Four years into the largest land war in Europe since 1945, it is worth being clear-eyed about what has been decided and what remains unresolved.

What the war has settled: Russia cannot rapidly conquer Ukraine. The assumption in Moscow in February 2022 was that Kyiv would fall within days and the government would collapse or flee. That did not happen. Ukraine’s military, its institutional resilience, and the coherence of its civilian leadership confounded the invasion’s original premise. That failure has permanent consequences for how Russia’s military capacity is assessed globally.