Opinion: Ukraine may already be winning World War III for an oblivious West

Against all odds, Ukraine is right on the point of winning World War III.

In July 2022, we argued that Russian President Vladimir Putin had blundered his way into a dystopian global conflict that pitted Russia, China and their Axis of Evil allies — Iran and North Korea — against the West by invading Ukraine.

Despite our warnings, Washington and Brussels in 2023 continued to act as if Putin’s war was merely an Eastern European conflict. They failed to grasp that Russia’s aggression against Ukraine was the same threat as Chinese President Xi Jinping aggression against Taiwan and the Philippines. 

In February 2023, China was actively conducting live-fire drills around Taiwan by sea and air. North Korea was aggressively conducting missile tests over the Sea of Japan. Iran was rapidly expanding its nuclear weapons program, and at the time had amassed 154 pounds of  highly enriched uranium, enough to build “several nuclear weapons,” according to Rafael Grossi, the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency. After watching then-President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech that month, we wondered whether he wasn’t already late to World War III.

Yet it was crickets at the White House in terms of connecting the dots between Putin and Xi’s escalating war against the West. Biden’s mantra was that Ukraine is an isolated conflict, and that it was only a question of defending Kyiv for as long as it takes. There was no talk then of defending U.S. allies and global interests from Putin and Xi’s aim to create and wield a new world order. Nor did Hamas’s heinous terrorist attacks and atrocities against Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023 make it clear to Team Biden that the risk to global security had expanded far beyond the front lines in Ukraine.

It seemed Putin and Xi’s visions of a new multi-polar order were openly clashing with traditional Western-style liberal democracy that had largely ensured global peace since the end of World War II in 1945. And the bad guys were winning.

Only one country fully understood what was at stake on a global basis: That was Ukraine, of course. By merely resisting and refusing to capitulate to Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals were holding back a tide of global setbacks for the West.

But now things have changed. Ukraine, chiefly on its own, using a wide assortment of asymmetrical kinetic means, is no longer fighting a long, losing defensive battle. Rather, it is dealing the decisive blow that may help to win the global war that much of the Western world still fails to recognize is being waged against it.

Zelensky has always understood the threat. Days before Putin invaded Ukraine, he warned that Europe and the world were facing their “biggest security crisis since the Cold War.”

The Ukrainian president reiterated this just months ago, on the fourth anniversary of the start of the war. Zelensky said that Putin “has already started World War Three.” Zelensky added that he believes “stopping Putin today and preventing him from occupying Ukraine is a victory for the whole world.”

Over time Ukraine, has held Russia back. Its armed forces have repeatedly repelled spring and summer ground offensives, inflicting more than 1.4 million Russian casualties. 

Today, with its strategic drone campaign, Kyiv is decimating Russia’s oil and gas industry. It has now hit all 11 of the country’s largest refineries, including a facility as far away as Siberia. It is estimated that Ukraine has destroyed or degraded as much as 43 percent of Russia’s total refining capacity, causing $13.5 billion in direct losses to its already stressed war economy. Widespread shortages now persist throughout Russia — the situation is especially dire in Russian-occupied Crimea, whose isolation is nearly complete.

Ukraine is also decimating Russia’s domestic supply chain. Beginning last week, Kyiv started striking the distribution centers of WildBerries, Moscow’s version of Amazon. Damage is already in the billions. Ukraine claims that the company is playing an essential in equipping Russian soldiers — both those currently in the field and those about to be mobilized.

Beyond Eastern Europe, Ukraine’s success is forcing Russia to retrench, especially in the Middle East. Putin was already unable to come to the aid of now-ousted Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. Even Iran, a wartime ally against Ukraine, is also beyond his help under the weight of U.S. attacks.

In addition, Russian paramilitary forces are under heavy attack by Islamic State terrorists across the Sahel in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially in Mali. Putin also lost his foothold in Venezuela and is in danger of losing Cuba to the U.S.

Perhaps most significantly, Ukraine has forced China to hedge its bets. In 2025, Beijing became Kyiv’s largest trading partner as the two countries’ bilateral trade hit $21 billion. Yet even so, China is still paying a price for Ukraine’s success. Kyiv’s revolutionary innovations in the area of drone warfare are forcing Xi to recalibrate and even rethink any plans to invade Taiwan. 

Even North Korea is reeling. Its soldiers for sale have died in Ukraine and its artillery and munitions have been proven marginal.

Putin, once seen as a hedge against Xi’s domination of Southeast Asia, is now only a weakened junior partner to Beijing. Need evidence? Xi has rejected Putin’s hopes of a Siberia 2 gas pipeline to generate badly needed revenue. Beijing has reportedly told Moscow to “stop raising the subject altogether.” So much for their much-vaunted “no-limits partnership.”

World War III is not yet won. But Ukraine is putting victory in the West’s grasp — if only Washington and Brussels will seize it.

Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy. Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer and led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014. They are the cofounders of INTREP360 and the INTREP360 Intelligence Report on Substack.

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