions of dollars will need to be provided to Ukraine just to rebuild the country back up to its state before The Invasion and without any firm outside security guarantee used to Ukraine there will always be the significant risk that after a ceasefire Russia will just decide to invade Ukraine again when they sense that the time is right a fear that will permanently hang over Ukraine's head like a spectre that will drive away any hope of significant foreign investment any hope of large numbers of the refugees ever returning and any hope of Ukraine ever being able to recover but so far it doesn't seem like anybody is going to be willing to give those vital firm security guarantees to Ukraine Because deep down everybody knows that Russia has never and will never abandon their long-term maximalist objectives towards Ukraine throughout this entire process of back and forth discussions on Ukraine's Future Between the ukrainians the Americans and the Europeans Russia's stated ultimate objectives towards Ukraine have never shifted a single time so far their demands for ending the war have basically remained the same since before the war even began in 2020 1 Russian officials still insist that because the provinces of hiran zapia donet and luhans have been declared to be annexed into the Russian Federation the Russian Constitution is clear that Russia can never compromise on what they view to now be their territorial Integrity since all of these provinces are now viewed as being core integral parts of Russia Russia insists that they cannot legally agree on freezing the front lines as they currently stand since doing that would leave signific ific amounts of these provinces beyond their control instead Russia continues to demand that to even consider peace Ukraine must fully withdraw from all of the territories of these provinces that they still control even though Russian forces have never managed to take them through Force to do so Ukraine would surrender their entire heavily fortified front line and approximately 21,700 square kmers of their territory that they still control about equivalent to surrendering territory the size of Slovenia more than 1. 3 million ukrainians still live on this territory that would be surrendered to the Russians as well 1.

3 million human lives that would be turned over to a hostile force that is actively attempting to conquer and incorporate them and 1.