Four years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the war has hardened into a structural feature of international politics.
What began as a rapid assault aimed at decapitating the Ukrainian government evolved into a prolonged war of attrition stretching from Kharkiv to Kherson. Entire cities have been reduced to rubble, millions have been displaced, and Europe’s post-Cold War security assumptions have been fundamentally shaken.
Hours after Russian troops were deployed to Donetsk and Luhansk, President Vladimir Putin gave a speech, during which he said that “modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era.”
“Russians and Ukrainians were one people – a single whole. These words were not driven by some short-term considerations or prompted by the current political context. It is what I have said on numerous occasions and what I firmly believe,” he said, after declaring the two regions independent Russian states.
Despite the scale of destruction and geopolitical consequences, the West still seems unable to internalize the key takeaways of the conflict.
Western powers refuse to learn from war in Ukraine
The first takeaway is that revisionist powers rarely limit themselves once deterrence fails.
When Russian forces crossed Ukraine’s borders, many analysts predicted Kyiv would fall within days. Instead, Ukrainian resistance, backed by Western military assistance, forced Russian troops to retreat from the capital and later from parts of northeastern and southern Ukraine.
But Moscow did not abandon its broader objective of subordinating Ukraine, as Putin so plainly stated in his address at the war’s beginning.
Under Putin, the Kremlin recalibrated. It mobilized hundreds of thousands of reservists without any end date, entrenched defensive lines across occupied territory, and intensified long-range strikes against civilian infrastructure, including energy grids, designed to break Ukrainian morale during winter.
The frontlines have since become a laboratory for modern warfare. Armed drones, precision-guided munitions, satellite-enabled targeting, and electronic warfare coexist with trench networks reminiscent of World War I.
Casualty estimates on both sides run into the hundreds of thousands killed or wounded. Ukraine remains heavily dependent on Western artillery systems, air defense platforms, and financial support. According to publicly available figures, the United States and European allies combined have committed well over $200 billion in military, financial, and humanitarian assistance.
Russia, meanwhile, has shifted to a wartime economy, increased domestic arms production, and restructured trade flows to blunt the impact of sanctions.
This leads to the second takeaway: economic pressure alone does not guarantee capitulation.
Sanctions have constrained Russia’s access to advanced technology and complicated its energy exports. Yet the Kremlin has withstood this through capital controls, parallel import networks, and expanded trade with non-Western partners.
Authoritarian systems built on centralized power and entrenched security apparatuses can absorb economic strain in ways democracies often fail to anticipate.
Linked to this is Moscow’s deepening strategic coordination with Iran.
Iranian-designed drones have been repeatedly deployed in strikes against Ukrainian cities, often with Russian improvements. The nations’ military-technical cooperation appears to be expanding, reinforcing a broader alignment among states seeking to counterbalance Western influence.
This clearly shows that the war has not isolated Russia in strategic terms; it has accelerated the consolidation of alternative partnerships.
The third takeaway regards the limits and drawbacks of incremental deterrence.
The invasion triggered unprecedented cohesion within NATO, expanded defense budgets across Europe, and prompted new membership bids. Yet Western military assistance to Kyiv has often been delivered in phased increments, each preceded by internal debate over risks of escalation. Long-range missile systems, advanced tanks, and air defense platforms were supplied only after prolonged hesitation.
From a strategic perspective, this risks signaling that aggression can proceed up to a shifting threshold. Deterrence depends not only on capability but on clarity.
When red lines appear negotiable, they’re open for contesting. Moscow has consistently disrespected those boundaries, whether through annexation, deliberately targeting civilian structures, or nuclear signaling, because it calculates that Western responses will remain measured and contained.
A fourth takeaway is the danger of normalizing a prolonged war.
The conflict dominated global headlines in 2022, but now competes for attention with multiple international crises. Civilian populations in Ukraine have adapted to air raid sirens and intermittent blackouts just as international audiences have adjusted to images of trench warfare and missile strikes.
But compassion fatigue is strategically beneficial to the Kremlin. Democracies make decisions based on voters’ shifting priorities. Sustaining a country’s long-term military and financial commitments becomes politically complex as public urgency fades.
For Israel, these dynamics are not merely theoretical.
The operational collaboration between Russia and Iran has direct regional implications. Iranian drone capabilities refined and deployed in Ukraine inform broader military planning, and could harm more Israeli civilians. Russian tolerance, and at times coordination, regarding Iranian entrenchment in Syria directly intersects with Israel’s security considerations. The war has demonstrated how theaters once considered distinct are increasingly interconnected.
At a deeper level, Ukraine has exposed a tension at the heart of the post-Cold War order.
Western foreign policy is grounded in norms, regional sovereignty, territorial integrity, multilateralism, and rules-based frameworks. These principles remain foundational.
But they do not deter actors who reject that framework's legitimacy. For regimes that define security in zero-sum, power-centric terms, normative pressure carries limited weight without credible backing.
Russia’s official rhetoric frames the war as resistance to Western encroachment on what Putin believes is his territory and collective moral decay. Because of this ideological construct, Russia interprets compromise as weakness and restraint as opportunity.
Strategic messaging from Moscow consistently emphasizes strength, endurance, and willingness to absorb costs. Because of this, deterring Russian aggression needs to rely less on persuasion and more on the clear demonstration that force will lead to unsustainable consequences.
Four years into the war, the uncomfortable conclusion is that the international system remains ineffectively reactive.
Ukraine’s survival is a testament to national resilience and sustained external support. But survival alone does not restore deterrence norms or resolve structural instability. Frozen conflicts, partial occupations, and unresolved front lines carry long-term consequences that extend beyond their immediate geography.
What the world still refuses to learn from Ukraine is that power vacuums are quickly filled, that incremental deterrence invites recalculation, and that authoritarian regimes measure resolve in material capability, not merely declaratory principle.
The longer the West ignores them, the more expensive the future becomes.
The war in Ukraine is not only about territory. It is about the credibility of the post-Cold War order and the durability of Western commitments.
If that order is to endure, it will require not only rhetoric about shared values but sustained readiness to defend them with coherent strategy and, when necessary, decisive strength.
The name of this article’s author has been altered due to security considerations.