CNN
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Bets were hedged, advantages were conjured, and insurance policies were drawn up. But ultimately most hoped it wouldn't happen.

Ukraine and its NATO allies have had to grapple with the idea of ​​a Trump victory for months, juggling ideas of a strong U.S. president who could be an even tougher ally, a dealmaker who could bring about a favorable peace, or new eyes that could see a new look. End of a tiring war.

That was just a comforting fiction: the road ahead of Kiev is extremely difficult. There should be no lasting mystery about what a Trump presidency means for Ukraine. Donald Trump said he would end the war “in 24 hours,” but didn’t say how. He also said that “Zelensky should never have started this war” and called him “one of the biggest salesmen I've ever seen” who gets $100 billion every time he visits Congress.

As of this morning, the fact that these statements are wild exaggerations no longer matters. They have become the distorted lens through which the President-elect of the United States will view the greatest conflict in Europe since the Nazis. Trump may appoint a Cabinet that slightly adjusts the pace or tone of his instincts, but in the end he wants out. It doesn't matter that, from a strategic perspective, the war in Ukraine has so far provided the Pentagon with a relatively cheap means of degrading its second-largest enemy without causing any harm to American lives. It is anathema to two of Trump's first turn-offs: costly U.S. military commitments abroad and antagonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin's initial reaction – that US-Russia relations could not get any worse than they are now under President Joe Biden – certainly belies its joy. According to most analyses, the coming year was a cautious venture for Russia. Moscow has deployed forces on the hills surrounding Ukraine's military centers in Donbass – near Pokrovsk, Kurakhove and Chasiv Yar – to facilitate Kiev's punitive ouster from the Donetsk region this winter.

Success in Donetsk could open the way to major cities like Dnipro and Zaporizhzhia, which could suddenly make the Ukrainian capital very vulnerable and likely tip the scales towards war. But the clock is ticking on Russia's efforts. Western officials have suggested that the death toll – of perhaps 1,200 dead or injured per day – is unsustainable without another large, unpopular mobilization by Russia, and that there could be a real shortage of arms and ammunition production in Moscow next year.

Putin played these latest cards in the hope that Trump would win, but certainly that he would remain a man of instinct – isolationist and wary of America's long-term alliances.

Trump is unpredictable and unpredictable, especially on complex and time-consuming matters such as foreign conflicts. He prefers the quick solution of simply leaving Afghanistan to the Taliban, or a face-to-face meeting in Singapore with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, or a drone strike on the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, Qasem Soleimani. We may never know whether he has truly studied the direction he is setting for Ukraine, or whether he simply never wants to talk about or spend money on the war again.

No matter the speed or detail of Trump's actions, the damage will still be felt in the coming weeks. I remember the massive drop in morale among Ukrainian troops last December when Congress cut off U.S. military aid for about six months. Frontline troops told me that without this help they would have to leave their positions, even though they knew that the Biden administration still wanted to have their backs in principle. Now they must contend with the reversed tide: the possibility that aid is still trickling in from the Pentagon and European NATO allies, but that the Trump administration has instead adopted a hostile stance toward Kyiv.

Furthermore, Trump is entering the White House at perhaps the most dangerous time for Kiev since the start of the war. Multiple frontline analyzes show that Ukraine lost ground at a near-unprecedented pace in October; The loss of small villages, insignificant in themselves, amounts largely to a strategic setback that leaves the East extremely vulnerable.

NATO's approach has long been politically flawed; The Biden administration did not want to arm Ukraine enough to defeat Russia militarily because it feared further escalation. But Biden also couldn't resign himself to letting Russia prevail. Instead, the alliance urged Ukraine to hold out in the hope that Putin would eventually collapse. It was the chaotic contradiction at the core of support for Kiev, but better than asking Ukraine to surrender.

Without the will to fight – the belief that the battle is winnable – it is almost impossible to ask Ukrainians to sit in a trench under shell fire or to press their armor into the deadly fire of enemy positions. Nobody wants to be the last soldier to die in a war. No one wants to lose their life fighting to protect a family that will likely live under Russian occupation anyway.

Trump's victory could also complicate Zelensky's position. For years, Zelensky has been – to paraphrase Trump – above all an outstanding representative of the Ukrainian cause. Now he is burdened with the immense baggage of Trump's first term in office, when he was caught up in Trump's demands to open investigations into the Biden family. Can Zelensky still be that salesman? Is it more likely that a new face in Bankova will receive military aid or negotiate a viable peace agreement?

Those fed up with the war in Ukraine – be they an ally of Kiev or a frontline soldier – should still not embrace the idea of ​​a Trump-backed deal. Moscow demonstrated in Syria in 2013 and Ukraine in 2015 that it negotiates to gain time to prepare or fulfill its military objectives. Putin will accept any territorial gains he can flesh out – he already has the gains on the negotiating table. But he will then regroup and not stop. He sold the war domestically as Russia facing the masses of the entire NATO alliance. An overheating Russian economy, an astronomical death toll, and the retooling of Russia's industrial base, all in service of this supposed struggle, cannot simply be undone. Putin is increasingly relying on war to stay in power.

This is evident in his maximalist behavior towards Russia's neighbors last month. Recent unrest in Georgia and Moldova, where pro-Russian forces have challenged pro-European movements with limited success, could lead to even greater Russian intervention in the coming months. It is unlikely that Putin will suddenly abandon his push for greater regional influence. Remember his original motivation: This war started because he wanted to occupy Ukraine and keep it out of NATO and the European Union. The Russian blood wasted over nearly three years probably requires a greater victory than simply maintaining the territorial gains already made.

Meanwhile, an important lesson of the war will be under severe attack. Over the past two years, Putin's fiercest opponents have pushed the key idea that we no longer need to fear Russia; that the Kremlin was stoking fear of its giant bear as a psychological weapon to compensate for its military weakness. Ukraine's unexpected resistance showed that fear was misplaced and that Moscow had struggled to defeat a neighbor it once despised as incapable of fighting.

Now a Trump in the White House could be asking the world to quickly accept a seemingly similar claim that is shockingly different: that the West shouldn't be afraid of Russia because it doesn't really do much harm. That would be Putin's greatest victory and the West's greatest weakness.