New Yorker writer James Verini argues that Ukraine is close to winning its war with Russia, that the United States should keep helping until Kyiv recovers every occupied inch of land, and that Joe Biden did more for Ukraine than Donald Trump has. Verini is the author of a new book, The Theater: Courage and Survival in the Defining Atrocity of the Ukraine War. “Anyone following this war closely will tell you it’s extremely possible that Ukraine will take this land back without any treaty or without any intervention from Trump,” he said in a podcast interview with Public. He estimates Russia has now taken roughly one million casualties, with as many as half a million dead, a toll he calls unsustainable and likely to break the regime. “I’m convinced it’s going to translate into a popular uprising,” said Verini, “if not against Putin, then at least against this war.”
On American policy, he argues that the United States must keep arming, funding, and sharing intelligence with Ukraine until Kyiv recovers the territories Russia has seized since 2022. “The Ukrainians will never submit to a truce or a peace agreement that allows Russia to keep any of the territories it’s occupied since 2022,” he said. Verini describes Russia’s invasion as a colonial war of annihilation and frames continued American support as both a moral duty and a winning bet. “If you want to bet on a winner,” he said, “you’d be betting on Ukraine right now, not on Russia.”
But much of the foreign policy establishment has reached a different conclusion than Verini’s. Most Western military analysts describe the war as a grinding war of attrition that shifted modestly in Russia’s favor in 2025. Russia controls about one-fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea and other territory occupied before 2022. Depending on the dataset, Russian forces captured roughly 4,800 to 5,600 square kilometers in 2025, the largest annual gain since 2022. Ukraine has not achieved a large-scale reconquest of occupied Ukrainian territory comparable to the Kharkiv and Kherson counteroffensives, though it has conducted later offensive operations, including the 2024 Kursk incursion and localized counteroffensives in 2025.
