{"id":17751,"date":"2026-02-15T22:10:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T06:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17751"},"modified":"2026-02-19T00:06:41","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T08:06:41","slug":"when-will-this-war-end-the-question-is-meaningless-the-new-york-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/?p=17751","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;When Will This War End? The Question Is Meaningless&#8221;, The New York Times"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/16\/opinion\/11-gumenyuk-final-02\/11-gumenyuk-final-02-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"Some broken pieces of a drone on the ground in the foreground. Farther away, some houses and a person looking into the distance. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A fallen Molniya drone a few miles from the front line in Donetsk in Ukraine.Credit&#8230;George Ivanchenko<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/section\/opinion\">OPINION<\/a> GUEST ESSAY<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By&nbsp;Nataliya Gumenyuk<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ms. Gumenyuk is a Ukrainian journalist who is writing a book about drone warfare. She wrote from Kyiv.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul>\n<li>Feb. 15, 2026<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Ukrainian soldiers tend to find questions about the future unsettling. When I asked Capt. Mykola Serga, who was an entertainer before he joined the army, to describe the outlook of troops, he paraphrased Viktor Frankl. \u201cThe first to break were those who believed it would all end soon, just like those who thought it would never end,\u201d Captain Serga said. \u201cThe ones who endure are those who focus on the work at hand.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Mr. Frankl\u2019s \u201cMan\u2019s Search for Meaning,\u201d originally published in the 1940s, has become a wartime best seller in Ukraine. It\u2019s one of the books, alongside financial literacy guides and novels, that Captain Serga has delivered to the trenches as part of an initiative to sustain morale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/16\/opinion\/11-gumenyuk-final-07\/11-gumenyuk-final-07-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"A network of trenches in the ground, supported by wooden beams and netting.\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The front line in Ukraine, with its drones and its trenches, can look like the future and the past at once. The photographs accompanying this essay were taken in February and March of 2025.&nbsp;Credit&#8230;George Ivanchenko<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Russian soldiers crossed Ukraine\u2019s northeastern border in February 2022 and moved west toward Kyiv. During the first hours of the full-scale invasion, everything was an emergency. Ordinary life was brutally interrupted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Back then it felt as though something so shocking had happened that surely the rest of the world would come to our aid. The lesson of the past year, for better or worse, is that the world is not coming to save us. President Trump has made it amply clear that his priority is a quick settlement to the war, on whatever terms he can get. Europe, reeling as the trans-Atlantic security architecture falters, is figuring out how to defend itself from a more openly aggressive Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And yet the clearer it has become that Ukrainians can truly rely only on ourselves, the less anxious the national mood has seemed. Previously, aid that dangled just out of reach was a disappointment. The acceptance that much of that aid is not coming \u2014 or at least not coming soon \u2014 has motivated us to continue to build up our own defense structures and capabilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I spent a lot of last year \u2014 as I did in other years \u2014 traveling around Ukraine talking to people. What\u2019s clear to me is that this war no longer feels like an interruption; it\u2019s just reality. Ukraine\u2019s military may be exhausted, but it\u2019s also the most battle-hardened in Europe. The front line, with its split screen of futuristic drones and the trenches reminiscent of the wars of the early 20th century, may look like the future and the past at once. But it\u2019s just our present, the only one we know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/11\/opinion\/11gumenyuk-alt-2\/11gumenyuk-alt-2-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"Behind some trees and a field of long grass, smoke rises in the distance. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The aftermath of an attack in the Donetsk region.Credit&#8230;George Ivanchenko<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>In August<\/strong>&nbsp;<strong>I was about six miles from the front line<\/strong>, riding in a vehicle that looked as if it had driven straight out of \u201cMad Max.\u201d Our truck, like others near the front, was wrapped in improvised defenses to avoid Russian drone surveillance: homemade nets, jagged spikes and welded frames.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rough roads took us into the forest, where I stayed overnight with two drone units of the Code 9.2 Assault Regiment, which operates Vampires \u2014 Ukrainian-developed drones that can carry up to around 30 pounds of explosives for more than 10 miles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I met a 23-year-old who went by the call sign Legat and said he left his master\u2019s program in international law in Kyiv last February because he no longer believed in international law. And I spoke with Kapa, a 32-year-old construction worker from Kharkiv who said he enlisted around the same time because he thought it would be better to choose when he joined the army rather than wait to be drafted. (Legat and Kapa asked that I use only their call signs.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I asked what they were using at the front that had come from America. They struggled to come up with anything. If it looked very different a year before, Legat and Kapa might not have known. To them, this was simply Ukraine\u2019s war. Neither of them expected it to end anytime soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/16\/opinion\/11-gumenyuk-final-06\/11-gumenyuk-final-06-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"Two uniformed firefighters carrying a hose. In the background, flames pour out of a building\u2019s windows. