One month ago, a week into the war, we asked three of our most experienced writers to analyze Trump's war against Iran from a Ukrainian point of view—to "score" the war, so to speak. Their conclusions then: Ukraine was being hit hard, with 8 of the 10 main factors going against Kyiv's interests. The central finding was that "how long the war lasts will determine everything."
Five weeks in, Russia has pocketed at least $10 billion in extra oil revenue—and analysts at the KSE Institute warn that figure could grow up to fifteenfold if the war drags on. Trump is musing aloud about leaving NATO. And Ukraine, boxed in on every front the original scorecard tracked, has opened a new one: burning Russia's Baltic oil ports faster than Western diplomacy can rescue them.
The military side of things
Ukraine is being forced into a nailbiting position, where military support—especially air defense—might shrink just as its invader is given a financial lifeline to build more weapons. However, Ukraine received a lifeline of its own, as countries across the Gulf and, to a lesser extent, the US, realize what modern air war really looks like.
The war on Iran is going about as well as could be expected from a leader who appears to have done little preparation, discounted warnings, and boasted that the enemy would fold in a matter of days. Washington charged dick-first into the Persian Gulf region, having failed to learn from four years of how Russia's invasion transformed warfare in the air and at sea. The US has thus far struggled to defend from Iran's counterstrikes, which keep picking off asset after expensive asset. And Russia is playing an instrumental role in those attacks.
Worse: Russia-Iran cooperation deepens on drones and satellites
Russia has provided Iran with satellite imagery identifying US and European military bases in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, and the UAE—four countries that collectively host tens of thousands of American troops, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told Axios on 31 March.
Russia's satellites can provide both overhead pictures (GEOINT) and data on electronic signals from radar, missiles, and aircraft (ELINT). US open source analyst John Ridge said Moscow can likely provide a single high-resolution revisit per day and multiple low-resolution revisits per day. Russia also has infrared coverage of the Middle East, which could give Iranians real-time information about when American and Israeli jets take off, helping them prep for and avoid US and Israeli attacks.
Intelligence agencies across Europe say that Russian support also includes drone deliveries, likely featuring upgraded models from the Shahed lineage—which Russia acquired from Iran years ago, then improved and iterated through constant waves of assault on Ukrainian territory.
Bizarrely, despite Russia's support for the country with which the US is at war, the Trump administration continues to push a pro-Russian "peace deal" onto Ukraine.
Worse: Pentagon may divert Ukraine's Patriots to the Gulf
Meanwhile, the Pentagon may divert weapons from the PURL program toward the Iran war, even though European allies are paying for those weapons, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed. That includes the all-important air defense missiles, including the PAC-3 MSE interceptors for the Patriot system—Ukraine's only means for dealing with Russia's ballistic attacks.
Ukrainian foreign minister Andrii Sybiha later said he had received assurance from Rubio that this would not happen. But his boss told Zelenskyy told Axios: "I am not just concerned, I am sure we will have such challenges. Absolutely."
"Unfortunately yes, I do think that's likely as states are conceivably going to prioritize their output of expendables for themselves as opposed to for Ukraine via PURL," Simon Miles, an associate professor at Duke University, wrote in an email.
Better: Ukraine signs first-ever defense deals with four Gulf states
The relentless Iranian air campaign is also an opportunity for Ukraine. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he signed 10-year defense cooperation agreements with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE and Syria during his tour of the Middle East last week—historical firsts for independent Ukraine. And more to come, he promises.
Zelenskyy said the signed agreements involve "strategic cooperation in the military tech direction and other areas." Kyiv has already dispatched its military experts to at least a dozen countries in the region to put on an air defense clinic on how to defend against modern mass strikes with drones and missiles.
Middle Eastern countries are also interested in sea drones, which may be put to work unblocking the Strait of Hormuz—using Ukraine's experience of breaking the Russian Black Sea Fleet's blockade of its maritime exports. In exchange, Ukraine hopes to get its hands on some of their anti-ballistic capabilities, as well as hydrocarbons such as diesel, per the president's remarks.
Caveat 1: In Ukraine, the legislative and bureaucratic system to allow such arms exports is still moving slowly, sources in the Defense Ministry have told Euromaidan Press.
Caveat 2: Sources also said Kyiv is paranoid about giving away its proprietary tech, military secrets, or hard-won battlefield expertise paid for in blood. This is putting the brakes on both miltech sales and the deployment of veteran war fighters to other countries to serve as instructors.
The money side of things
One month ago, Brent crude was $78. It is now $116—and Ukraine is paying every cent of the difference. The biggest change since then is not in Moscow. The sanctions architecture meant to limit Russia's gains from elevated oil prices has begun to unravel in Washington: from a 30-day India waiver to a Russian tanker cleared to dock in Havana. Ukraine's response has been to start burning Russia's oil ports.
