After three years of total war, Ukraine has come to a bitter but lucid conclusion: peace is not synonymous with security. And security guarantees, no matter how solemn they may sound on paper, are worth exactly as much as the willingness of those who offer them to defend them by force.
From here arises Kiev’s Plan B – one devoid of diplomatic romance, but rich in strategic realism. Ukraine is preparing to become a “steel hedgehog”: too well-armed, too costly, and too dangerous to ever be swallowed by Vladimir Putin’s Russia, writes Politico.
The phrase is not accidental. Last year, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, explicitly called for the transformation of Ukraine into a state “indigestible for aggressors, present or future”. For Kiev, this is no longer a metaphor, but a project of national survival.
The Lesson of Broken Guarantees
The root of Ukrainian distrust is deeply historical. In 1994, Ukraine gave up its nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees from the US and the UK. The result is known: the paper held up, the promises did not.
Today, when Donald Trump explicitly excludes Ukraine’s accession to NATO, and Article 5 remains inaccessible, Kiev is forced to accept an uncomfortable reality: any alternative agreement, no matter how personalized, is weaker than a real collective umbrella.
“Ukraine has undergone a fundamental reassessment of the meaning of security guarantees”, explains Aliona Getmanciuk, head of Ukraine’s mission to NATO. “Today, it is clear that the core of any real guarantee must be its own army and its own defense industry.”
A Peace That Could Weaken Europe
Paradoxically, for Moscow, a swift peace could be more useful than a prolonged war. A frozen or concluded conflict would reduce the pressure on Europe to rearm, to massively invest in the military industry, and to build its strategic autonomy from the US.
This is exactly what worries Ukrainian officials: a peace that disarms the West politically and psychologically, but allows Russia to recover.
And if Washington changes its mind – not at all unlikely in a Trump era – Ukraine can no longer afford the luxury of hope.
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