Fifty days to hold the line in Ukraine

This week, US President Donald Trump announced a new aid package for Ukraine and threatened 100% tariffs on Russia, along with sanctions on countries that continue enabling its wartime economy. He set a 50-day deadline for the two sides to reach a peace deal.

I know exactly how long that is. I spent nearly that amount of time at or near the zero line in Ukraine during the summer of 2022, before the rise of mass-produced suicide drones and industrialized attrition.

Survival has become exponentially harder since then. The battlefield today is not the one I endured. It’s more lethal, more unforgiving and increasingly devoid of illusions.

I commend Trump for finally accepting what many of us learned the hard way: Russian President Vladimir Putin cannot be bargained with. I, too, once believed in the possibility of negotiation. I was wrong. Russia treats this war as a zero-sum game. Every Ukrainian gain is interpreted as an existential loss.

That mindset rules out compromise and guarantees escalation. For Moscow, this war has ceased to be about reclaiming land or protecting cultural spheres of influence. It is now a vehicle for regime preservation through devastation. Territory is incidental; what matters is demonstrating that Russia can destroy, intimidate and endure—no matter the human cost.

The summer campaign is unfolding with grim clarity. Russian forces have carved a salient west of Novoekonomichne and Hrodivka, forming a protrusion that places mounting pressure on the Pokrovsk axis. While not yet encircled, Pokrovsk is increasingly at risk of being flanked from multiple directions.

Simultaneously, pressure in the Konstantinivka sector appears aimed at degrading transit hubs vital to Ukrainian logistics. Both towns are critical to stabilizing the broader Donbas front. If Russian forces manage to compromise either, it could open a path for deeper offensives toward Sloviansk and Kramatorsk: the symbolic and operational core of Ukraine’s eastern defenses.

To the north, Kupiansk remains a major objective. Its capture would sever logistical arteries feeding the Kharkiv and Luhansk fronts and reopen a corridor for Russia to apply pressure along the Oskil River.

Beyond its tactical value, Kupiansk would serve as a powerful propaganda tool, validating Moscow’s narrative of regained momentum after prior stagnation. With roughly six to eight weeks left in the summer fighting season, Russia is moving urgently to lock in territorial gains before seasonal conditions and intensified Ukrainian resistance bring operations to a standstill.

But ammunition and hardware aren’t the only Ukrainian deficits. The country is suffering from a quiet manpower crisis. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky remains popular, and public support for the war endures, but voluntary enlistment is thinning. Draft dodging is rising.

Meanwhile, Ukraine grows more reliant on foreign volunteers, especially from Latin America, where casualty rates among Brazilians and Colombians are increasingly reported—more so than foreign volunteers from Europe or North America.

There’s no easy way out. Without sustained economic pressure on Russia’s wartime economy, the war is unlikely to end this year. A sanctions regime must follow this 50-day window, with a sanctions package strong enough to paralyze Russia’s economic and financial engines and pressure its global enablers to reconsider their complicity. Rhetoric alone won’t shift the momentum.

These next 50 days will be among the most punishing of the war. They will be filled with trench warfare under drone surveillance, men wounded and left waiting for days before extraction, cities struck by missiles in the dead of night.

Kyiv remains a modern European capital under siege. What matters now is clarity of purpose. Trump appears—for now—to be signaling that he sees the war as it is, not as he once hoped it might be.

This war has become a case study in how democracies respond to existential threats while leadership changes hands. For Taiwan, that lesson matters. The lack of strategic continuity in Western policy—swerving from one administration’s doctrine to the next—has emboldened autocracies to test thresholds.

If Ukraine falters because of a policy lapse tied to political transition, Beijing will take note. The fate of Taiwan may hinge not just on military readiness, but on whether the free world can signal resolve that outlasts its election cycles.

Ukraine must hold the line. If it does, these 50 days may not just turn the tide in Donbas—they may reset the moral and strategic compass of the West.

Benjamin Stuart Reed is a US military veteran of Iraq and a former security contractor who worked in Afghanistan. He later volunteered in Ukraine, where he served in frontline roles during the early phase of the war. A fluent speaker of several languages, he has lived abroad extensively, including four years in Thailand. He is represented by Writers House Literary Agency in New York for his forthcoming memoir, “War Tourist.”  He tweets at @BenReedOfficial