Marco Rubio Is Walking into a Trap
Ukraine still has an opportunity to win the war—if the Trump administration will let it.
I’M AN ETERNAL OPTIMIST. But my gut, informed by a career spent studying and implementing American foreign policy, tells me this week will not go well. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Rubio’s diplomatic experience is limited to his time in the Senate, during which he served on the Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committees. He has primarily focused on Latin American policy. Lavrov, on the other hand, has been Russia’s foreign minister since 2004, which makes him the longest-serving foreign minister in modern history. Before that he was a career diplomat. He is known for both his diplomatic savvy and his mastery of deception.
The subject of the Rubio-Lavrov discussions will be Ukraine, a nation that will not have a representative at these alleged peace talks. President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that any decisions made during these talks without Ukraine's participation are unacceptable. Representatives from NATO, the EU, or any European nation have not been formally invited to take part in the sessions. Perhaps my gut is just reflecting my bias toward Ukrainians being allowed to defend their territorial sovereignty and their nation’s independence.
In late February 2022, as Russian tanks rumbled toward Kyiv and the world braced for Ukraine’s collapse, I had a gut reaction, too. While many analysts and even some U.S. government officials expressed concern that Ukraine would collapse within days, I publicly predicted that Ukraine would not just hold their own but repulse the invasion, which they did. My assessment was based on my experiences with both the Russian military (which I said at the time was inept) and Ukraine’s fledgling army (which had shown significant improvement since the early 2000s). Ukraine’s unique culture, spirit, resolve, and refusal to bow to tyranny have since become world famous.
OVER THE NEXT THREE YEARS, with a map in my home office and paying dogged attention to open-source intelligence reports from the war zone, I outlined what military leaders usually describe as “phases of a campaign.” While these are not universally or even publicly recognized by others, these serve as my description of the last three years of the war. So far, there have been nine phases. Some of them overlap—the aerial campaigns overlapped with ground and naval campaigns, etc.—but each had its turn as the most significant part of the war. Here are succinct descriptions of each phase:
Phase 1—The failed Russian invasion (February–April 2022): Designed to be a lightning strike—seizing Kyiv, decapitating Ukraine’s leadership, and forcing a swift surrender—the initial Russian invasion was dysfunctional for a variety of reasons: poor generalship, lack of junior leaders, bad doctrine and tactics, lousy equipment, little logistical planning, and overwhelming hubris, just to name a few. Ukraine, armed with Javelins, Stingers, iron will, and clever leadership, halted the assault with a mix of conventional operations, guerrilla tactics, and population determination. The Battle of Kyiv ended in a humiliating Russian retreat.
Phase 2—The Russian shift to the East (April–July 2022): After its failure in Kyiv, Russia recalibrated, focusing on the Donbas, where it thought it could make better use of its traditional strengths—artillery and massed infantry. Ukraine, outgunned but not outmatched, used mobile defenses, precision strikes, and newly provided precision HIMARS systems to blunt Russian advances. The battle for cities like Severodonetsk and Lysychansk showed Ukraine’s ability to trade space for time—a key factor in any active defense—and contributed to severe Russian losses.
Phase 3—The Southern counteroffensive and Kherson’s liberation (August–November 2022): Ukraine seized the initiative, launching a counteroffensive in the south. U.S. intelligence and Western-supplied weaponry stopped Russian logistics and maneuvers, forcing them to abandon Kherson without a costly urban fight while also demonstrating that Ukraine could retake lost territory, boosting morale and shifting global perceptions. Russian forces also managed to avoid being surrounded, living to fight another day and demonstrating that the Russian Army is also capable of adaptation, even if not as quickly as the Ukrainians.
Phase 4—The Battle of Bakhmut and Russian attritional warfare (December 2022–May 2023): With Wagner Group forces leading the charge, Russia turned to brutal, high-casualty attrition warfare. Ukraine held Bakhmut for months before the city eventually fell, drawing Russian forces into a costly fight and inflicting massive casualties. This led to the inactivation of Wagner and an unfortunate Russian “accident” of the group’s leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin.
