Although President Trump vowed on the campaign trail to settle the Russia-Ukraine war in “24 hours,” he is likely to move cautiously in office, conservative analysts say. A major concern is avoiding in Ukraine a repeat of President Biden’s defeat in Afghanistan. For his main interlocutor’s bravado disguises a weak military position.

“Take a deep breath and stay calm,” Hudson Institute senior fellow Luke Coffey wrote yesterday in Foreign Policy. “Contrary to widespread speculation that Trump will throw Ukraine under the bus, this is not a time for panic.”

“Given the political stakes surrounding Ukraine — and Trump’s desire to be seen winning and projecting strength — it’s unlikely he will want to appear weak or easily manipulated by Russian President Vladimir Putin,” Mr. Coffey argues in a piece headlined: “Why Ukraine Is Ready to Gamble on Trump.” 

Mr. Coffey cautions that “a loss of Ukraine to Russia would be seen at home and abroad as a defeat for the United States and Trump by extension.”

Mr. Trump prides himself on knowing the major players: Russia’s Putin, Ukraine’s Zelensky, and North Korea’s Kim. However, he may find the three leaders trickier to deal with than he portrayed on the campaign trail.

Since September 1, President Putin has conquered several towns and small cities in southeastern Ukraine, mainly through carpet bombing and human wave attacks. To win 240 square miles, about one tenth of one percent of Ukraine, the cost has been extraordinarily high.

Over the last 10 weeks, Mr. Putin’s army has lost 90,000 men killed or wounded, more than the 70,000 the Soviet Union lost in Afghanistan — during an entire decade. This tally comes from Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, and is accepted by American and British defense officials.

In Europe’s largest land war since World War II, Russia has lost in nearly 1,000 days some 705,880 killed or wounded. This is 10 times the  losses in Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, a nation with twice the population of today’s Russia. Ukrainian losses are about one-third.

The 2007 movie “Charlie Wilson’s War” dramatized the heroic fight in Washington to bring American anti-aircraft rockets to Afghan rebels in the 1980s. Unheralded by today’s Hollywood, Ukraine has shot down 369 Russian military aircraft, three times the losses in Afghanistan, and 329 Russian helicopters, four short of the Afghan total.

On the ground, Ukraine has chewed through Russia’s massive stocks of Cold War armaments. Russia has lost 28,495 military trucks and fuel tankers, which is three times the Afghan toll; 18,661 armored personnel carriers, or 14 times the Afghan toll; and 9,233 tanks, totaling 63 times the Afghan toll.

“Russia, a supposed great power, has been unable to defeat Ukraine, a third- or fourth-rate military power at best at the onset of the invasion. A war which was meant to be over in two weeks has lasted over 1,000 days and is nowhere near a conclusion,” London-based Eastern Europe analyst Timothy Ash wrote yesterday. 

“Russia has lost perhaps half a million men, and maybe half its conventional military capability — so much so that it is now forced to field Second World War kit in battle in Ukraine,” Mr. Ash added.

Since August, the Russian army has been unable to dislodge several thousand Ukrainian soldiers occupying a small chunk of western Russia about half the size of Massachusetts’s Berkshire County. Afraid of the political costs of imposing a national draft on his population of 144 million people, Mr. Putin is resorting to importing mercenaries.

Today, 10,000 North Korean soldiers, dressed in Russian Army uniforms, are starting to engage Ukrainians soldiers in the occupied region, Kursk. On the matériel side, North Korea reportedly sold to Russia half of the artillery shells fired this year at Ukrainian targets.

Trump believes in the power of his personal diplomacy. However, his three face-to-face meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un failed to yield substantive results. At their current level, North Korea’s expeditionary force represents only one week’s burn of Russian soldiers at the front. The fear is that behind them stands the Korean People’s Army, 1.3 million strong.

The arrival  of North Korean soldiers is a symbolic blow to Europeans. After 500 years of sending European soldiers to the “Global South,” this flow is reversed. Yesterday, the 32 nations of the North Atlantic Treaty issued a statement denouncing North Korea’s participation in the war as “a dangerous expansion.”

North Korea’s toe-dipping in the war is stiffening European spines. Yesterday, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni said at a European Union summit: “As long as there is a war, Italy is on the side of Ukraine.” Europe’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said: “We cannot outsource our capacity of action. Whatever happens in the U.S., we have our interests, we have our values.”

Mr. Borrell was responding to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who often acts as the ventriloquist’s dummy of Mr. Putin. “The situation on the front is obvious, there’s been a military defeat. The Americans are going to pull out of this war,” Mr. Orbán told Hungarian state radio before leaders gathered in Budapest. “Europe alone cannot finance this war.”

Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy estimates that the European Union has  spent $174 billion in military, humanitarian, and financial aid to Ukraine since Russia launched its full-bore attack in February 2022. Over the same period,  America contributed $108 billion. Much of the American aid goes to Ukraine in the form of armaments, largely manufactured in red states.

On the campaign trail, Trump described Ukraine’s leader as “the world’s greatest salesman.” He spoke with a tinge of envy. This week, Mr. Zelensky was at it again, gladhanding, figuratively, Trump and Elon Musk in a joint telephone call the day after the election. Spinning his version of the call, Mr. Zelensky said approvingly of Trump:  “The concept of ‘peace through strength’ has proven its realism and effectiveness more than once. Now, it is needed once more.”

The next day, at a public forum in Sochi, Mr. Putin entered the fray, praising Trump for taking last summer’s assassination attempt “like a real man.” After congratulating the President-elect, he said Trump’s peace proposal for the Russia-Ukraine war “deserves attention.”

When peace talks start, both sides will have to give. Russia may have to accept Ukraine entering the European Union. Ukraine may have to accept not entering NATO in the lifetime of Mr. Putin. Last month, he turned 72. 

There could, instead, be a Korean-style standoff. That means an armistice, no formal recognition of Russia-control of 20 percent of Ukraine, and a demilitarized zone patrolled by troops from major European powers, such as Britain, France, Germany, and Poland.

Last night, Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, a firm Ukraine supporter, flew to Florida to meet with Trump at Mar-a-Lago. Russia’s pyrrhic victories of September and October seem aimed at locking in as much land as possible before talks start. If battle lines are frozen in place at current positions, a Ukraine-Russia demilitarized zone would be 800 miles long, five times the length of the DMZ that cuts Korea in half.

As the players take positions and adopt postures for talks, Mr. Putin may not realize how fragile his situation is. Trump may not be aware how strong his position is. “Putin goes into any talks with Trump in a critically weak position,” Mr. Ash writes from London, referring to the debilitated shape of the Russian Army. “Trump might not realize it, but he goes into potential talks with Putin from a position of overwhelming strength.”

“Trump needs a Ukraine peace deal much less than Putin,” Mr. Ash writes in a blog arguing thatTrump should call Mr. Putin’s bluff. “Putin is weak, Trump has all the cards. Let’s see if he can actually play a great hand to clean up the table.”