What will the situation in Russia and Ukraine look like five years from now?

War will remain the principal factor shaping politics, societies and policies of Ukraine and Russia. With its root cause — Russia’s expansionism — unresolved, the war will become increasingly uncontained. The mutually reinforcing imperatives of territorial expansionism and kleptocratic autocracy in Russia will be the main source of continuity and change. Vladimir Putin’s dictatorial information advantage will grow and enable him to suppress popular protest or elite rebellion. Russia’s autocratic modernization will increasingly have North Korean characteristics. Prospects of “lame duck” syndrome due to Putin’s aging and grave uncertainties about the war’s costs — whether Russia subordinates Ukraine or not — will drive him to constantly prove his leadership prowess. With domestic opposition eliminated and economic miracles unlikely, he will be compelled to validate his potency by terrorizing and attacking his long-avowed external enemies — the European states and U.S. entities and interests globally.

Ukrainian society’s commitment to freedom and independence will face dire challenges and might weaken, but Ukraine will remain resilient through tighter military-industrial integration with the West, stronger home-grown long-range capabilities, aversion to Russian occupation, and adaptive innovation of local communities. Even if Volodymyr Zelenskyy steps down, his successor will have to show the same or stronger capacity to understand and channel core Ukrainian public aspirations into policy.

Mikhail Alexseev is a professor of political science at San Diego State University.

Barring a dramatic shift in approach from either the West or Russia, we can glimpse the probable trajectory of Russia’s invasion through the prism of Moscow’s other “frozen conflicts.” Specifically, Moldova and Georgia offer a sobering preview of the kind of uneasy truce that may eventually settle over Ukraine. In those cases, Russia retained de facto control over significant swaths of territory through direct military presence or proxy forces, even as much of the international community refused to recognize such occupations.

A similar outcome in Ukraine would leave the country’s borders effectively, if not officially, redrawn by force, its sovereignty compromised and its reconstruction constrained by perpetual insecurity and uncertainty. This scenario would not mark the resolution of the conflict so much as its suspension, a limbo that would allow Moscow to preserve leverage over Kyiv while testing Western resolve over time. In that sense, “peace” would be little more than a euphemism for a frozen, unjust and inherently unstable status quo. Concerningly, it would also constitute a resolution similar to what Crimea and eastern Ukraine experienced following Russia’s first invasion in 2014 — until Moscow launched the full-scale salvo in 2022.

Ned Price was deputy to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a senior adviser and spokesperson in the State Department during the Biden administration.

Russia will be able to sustain the war, but its sovereignty will noticeably diminish as economic dependence on China grows and depopulation accelerates. Five years from now — at age 78 and likely having just claimed another presidential term that would extend his rule to 2036 — Vladimir Putin will oversee further economic decline, necessitating greater domestic repression and regime-stimulated nationalistic fervor. The children of Putin’s inner circle will take on more prominent roles before an eventual leadership transition, and economic constraints will animate elite skirmishes over future control of domestic assets.

Ukraine will face increasing difficulties sustaining its war efforts but can do so if it continues innovating to address battlefield challenges, deepens European integration and receives substantial financial support (including access to frozen Russian assets) from allies to maintain economic growth. Ukraine’s population will decline and shift west due to losses on the battlefield; cities may become uninhabitable because of Russian airstrikes or will not be rebuilt. To counter growing public dissatisfaction, the government will likely become even more highly centralized around the presidential administration, limiting democratic institutions and dividing society.

Near term, victory for either side will seem pyrrhic, but while a Russian victory will not end its precipitous decline, Ukrainian victory could potentially be democratically and economically restorative.

Heather Conley is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

The fundamental problem with the Russia-Ukraine conflict is that, after years of bloodshed, it cannot be definitively “settled” and is likely to persist in a simmering state for many years. The war represents a battleground between Russia, as the geopolitical heir to the Soviet Union — albeit with a significantly diminished posture — and a Western bloc that has itself entered a period of geopolitical instability and is struggling to redefine its position in the international order. This confrontation, marked by multilateral, spiraling disorder, is unlikely to vanish and may instead continue in various forms for the foreseeable future.

At a more regional level, the war is compounded by the fact that neither side can realistically “win” the fight. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia militarily unless the West becomes directly involved — something that would risk triggering a third world war. Conversely, Russia lacks the resources to conquer the entirety of Ukraine and to establish and maintain political control, even in the event of an imposed geopolitical settlement. The kind of arrangement Russia seeks — security guarantees that would ensure Ukraine remains permanently “friendly” — is unlikely ever to be implemented in practice, even if once agreed.

