Ukraine’s resilience in a war of attrition: cooperation between society, the state, and the international coalition supporting Ukraine

This review presents an analytical framework comprising three interconnected nodes and a mechanism by which they compensate for each other. Using Ukraine as a case study, it demonstrates the explanatory value of this framework and the conditions under which this mechanism becomes less effective. The proposed approach complements the understanding of resilience in terms of coping, adaptation, and transformation by explaining how these capacities are realised under sustained, recurring pressure. Weakening individual nodes or the links between them erodes Ukraine’s ability to resist external aggression effectively and affects security across the European continent.

The review was prepared by the team of the National Platform for Resilience and Social Cohesion, a civic initiative launched in February 2018. The National Platform’s activities are geared towards strengthening Ukraine’s national resilience. This is achieved by establishing dialogue practices in society, providing the authorities with proposals for developing relevant policies, particularly those on resilience and social cohesion, as well as ensuring public awareness of these processes. The initiative has been implemented with the financial support of the European Union as part of the Sustaining Ukrainian Resilience and European Security through Dialogue project.

The content of this publication is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.

KEY MESSAGES

1. Resistance to external armed aggression goes beyond models designed to respond to short-term external shocks, whether natural or man-made.

2. In social resilience models, the capacities to cope, adapt, and transform reside within the entity under pressure; in Ukraine’s case, that entity is society and the state.

3. To analyse Ukraine’s resilience, we use a framework built around three interdependent nodes: social mobilisation, state institutions, and the international coalition supporting Ukraine, all facing a shared but asymmetric threat.

4. Within this framework, resilience depends on mutual compensation among the nodes. They exchange resources, temporarily take over one another’s functions, and adjust how they operate as the threat recurs. If one node can no longer perform a critical function, the others provide it with resources, temporarily assume some of its functions, or prompt it to change how it operates, allowing the system to continue performing that function.

No single node is sufficient on its own.

5. A protracted war changes how resilience works: the threat does not end but reappears in different forms, placing structural pressure on each node and on the mechanism as a whole. The mechanism continues to work only as long as compensation outpaces depletion and several nodes do not weaken at the same time.

6. From 2022 to 2025, the mechanism mainly sustained coping and adaptation, while some changes laid the groundwork for institutional transformation.

7. The coalition’s effectiveness depends on both its own resources and the extent to which partners continue to see support for Ukraine as serving a shared interest, particularly in building Europe’s security architecture. In this context, trust and democratic progress are resources for coalition resilience, not just domestic values.

8. The more effective the mechanism, the better Ukraine can integrate into Europe’s collective security mechanisms and the broader the range of interests it can defend in a future settlement of the armed conflict.

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