Trump says Ukraine can win back territory; experts weigh feasibility

President Donald Trump told the United Nations General Assembly this week that Ukraine could win back all its land from Russia if it receives the right support, a claim that instantly drew scrutiny about Kyiv’s military feasibility after more than three years of war. Trump said that with time, patience, and the financial backing of Europe and, in particular, NATO, the original borders from which the war started are “very much an option.” He also argued that Russia’s economy was in trouble and that President Vladimir Putin had been “fighting aimlessly.” The Kremlin quickly pushed back, saying Russia’s economy fully supports its army and that it would be a mistake to believe Ukraine could reclaim any seized land. The remarks marked a notable shift from Trump’s earlier posture that Kyiv would have to concede territory and sparked a fresh wave of debate over what it would take for Ukraine to regain territory or restore borders.

Col. Philip Ingram, a former British Army colonel and intelligence expert, told Daily Mail that while reclaiming occupied land would be a mammoth task, there is a path forward, albeit a long one. “From a pure military perspective, it would be very difficult for the Ukrainians to use their military to push the Russians out,” he said. “But from a wider operational perspective, where you bring in the geopolitical aspect of it, there is a realistic possibility, but it will take a long time. It will rely on the Russian ability to continue to support its tactical operations, collapsing.” Ingram added that Ukraine’s strikes against Russia’s oil and gas industries have begun to erode Moscow’s war-fighting capacity, noting that disrupting energy production makes it harder for Russia to fund its front-line operations. “The more the Ukrainians destroy, the less ability Russia has to manufacture the arms and ammunition they need to support the tactical fighting in the east. They could be put into a position where parts of their front are at risk of collapsing.”

The fuller wartime context shows Ukraine and Russia locked in a brutal, grinding conflict more than three years after Vladimir Putin’s invasion, with Kyiv still resisting fierce Russian offensives and launching counter-strikes of its own. At stake is not only battlefield momentum but also the long-term viability of Ukrainian sovereignty amid a war that has translated into a massive mobilization and a complex web of international support. Kyiv continues to face a substantial strategic gap: Russia occupies roughly 19 percent of Ukrainian territory, including the four occupied oblasts of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Luhansk, and Donetsk, and Russia’s formal annexation of Crimea in 2014 remains a permanent source of tension. The front lines are reinforced by extensive Russian trench networks, anti-tank barriers, minefields, and other fortifications described by Western officials as among the densest in modern warfare.

On the battlefield, the manpower and hardware gap remains stark. Analysts place Russia’s active-duty personnel at about 1.32 million, compared with Ukraine’s roughly 900,000. Russia also lists a reserve pool of about 2 million, versus Ukraine’s 1.2 million. The imbalance extends to other dimensions of military power. North Korea reportedly contributed about 11,000 troops to assist in Russian operations, though their exact role remains unclear. While Ukraine mobilized a national force in response to the invasion, recruitment pressures and political sensitivity surrounding fresh conscription have complicated Kyiv’s ability to rapidly surge manpower.

Defence budgets illuminate the scale of sustained capability. Russia’s official defence budget is around $126 billion, more than twice Ukraine’s $53.7 billion, and Moscow’s larger economy and weapons-industries allow more resources to flow into armaments. Even so, Western support is a decisive variable for Kyiv. Russia maintains an air advantage with a vast fleet—roughly 4,292 aircraft in all, including fixed-wing and rotary assets—versus Ukraine’s 324 aircraft. That gap translates into the ability to project power, conduct long-range strikes, and maintain air superiority across broad swaths of the front. The Ukrainian air arm relies on Western-supplied platforms and munitions, including F-16s, Patriot missiles, and other robust air-defense and strike systems, which have helped shrink the gap but not close it.

Russia also holds a sizable advantage in land combat vehicles and naval assets: Moscow’s inventory includes about 5,750 tanks to Ukraine’s 1,114, a disparity that underpins much of the ground war’s dynamics. The Russian fleet dwarfs Ukraine’s with roughly 419 ships and submarines to Kyiv’s 89 ships, a structural edge that translates into sea control near the Black Sea and the broader maritime theatre. The naval balance has profound implications for Ukraine, given its reliance on ports and supply lines that can be disrupted or interdicted from afar. Ukraine’s defenders have sought to counter this with sea drones, long-range missiles, and a portfolio of Western air defense systems to protect critical infrastructure and deter larger strikes.

Even with these mismatches, Kyiv retains a crucial strategic advantage: a national sense of purpose and resilience that specialists describe as the moral component of fighting power. Col. Ingram highlighted the intangible edge that can sustain a country through protracted conflict. “In military terms, this is what is called the moral component of fighting power. That brings with it resolve, and it is associated with a military capability that is difficult to measure in scientific terms,” he observed. He also cautioned that for Ukraine to turn the tide, it would require not only continued Western-supplied weapons but also a concerted effort to degrade Russia’s economy over time. “The only way to force Putin’s hand would be to stop Russia’s ability to export its oil and gas products overseas,” Ingram said, advocating for secondary sanctions against China, India, and other purchasers of Russian energy to disrupt Moscow’s funding for the war.

Trump’s UN remarks, while welcomed by some Ukrainian supporters for signaling renewed Western willingness to push for a swift end to Moscow’s aggression, also confronted the hard arithmetic of the conflict. Russia’s manpower, materiel, and the scale of its defence-industrial base have sustained a modern, multi-domain war for years. Ukraine has mounted significant counter-offensives and leveraged Western intelligence, materiel, and air defenses to blunt Moscow’s momentum, but sustaining such a campaign hinges on ongoing, coordinated international support and the ability to economically constrain Russia without triggering broader geopolitical shocks.

The war’s trajectory continues to be shaped by a complex mix of battlefield dynamics and external leverage. The Trump-era posture shift, if echoed by broader U.S. administration stance, could influence negotiations, sanctions policy, and the cadence of arms deliveries to Kyiv. Yet even with promises of a potential rollback of territory, the practical and logistical challenges remain formidable. The front lines have tested the limits of modern warfare, where even substantial Western-supplied equipment can be outmatched in sheer numbers and in the sheer scale of resource mobilization that Moscow can muster over time.

As the conflict endures, Kyiv’s path to reclaiming land will likely hinge on a combination of sustained Western support, economic pressure on Moscow, and strategic uses of technology and logistics to exploit weaknesses in Russian defenses. The realism of such a prospect remains a matter of analysis and debate among security experts, who emphasize that any change on the ground would unfold over a period of years rather than weeks. In the near term, both sides appear prepared for a protracted struggle, with the global community watching closely how political statements translate into real-world outcomes on the battlefield and in the economy.