Whatever direction the conflict may take, it will almost certainly involve the recurrent breakdown of agreements, the non-observance of bilateral commitments, and periodic fighting, unless there is a fundamental transformation within either Russia or Ukraine.

Tatiana Stanovaya is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center.

Wars don’t have to end. Even if Russia realizes that it can’t win the war on the battlefield, the Kremlin is unlikely to seek a ceasefire. Instead, it could dial down the intensity of the fighting to a more sustainable pace (a la 2015-2022), allowing it to fight a “forever war.” The goal would be simply to prevent a scenario where Ukraine “wins,” permanently decoupling from Russia and realizing its dream of joining the European Union.

For Ukraine, any decline in the intensity of the fighting will be a relief. Yet periodic strikes on Ukrainian cities, daily fighting on the front, and the perpetual threat of another massive Russian offensive will leave the country frozen in a wartime posture. This could stall refugees from returning, deter Western investment and stifle Ukraine’s democratic politics. It could also slow momentum on reforms needed to join the EU, leaving Ukraine perpetually stuck on the outside of Europe. To avoid this, the EU will need to accept more risk in bringing Ukraine in, and Kyiv will need to not just implement reforms but figure out how to return to a more normal democratic politics, despite the war.

Max Bergmann is director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

By 2030, the war will likely have hardened into a bitter stalemate — a frozen conflict defined less by movement on the front line than by exhaustion on both sides. Yet Ukraine’s resilience and ingenuity will have solidified a national identity stronger than at any point in its history. Kyiv, still outside NATO but edging toward EU accession, will remain under pressure from fatigue in some member states, even as determination in Brussels sustains momentum toward integration. Instead of succumbing to its many challenges, Ukraine will channel the discipline, unity and creativity forged in wartime into democratic renewal.

Russia, by contrast, will look increasingly hollow. Economic decline, demographic collapse and staggering battlefield casualties will expose the limits of its imperial ambitions. The Kremlin will cling to power through repression, propaganda and the export of far-right extremism to Europe — but its victories will ring empty, masking isolation and institutional decay.

The result will not resemble peace, yet it will not mark defeat either. Ukraine will stand battered but unbroken — a nation transformed by struggle, whose hard-won cohesion and thriving defense industry will offer the clearest proof that resilience, not conquest, defines the future of Europe.

Robert Benson is associate director for national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress.

Russia is fighting a 20th-century war. Ukraine is fighting a 21st-century one.

The difference isn’t hardware or heroics — it’s architecture. Russia substitutes mass for precision; Ukraine substitutes software for mass. In place of rigid command hierarchies and heavy firepower, Ukraine weaponizes connectivity: A $500 commercial drone spots a Russian position, transmits coordinates to a tablet-equipped artillery crew, and triggers a strike — all in under 90 seconds. What once took 20 minutes now happens faster than the target can move.

Over three years, Ukraine has become the world’s first software-defined military — a live-fire lab where engineers and soldiers iterate weekly. The result is a defense ecosystem that learns faster than its adversary can adapt — and costs a fraction to operate. A quadcopter and a line of code can disable a $2 million tank. Speed creates leverage; leverage creates deterrence.

Five years from now, Ukraine’s security will hinge less on lines held than on networks sustained — the ability to out-build, out-integrate and out-update a centralized opponent. Modern war rewards those who adapt fastest. Ukraine is proving the doctrine — and redefining what power looks like.

Wendy R. Anderson is a former senior official in the Defense and Commerce departments under the Obama administration and former senior vice president of national security at Palantir Technologies, where she helped lead the U.S. component of the company’s work with Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense. She will soon be advising several Ukrainian defense-tech companies.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has created a generational hatred that has torn families and friends apart, a fissure that will last throughout the lives of anyone currently reading this. Five years from now, Ukrainians will maintain a mortal abhorrence for Russia that will drive politics and culture in the country — from what language people can or should speak, to what songs and movies to watch, to whom to date and why.

In 2021, prior to the invasion, a survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 43 percent of Ukrainians had close relatives in Russia, with another 14 percent claiming distant relatives. The bitterness of human loss, the terror caused by nightly bombings and the upending of promising lives have severed many, if not most, of these relationships. It would be wrong to think that this war is just about Vladimir Putin’s tyrannical rule. Ukrainians regularly report that they cannot recognize their Russian relatives. Russia, in their view, has undergone a sort of all-society brainwashing that they do not understand and cannot excuse.

Ukraine will use this deep loathing and detachment for growth, however. The country’s impressive defense technology sector will drive post-war economic revitalization and help Ukraine become one of Europe’s most heavily armed states so that an invasion cannot happen again.

Tim Mak is the founder of The Counteroffensive, which covers the Ukraine war, and The Arsenal, which covers Ukrainian and European defense technology.