During his campaign, President Trump made a clear promise: he would end the war in Ukraine in just one day. However, a year into his return to the White House, the conflict has, by many accounts, intensified for Ukrainians, not improved.
The statistics paint a grim picture: civilian deaths and injuries in 2025 surpassed those of the previous year. Cities faced an onslaught of missiles and drones, while Russia managed to seize more territory than in any year since its full-scale invasion in 2022. Moscow’s relentless attacks have all but crippled Ukraine’s power grid, plunging the nation into its most brutal winter in over a decade.
Oleksandr Polishchuk, who lost his wife in a missile strike on their Kyiv apartment building last April, described the year as “extremely hard.” He recounted the constant shelling, the struggle of daily life without electricity or heating, and the emotional toll.
After taking office in January 2025, Mr. Trump dramatically altered the American approach to the conflict. He extended overtures to Russian President Vladimir V. Putin, the aggressor in the war, while simultaneously distancing the United States from Ukraine. Financial assistance from the U.S. to Ukraine plummeted by 99 percent in 2025, and American weapons were only provided if Kyiv or its Western allies covered the cost.
Meanwhile, Russia ramped up its production of missiles, drones, shells, and mines, deploying them aggressively, partly to strengthen its position in the peace talks championed by Mr. Trump. The American president has openly sought credit for ending the war, with the next round of negotiations between Russia, Ukraine, and the United States scheduled for Geneva.
Moving away from the previous administration’s policy of isolating Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump successfully brought Russia and Ukraine to the negotiating table for face-to-face discussions. He dismissed traditional diplomatic methods as ineffective, opting instead for negotiators he viewed as seasoned deal makers. Sanctions were also imposed, targeting Russia’s oil revenue that fuels its war machine.
However, Mr. Putin has drawn out the negotiations, using the time to sustain his offensive. A year into Mr. Trump’s second term, and nearly four years after the initial invasion, Mr. Putin shows no sign of abandoning his objectives of seizing more Ukrainian territory and asserting Russian dominance.
The White House did not offer a comment on this story.
Mr. Trump has admitted that resolving the war has proven far more challenging than he anticipated. Ukrainian officials contend that stronger actions are necessary to sway Mr. Putin.
Strength is a quality Mr. Trump values highly. He has often claimed Mr. Putin respects him in a way he didn’t respect previous U.S. administrations, believing this gives him leverage. He has repeatedly stated that the war would never have started if he had been president in 2022.
Yet, Mr. Trump’s deference to Mr. Putin has not gone unnoticed by the Kremlin leader. Mr. Trump has described their relationship as “fantastic” and consistently claimed Mr. Putin desires peace. At times, he has even endorsed Mr. Putin’s revisionist history, including blaming Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for initiating the war.
Despite occasional public criticism and the oil sanctions, Mr. Putin has largely sidestepped Mr. Trump’s threats. In July, Mr. Trump issued an ultimatum, giving Russia “about 10 or 12 days” to end the war before facing new sanctions. However, this deadline passed without consequence, followed by an announced summit with Mr. Putin in Alaska. A month later, Mr. Trump again threatened “massive sanctions” but also presented reporters with a photo from Mr. Putin of the two men in Alaska, interpreting it as a gesture of honor and respect.
Throughout this period, Moscow’s attacks continued to exact a heavy toll on Ukrainians. In 2025, over 2,500 Ukrainian civilians were killed, a 20 percent increase from 2024 and the highest death toll since 2022, according to United Nations statistics. Russia also unleashed more than 53,000 long-range drones on civilian targets in Ukraine in 2025, nearly five times the number launched in 2024, data from The New York Times and the Ukrainian Air Force reveals.
Furthermore, Moscow is increasingly targeting city centers with ballistic missiles, which are difficult for air-defense systems to intercept due to their speed. This year alone, Russia has fired 154 such missiles at Ukraine, approximately three times the number from the same period last year.
Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Ukrainian human-rights activist, argues that the human cost has been overlooked in the peace talks, which the Trump administration seems to approach like a real estate transaction focusing on territorial interests and natural resources. She notes that Mr. Trump has chosen real-estate developers with personal ties to him to lead the American delegation.
“There are no limits for Putin, because a human dimension is not a priority of these negotiations,” Ms. Matviichuk stated. “The politicians discuss natural minerals, Russia’s territorial interests, even Putin’s vision of Ukrainian history, but they don’t speak about people at all.”
This month, Ms. Matviichuk, whose organization received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 for documenting Moscow’s war crimes, posted a poignant question on Facebook: “Why has Trump’s year of negotiations been the deadliest for civilians in Ukraine since the full-scale invasion?”
Her post garnered thousands of responses. One woman sarcastically suggested offering Mr. Trump her Nobel Prize, implying he might be more committed to Ukraine if it served his personal ambitions.
Many Ukrainians remain skeptical of Mr. Trump’s motives, fearing his haste to end the war might result in an unjust peace imposed upon Ukraine.
Ukraine’s European allies maintain that Russia should not be rewarded for its aggression. However, a 28-point peace plan drafted by American and Russian envoys late last year appeared to Ukrainians as a demand for surrender. Ukrainian negotiators have since been working tirelessly to modify its terms, extending the diplomatic struggle for months.
President Zelensky has openly criticized the Trump administration for placing more pressure on Ukraine than on Russia to compromise.
“The Americans often return to the topic of concessions, and too often those concessions are discussed in the context only of Ukraine, not Russia,” Mr. Zelensky declared at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.
As Ukrainians endure a harsh winter marked by continuous Russian strikes, few believe Mr. Putin will cease hostilities anytime soon.
Before the initial trilateral talks in the United Arab Emirates on January 23 and 24, Russia systematically destroyed Ukraine’s power grid. On February 3, the day before talks were set to resume, Russia launched a record number of ballistic missiles into Kyiv, hitting at least five power plants.
Residents of the capital have recently coped with as little as two hours of electricity and heat per day.
This winter has been particularly tough on businesses. A cafe previously known as Trump Pizza Station, for instance, had to change its name to Nolan after Mr. Trump publicly chastised Mr. Zelensky at the White House nearly a year ago.
Yuliia Baliosa, an 18-year-old bartender at Nolan, noted that customers had disappeared as nearby offices and the university emptied. The cost of running a generator was prohibitive. On a recent weekday, the cafe had no pizza, no burgers, and no hot food available during lunch hours. “It’s basically impossible to live,” Ms. Baliosa lamented. “Just live, really. People have become very angry. Very.”
The name Nolan signifies nobility, a source of inspiration for the cafe’s owner, who aimed for a business that “does not embellish reality and does not exaggerate.” However, last week, Nolan closed its doors permanently.