Phase 5—The 2023 summer counteroffensive (June–September 2023): Attempting to quickly train and incorporate Western-supplied armored vehicles, Ukraine launched a long-anticipated counteroffensive. Unfortunately, Russia had time to construct layered defensive fortifications protected by meticulously planned long-range fires and drones. Having seen even the best of armies attempt the kind of combined arms maneuver and complex obstacle breeches Ukraine was attempting to employ, my gut told me then it would not go as well as many anticipated.
Phase 6—The deep-strike campaign (October 2023–February 2024): Russia continued relentless attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets—a war crime—while Ukraine began using long-range missiles and newly produced drones to target Russian supply hubs, airbases, and the Black Sea Fleet. Russia, forced to stretch its defenses and redeploy resources, bowed to Ukraine’s ability to hit deep behind enemy lines.
Phase 7—The winter of drones and electronic warfare (February–May 2024):
Both sides ramped up the use of drones and electronic warfare. Ukraine used small-unit combined-arms teams, deep strikes, special operations, NATO-provided intelligence, and improved electronic countermeasures to outmaneuver Russia’s superior numbers and thwart Russian advances.
Phase 8—The 2024 spring-summer battlefield maneuvers (June–September 2024):
With renewed U.S. financial support after a congressional delay, Ukraine launched targeted offensives to exploit Russian weaknesses, forcing Russia to shift defensive positions repeatedly and further eroding their ability to sustain the fight. Ukraine launched a campaign into the Russian region of Kursk, taking a chunk of land the size of Los Angeles and a small city, proving that their capacity for surprise and offensive operations had not been depleted.
Phase 9—Betting on allies (October 2024–January 2025). Russia deploys North Korean forces to try to reduce the Ukrainian salient in Kursk. While the Ukrainians lost ground and consolidated their lines, the North Korean forces not surprisingly proved mostly ineffective. The Russian economy increasingly showed signs of weakness as Zelensky for the first time signals openness to peace talks.
We’re now entering what some might call Phase 10, the inflection point. The Trump administration appears to be turning away from eight decades of a strong U.S.-European strategic alliance. At the same time, my gut says we may be approaching a critical turning point: Russia is weakened, and Ukraine seems to be gaining strategic momentum. The path the U.S. government chooses in the next few weeks could contribute to Ukraine’s long-term success, continued support of alliances and partnerships that have contributed to our nation’s security and prosperity in the past, and a world order that promotes global stability, prosperity, and national sovereignty.
Throughout these phases, U.S. and NATO support to Ukraine has been pivotal, even when some have criticized the tempo and amount of that support. The question now is whether that commitment will hold firm or waver at this crucial moment in history.
THE MEETING BETWEEN RUBIO AND LAVROV will not be one of equals. As a senator, Rubio was, until late in his tenure, a strong supporter of aid to Ukraine. But he now must represent a more transactional president whose skepticism of Ukraine and friendliness to Russia go back years. Lavrov represents a paranoid, aggressive, authoritarian regime that still sees itself as engaged in a long-term war against the United States and Europe. The hastily announced meeting being held in Saudi Arabia—an authoritarian Gulf Arab state—may have repercussions far from the war that is ostensibly being settled. The Trump administration and Ukraine must both be struck by the parallels to a previous Trump peace agreement in which another inexperienced secretary of state made a deal with a more seasoned enemy to end a war without any American allies in the room—Trump’s Doha Agreement with the Taliban.
Trump has claimed that the American withdrawal from Afghanistan—which his Doha Agreement guaranteed—inspired Putin to invade Ukraine. If that’s the case, he should consider what lessons others, like Xi Jinping, might take from an American abandonment of Ukraine.
Back in February 2022, the night before tanks rolled across the border of Ukraine, all intelligence indicators suggested that Russia was indeed about to invade, but I remember thinking no one in their right mind would be so foolish as to start such a war. But because of what I’ve learned about Putin over decades serving in Europe, watching him become increasingly emboldened, my gut told me he would be just that rash and reckless. Putin did give the order, his troops indeed crossed into a sovereign country, and the costs to Russia will take generations to recover.
The United States and NATO can counter Putin’s criminal action and restore international order—not just in Europe, but anywhere an aggressive, authoritarian country might be considering a land-grab. I hope this time my gut is wrong, and that our support for Ukraine continues.
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