HISTORIAN and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari, the author of the bestsellers "Sapiens" and "Homo Deus", wrote a commentary for the Financial Times in which he claims that despite Russian propaganda, Ukraine is winning the war so far, he writes Index.
Harari recalls that US President Donald Trump, who in February 2025 told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he had to give in to Russian demands because he "has no cards in his hands," stated this week that "Ukraine, with the support of the European Union, has the strength to fight and WIN."
From the defense of Kiev to great victories
Harari writes in his commentary that Ukraine appeared completely helpless in the face of Russian aggression in 2014, when the Russians easily seized Crimea and parts of the country's east. The war escalated on February 24, 2022, when Russia launched a full-scale invasion with the aim of subjugating all of Ukraine and extinguishing its existence as an independent state. At the time, many, including Western allies, expected Russia to conquer Kiev within days and even offered Zelensky an evacuation and the establishment of a government in exile.
But Zelensky remained in Kiev, reportedly telling the Americans, "I need ammunition, not transportation." The Ukrainian army, outnumbered and outgunned, shocked the world by repelling a Russian assault on the capital. In late summer 2022, major Ukrainian counteroffensives in Kharkiv and Kherson followed, liberating much of the territory captured in the first phase of the invasion.
Modest Russian advances and huge losses
Since then, despite limited advances on both sides, the battle line has shifted little. Russia is trying to create the impression of an inexorable advance, but, Harari writes, as of spring 2022, it has not captured any strategically important targets like Kiev, Kharkiv, or Kherson.
In 2025, at a cost of 200 to 300 dead and wounded, the Russian army managed to capture only a narrow border strip of about 0,6 percent of Ukraine's total territory. At this pace, Harari argues, it would take them hundreds of years and tens of millions of casualties to conquer the rest of the country.
He compares the situation to World War I, when generals sent tens of thousands of soldiers to their deaths for a few kilometers of muddy ruins, while newspapers printed maps that artificially exaggerated "advances" on a "large scale." The same is true of today's Russian maps, Harari says.
War of Attrition and Ukrainian Strategy
Harari emphasizes that it makes sense for Ukraine to withdraw tactically and preserve the strength and lives of its soldiers, while the Russians exhaust themselves with costly attacks with minimal gain.
"Ukraine managed to bring the war to a stalemate," he writes, recalling the analysis of retired Australian General Mick Ryan: if the US had conquered only a fifth of the country three years after the invasion of Iraq with a million casualties, no one would have called it a victory.
Ukrainian innovations at sea and in the air
Harari points out that Ukraine's success at sea is equally impressive. On the day of the invasion, the Black Sea Fleet had complete superiority, and Ukraine seemed to have no answer. It reminds of the incident on Snake Island when the Russian ship Moskva sent a message to the garrison to surrender, and they replied "Russian warship, screw you".
Although the Russians quickly captured the island, in June 2022 the Ukrainians retook it, and the Moscow and numerous other ships ended up at the bottom of the sea. Through innovative use of missiles and drones, the Ukrainians neutralized Russian naval supremacy and changed the very nature of naval warfare.
In the air, writes Harari, Russia also failed. While Israel won control of Iranian skies in 36 hours without losses in the 12-day war against Iran in 2025, Russia has yet to conquer Ukrainian skies and is suffering massive losses, including a strike on its strategic bomber fleet in June.
That is why the Kremlin increasingly relies on long-range missiles and drones to terrorize Ukrainian cities, while Ukraine mostly avoids civilian targets in Russia, but increasingly successfully hits military air bases and infrastructure deep in Russian territory.
Without direct NATO intervention
All this, Harari reminds, Ukrainians achieved without direct military intervention of third countries. The only foreign country that has formally sent soldiers to the war is North Korea, with more than 10 fighters on Russia's side. NATO countries have provided Ukraine with enormous weapons and resources, but no allied soldiers are officially involved in the fighting.
Before February 24, 2022, and long after, NATO denied Ukraine many types of heavy weapons and restricted the use of other systems, and some restrictions remain today. That is why the Ukrainians won in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Kherson in 2022 with limited arsenals. If they had received full support from the beginning, the war might have ended by the end of 2022 or summer of 2023 before Russia rebuilt its army and war economy.
The weak point is the West.
Harari assesses that the weakest link of Ukrainian defense in 2025 is not on the battlefield but in the minds of Western friends. Since Russia has failed to gain supremacy at sea and in the air, or break through the Ukrainian defenses on land, its strategy is to bypass the Ukrainian position by attacking the will of the Americans and Europeans.
"By spreading propaganda about an inevitable Russian victory, the Russians hope that the Americans and Europeans will lose their will, withdraw their support for Ukraine and force it to capitulate," writes Harari.
This, he warns, would be a disaster not only for Ukraine but also for NATO countries, which would lose credibility and the best defense against growing Russian threats. While Russia is expanding its military and war economy, Europe is hastily re-arming itself, but for now the largest and most experienced force standing between the Russian army and Warsaw, Berlin or Paris is the Ukrainian army.
Ukrainian Army - the shield of Europe
Harari reminds us that the Polish, German and French armies each have around 200 soldiers, most of whom have no combat experience, while Ukraine has around a million mostly hardened veterans.
After Russian incursions into Estonian airspace and drone flights over Poland and Romania (and perhaps Denmark), Europeans, writes Harari, should realize that if Russia were to attack Europe tomorrow and the US stood aside, the continent's greatest military advantage would be the Ukrainian military. The US military also has something to learn from Ukraine's experience and drone development, in which Ukraine is at the forefront.
"That's probably part of the reason why President Trump has become more sympathetic to Ukraine in recent weeks. He likes to be on the winning side," Harari concludes.
Putin has already lost a key battle
Harari concludes that it is not known how the war will develop further because it depends on future decisions, but in one respect the Ukrainian victory is already decisive and irreversible. "War is the continuation of politics by other means. The winner is not the one who conquers more land, destroys more cities or kills more people, but the one who achieves his political goals. And in Ukraine it is already clear that Putin has failed to achieve his main war goal – the destruction of the Ukrainian nation," writes Harari for the Financial Times.
He recalls that Putin has claimed in numerous speeches and essays that Ukraine has never been a true nation. In his long essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" from July 2021, Putin claimed that Ukraine is a false creation by which foreign powers want to weaken Russia. He started the war to prove to the world that the Ukrainian nation does not exist and that Ukrainians, as soon as they get the chance, will gladly return to "Mother Russia."
"Ukraine is a very real nation."
"No one knows how many more people will die because of Putin's delusions and ambitions, but one thing has become abundantly clear to the entire world: Ukraine is very much a real nation, and millions of Ukrainians are ready to fight to the end to remain independent from Russia," Harari writes.
"Nations are not made up of clods of earth or drops of blood. They are made up of stories, images and memories in people's heads. Regardless of how the war will develop in the coming months, the memory of the Russian invasion, crimes and Ukrainian victims will continue to feed Ukrainian patriotism for generations to come," concludes Harari in a comment for the Financial Times.
Source: Index
Photo: EPA/YURI KOCHEPA/YURI KOCHETKOVETKOV
