Trump Said He’d End the War in Ukraine in a Day. It’s Harder Than He Thought.

News AnalysisTrump Said He’d End the War in a Day, but It’s Worsened for UkrainiansRussian attacks and Ukrainian civilian deaths rose as President Trump’s peace talks dragged on during his first year back in the White House.An apartment building that a Russian missile struck in Kyiv, Ukraine, in August. Moscow’s attacks have inflicted a growing toll on Ukrainians.Credit...Finbarr O'Reilly for The New York TimesFeb. 17, 2026, 4:25 a.m. ETPresident Trump repeatedly promised during his campaign that he would end the war in Ukraine in one day.But by most measures, the war has grown worse for Ukrainians since Mr. Trump returned to the White House, not better. More civilians were killed and injured in 2025 than in the previous year. More missiles and drones are hitting city centers. Russia captured more territory in its slow-moving advances in 2025 than in any year since 2022, when it launched its full-scale invasion. Moscow has practically destroyed Ukraine’s power grid during the country’s harshest winter in more than a decade.“It was a hard year — how else can you imagine it?” said Oleksandr Polishchuk, whose wife was one of 13 people killed when a missile slammed into their apartment building in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, in April. “Shelling, having to go to work, dealing with household issues, no electricity, no heating. I think it was very hard, extremely hard.”After taking office in January 2025, Mr. Trump tossed out the American playbook for the war. He made overtures to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, the aggressor in the conflict and an avowed opponent of the West, while distancing the United States from Ukraine. U.S. aid to Ukraine fell by 99 percent in 2025 compared with the year before, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German research center. Mr. Trump stopped giving American weapons to Kyiv, unless it or its Western allies paid for them.ImageOleksandr Polishchuk with his daughter in April, after his wife died in a Russian missile attack in Kyiv. On top of the loss, he said he was coping with shelling and the lack of electricity and heating.Credit...Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesAt the same time, Russia increased its own production of missiles, drones, shells and mines. Moscow used the weapons at a rapid clip, in part to improve its position in talks pushed by Mr. Trump, who has made no secret of his desire to be credited with ending the war. Delegations from Russia, Ukraine and the United States are scheduled to hold the next round of negotiations on Tuesday and Wednesday in Geneva.As he has moved away from a Biden administration policy of isolating Mr. Putin, Mr. Trump has succeeded in getting Russia and Ukraine to talk about settlement terms, including in face-to-face meetings in recent weeks. Mr. Trump has largely set aside traditional diplomatic principles that he said had done nothing to end the war, turning instead to negotiators he sees as seasoned deal makers. He has also imposed sanctions that have reduced the oil revenue that fuels Moscow’s war machine.But Mr. Putin has slow-walked his way through the months of negotiations, using them to buy time to continue his assault. A year into Mr. Trump’s second term and almost four years after Russia’s invasion, Mr. Putin has signaled no retreat from his goals of taking more Ukrainian territory and imposing Russian dominance.The White House did not respond to a request for comment for this astory.Mr. Trump has acknowledged that the war is much harder to resolve than he thought it would be. Ukrainian officials have argued that the American president would have to take stronger action for Mr. Putin to change his thinking.Strength is a quality that Mr. Trump prizes above most others. He has asserted that Mr. Putin “respects” him in a way he did not respect previous U.S. administrations, which he says gives him leverage. Mr. Trump has said numerous times that the war never would have happened had he been president when the full invasion began in 2022.But Mr. Trump has shown a deference to Mr. Putin that has assuredly not been lost on the Kremlin leader. Mr. Trump has called his relationship with Mr. Putin “fantastic” and has repeatedly said that Mr. Putin “wants peace.” Mr. Trump has at times accepted Mr. Putin’s rewriting of history, including by blaming President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine for starting the war.ImageResidential buildings amid electrical failures in Kyiv last month. Moscow has practically destroyed Ukraine’s power grid during the country’s harshest winter in more than a decade.Credit...Lynsey Addario for The New York TimesOutside of occasional public criticism and the oil sanctions, Mr. Putin has largely dodged Mr. Trump’s threats. In July, Mr. Trump said he would give Russia “about 10 or 12 days” to end the war before imposing new sanctions. Mr. Trump then announced a summit with Mr. Putin in Alaska, and the deadline passed. A month later, Mr. Trump again threatened “massive sanctions.” But he also showed reporters a photograph sent to him by Mr. Putin of the two men in Alaska and called it a sign of honor and respect.All the while, Moscow’s attacks inflicted a growing toll on Ukrainians. In 2025, Russia killed more than 2,500 Ukrainian civilians, more than in any year since 2022 and a 20 percent increase from 2024, according to United Nations statistics. Russia sent more than 53,000 long-range drones to civilian targets in Ukraine in 2025, almost five times as many as in 2024, according to a data set created by The New York Times using numbers from the Ukrainian Air Force.Moscow is also increasingly firing on city centers with ballistic missiles, which move so quickly that air-defense systems have difficulty knocking them down. Russia has launched 154 of those missiles at Ukraine this year, according to the data set, about three times the number fired during the same period last year. The New York Times would like to hear from readers who want to share messages and materials with our journalists.Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Ukrainian human-rights activist, said that the human cost of the war had been excised from the peace talks as the Trump administration treats negotiations like a real estate deal that would carve up both Ukraine and its natural resources. To lead the American delegation, Mr. Trump has chosen real-estate developers with a personal connection to him.