Invaded by a giant, but not defeated: End of war in Ukraine will feel like a rout at first, before future opens up for war-torn nation

Sky News AU

26-05-2025

It will not look like a victory.
Not at first.
When the dust of negotiations settles and the terms of a ceasefire are read aloud - likely acknowledging de facto Russian control of portions of Donetsk, Luhansk, and perhaps Crimea - many Ukrainians will feel only grief.
After three years of war, the loss of land, lives and sovereignty will feel like a slow bleed culminating with a bitter compromise.
There will be no euphoric liberation moment.
Instead, the end will be a sapping, exhausted acceptance.
And yet, with time, what may first be seen as a rupturing of the country will increasingly take on the contours of something else: a national hinge moment.
Annual remembrances will mark abidance against overwhelming odds.
For generations, the narrative will reduce itself to a simple and defiant truth: we were invaded by a giant, we were not defeated, our culture and society endures.
Collectively, recent statements from the key leaders involved indicate a mutual, albeit cautious, movement toward negotiations.
The acknowledgment of the complexities and the emphasis on diplomatic solutions suggest that the prospect of a full Russian occupation of Ukraine has diminished, with all parties seeming to signpost a negotiated end to the conflict.
While rejecting a recently proposed 30-day ceasefire, Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed openness to renewed peace talks, stating: 'This would be the first step towards a long-term, lasting peace, rather than a prologue to more armed hostilities after the Ukrainian armed forces get new armaments and personnel, after feverish trench-digging and the establishment of new command posts.'
There is no romanticism in this.
The human and economic toll has been catastrophic.
Since 2022, over 8 million Ukrainians have fled their homes - some 14 million have been displaced internally or abroad.
By 2024, Ukraine had lost access to 15 to 20 per cent of its prewar GDP base - a collapse driven not just by occupation, but by the decimation of key industrial zones and infrastructure in the east and south.
Cities like Mariupol, Severodonetsk, and Bakhmut, once vital to metallurgy, chemicals, and logistics, are now cratered ruins.
The cost of rebuilding physical infrastructure alone is estimated by the World Bank and Kyiv School of Economics at more than $620 billion - and that figure rises monthly.
But these losses, grievous though they are, do not equate to strategic defeat.
The government and the people of Ukraine continue to show remarkable resilience.
Children are attending school and Ukraine has kept critical social and health services and business running.
Ukraine's private sector has also demonstrated incredible durability.
Many firms have started to invest in repairs, including through distributed energy solutions such as gas power plants, solar panels and biogas.
The occupied territories, for all their natural resources (including coal, iron, and access to ports), also represented political and cultural ambivalence.
Heavily Russian speaking, generally more conservative, and historically sceptical of Kyiv's western leanings, the Donbas region has long complicated Ukraine's internal cohesion.
Their effective secession may, paradoxically, render the remaining state more politically unified, more westward-facing, and more determined to consolidate a democratic future.
Consider the demographics: the loss of the eastern oblasts would mean Ukraine's remaining population would tilt younger, more urban, and more European in outlook.
Education and democratic preference indicators are likely to rise modestly.
Politically, the absence of pro-Russian voting blocs could streamline reform agendas and reduce obstruction in parliament.
Linguistically, too, Ukraine is pivoting with purpose: the Ukrainian language is asserting itself in public life, media, and education at an accelerating rate.
In the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, there are huge proportions of Russian speakers.
These regions exhibited lower secondary school completion rates compared to central and western Ukraine.
Internationally, the shift is no less stark.
Ukraine may never regain all its lost land, but it has firmly reoriented its future.
Already, it is stitched into the economic and military fabric of the West.
EU candidate status, deepening trade ties, and long-term security pacts with NATO members (even if formal membership remains distant) are gradually remaking Ukraine's posture.
Western investors, once hesitant, are beginning to take note: infrastructure, agriculture and tech sectors are drawing attention not out of charity, but because a leaner, more liberal Ukraine may lead to foreign capital flows in tandem with political reforms.
President Zelensky's place in this trajectory will rise with time.
Initially elected as a populist reformer, he will likely be remembered for his wartime leadership, consistent public presence, and refusal to flee Kyiv in the war's earliest hours.
When the suffering and grim realities of day-to-day life, and bitter concessions recede from the collective memory, he will be remembered as the man who held the nation together.
To some, the idea of a "victory" that includes ceding territory will never sit comfortably.
That discomfort is warranted.
Yet it must be weighed against the alternative: a state wiped from the map, a people absorbed, a democracy snuffed out.
That was the spectre of early 2022.
Instead, Ukraine remains. It governs. It legislates.
It teaches children, runs elections, and builds roads.
For a few weeks, its extinction looked plausible. It is now, plainly, improbable.
Victory in the 21st century is rarely total.
Ukraine has lost much, and will grieve long.
But it has also seemed to have fended off a superpower.
In doing so, it has earned not just international admiration, but a future.
The war will end. Ukraine will still be here.
And that, over time, may be recognised as something far closer to victory than it first appears.
Nicholas Sheppard is an accomplished journalist whose work has been featured in The Spectator, The NZ Herald and Politico. He is also a published literary author and public relations consultant