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Firefighters at a residential building near the front line in Donetsk.Credit&#8230;George Ivanchenko<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>That month near Pokrovsk in Donetsk, I also met with Junior Sgt. Pavlo Vyshebaba, 39, a vegan, former animal-rights activist and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/nanovic.nd.edu\/features\/to-my-daughter\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">poet<\/a>&nbsp;in the Minotaurs, a mortar unit informally named for the labyrinths the soldiers have carved among the village\u2019s houses to avoid Russian drones. (Mortars can halt an assault for 10 to 15 minutes, Sergeant Vyshebaba said, giving the drones time to arrive.) The risk of detection was so high, he said, that they could not even keep cats with them to deal with the abundant mice because cats could be detected by thermal imaging and give away nearby humans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>More recently, he was charged with integrating ground robotic systems into the unit, which were proving transformative \u2014 clearing paths, delivering mortars to the front and demining \u2014 and improving his mood. For this unit and others, technology was fundamentally reordering the battlefield, allowing Ukraine to stand its ground and make Russia feel the cost of the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/11\/opinion\/11-gumenyuk-final-10\/11-gumenyuk-final-10-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"Three rows of pyramidal blocks and a razor-wire fence extend into the distance. \"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">A Ukrainian defensive line of antitank dragon\u2019s teeth and barbed wire in the Kharkiv region.&nbsp;Credit&#8230;George Ivanchenko<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Earlier in the summer I spoke to Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a former defense minister and now a security analyst, who described<strong><\/strong>Ukraine\u2019s approach to me as \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/carnegieendowment.org\/research\/2025\/06\/ukraines-new-theory-of-victory-should-be-strategic-neutralization?lang=en\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">strategic neutralization<\/a>,\u201d a long-term military approach to make Russia\u2019s operations irrelevant. In other words, Ukraine is looking for pragmatic, economical ways to blunt Russian operations and make Russia\u2019s losses significant enough for President Vladimir Putin to finally decide that Ukraine is simply not worth it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Russia hurls waves of soldiers into frontal assaults, accepting staggering losses \u2014 a style of warfare known as the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/06\/27\/us\/politics\/russia-casualties-ukraine-war.html\">meat grinder<\/a>. Last year Russia\u2019s incremental territorial gains cost the Kremlin enormous amounts in men and mat\u00e9riel. Though recruitment in Russia is systematized with&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/11\/02\/world\/europe\/russia-ukraine-war-draft.html\">substantial cash<\/a>&nbsp;bonuses paid to recruits, this is only enough to&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/kyivindependent.com\/inside-russias-2026-draft-strategy\/\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">maintain troop levels<\/a>&nbsp;at the current estimated&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/01\/27\/us\/politics\/russia-ukraine-casualties.html\">rate of loss<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Ukraine could not emulate this approach even if it wanted to. Its population is much smaller, and it lacks Russia\u2019s vast oil and gas reserves. But the difference is more essential: For Ukraine, the fight is to save lives. To sacrifice more lives than it must would run contrary to the very logic of the war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It can seem that the world watches Russia\u2019s war on Ukraine as if it were a film. When attention wanes, there is a demand for an ending \u2014 if not good, then bad. For Ukrainians, this is not cinema but reality. It will last as long as it lasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2026\/02\/11\/opinion\/11-gumenyuk-final-04\/11-gumenyuk-final-04-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp&amp;disable=upscale\" alt=\"A person bent and lifting a crate full of small explosives. In the background are debris and the remains of houses.\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Collecting usable ammunition in a village in the Kramatorsk district in Ukraine.&nbsp;Credit&#8230;George Ivanchenko<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>At a pipe plant in Nikopol, a city across the Dnipro River and less than five miles from the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/05\/27\/world\/europe\/russia-ukraine-nuclear-zaporizhzhia.html\">Zaporizhzhia<\/a>&nbsp;nuclear plant, which Russia controls, I asked a crane operator, Yevhen Bilousov, when he thought the war might end. The factory was ringed with antidrone nets, its windows covered by metal sheets perforated by shrapnel holes, but the work carried on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The question itself was meaningless, he told me, \u201cbecause everything depends not on when but on how the war ends.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>OPINION GUEST ESSAY By&nbsp;Nataliya Gumenyuk Ms. Gumenyuk is a Ukrainian journalist who is writing a book about drone warfare. She wrote from Kyiv. Ukrainian soldiers tend to find questions about the future unsettling. When I asked Capt. Mykola Serga, who was an entertainer before he joined the army, to describe the outlook of troops, he [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001004,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17751"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001004"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17751"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17759,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17751\/revisions\/17759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldcampaign.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}