Held: Russia's windfall is bigger than we predicted
We warned that Russia's oil revenues were running ahead of its own $59-per-barrel budget target for the first time in months. That has continued and deepened. With every barrel of oil now earning nearly $51 above its budget target, Moscow is clearing almost double its own projections.
The KSE Institute now estimates Russia could pocket between $45 and $151 billion in additional 2026 budget revenues, depending on how long the war drags on. Even in an optimistic six-week-war scenario with fast recovery, Russia earns an additional $84 billion in export earnings and $45 billion in budget revenues compared to a no-war baseline. The windfall has already been enough for the Kremlin to scrap planned 10% cuts to non-security spending and abandon a downward revision of its 2026 growth forecast.
The sharper call was on Washington's posture. We wrote that the 30-day waiver allowing Indian refiners to buy stranded Russian crude looked like more than an emergency measure. It was. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has since publicly floated lifting broader restrictions on Russian oil to release global supply.
The next step came on 30 March. Donald Trump told reporters at the White House that Russia—and other countries—were free to ship oil to Cuba. "If some country wants to send oil to Cuba, I have no objections," he said. A Russian tanker was cleared by the US Coast Guard to dock in Havana. In three weeks, US enforcement had moved from a temporary waiver to open permission for Russian crude shipments to a sanctioned state.
Missed: Petrol prices climbing—but slower than feared
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We projected Ukrainian petrol prices could approach 100 hryvnias per liter if Brent reached $100–140. Brent is now at $116, and A-95 petrol stands at 71.60 hryvnias ($1.63). The direction was right; the pace was not. Prices have climbed steeply, but the 100-hryvnia threshold has not arrived as fast as feared. The EU shelving its planned reduction of the Russian oil price cap from $60 to $45 has not helped.
The larger miss was about agency. We framed Ukraine's position largely in terms of what was happening to it. We missed what Kyiv would do about it.
New: Ukraine is burning Russia's Baltic oil ports
Since 22 March, Ukraine has struck Russia's Baltic oil export infrastructure four times in a single week. The campaign hit the Ust-Luga terminal, the Primorsk port, and the KINEF Kirishi refinery—one of Russia's largest, processing around 350,000 barrels per day. Ust-Luga keeps burning, with shadow-fleet tankers waiting offshore.
Reuters calculated that at least 40% of Russia's total oil export capacity had been halted by 26 March—what it called "the most severe oil supply disruption in the modern history of Russia." Ust-Luga and Primorsk together handle around 2 million barrels of Russian crude exports per day—the arteries of the shadow fleet Russia uses to ship oil despite sanctions.
Alan Vaht, a board member at Estonian gas station chain Terminal, Vaht estimated daily losses at $50–55 million.
Zelenskyy explained the logic: "The pressure on Russia in the world is decreasing. Therefore, unlike most countries in the world, Ukraine has its own sanctions: its long-range capabilities."
A source in Ukraine's Office of the President estimated Russia stood to earn $2 billion from the US sanctions waiver alone. The total Russian windfall from the Iran crisis could reach $10 billion. The drone campaign is the only mechanism currently working to close that gap.
The total Russian windfall from the Iran crisis could reach $10 billion; Ukraine's long-range drones are the only mechanism currently working to close that gap.
Worse: Ukraine's budget runs out in June
Ukraine's budget was precarious before the Iran war. Ukraine's own financial authorities estimate the country needs $52 billion in foreign assistance in 2026. It is not even close to having it.
A €90 billion ($103.5 billion) EU loan is Ukraine's primary financing mechanism for 2026. It remains blocked by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's veto ahead of Hungary's 12 April elections. Ukraine runs out of funds for civilian expenditures and war financing by June if the loan stays frozen.
Ukraine imports 100% of its fuel at euro and dollar prices. With Brent above $100, every week of the Iran crisis adds pressure to a budget already counting weeks rather than months. The EU loan and global oil prices are not two separate problems—they are the same pressure from opposite sides.
The geopolitical side of things
In the five weeks since our scorecard, Trump has gone from privately doubting NATO to publicly threatening to leave it.
New: Trump is openly threatening to leave NATO
"I am strongly considering pulling the US out of NATO," Trump told the Daily Telegraph at the beginning of April, calling the alliance a "paper tiger." What the Soviets did not manage in four decades, Donald J. Trump seems to have achieved in four weeks. Or, at least, that is what many pundits are predicting.
Mixed: A NATO breakup is a short-term blow, long-term opening for Ukraine
In the short run, a concrete NATO split would obviously weaken Ukraine's situation—but possibly more geopolitically than concretely militarily. The Trump administration has already ended its own military aid to Ukraine, but Ukraine is still receiving weapons bought in the US for European money. With Donald Trump in charge in Washington, it is a fool's errand to predict what would happen with those deliveries if NATO splits.
Longer-term, a NATO breakup would force the Europeans to develop their own defense force of sorts. Zelenskyy has often suggested an EU army, with Ukraine as its core—which would obviously bring Ukraine "inside" as a cornerstone of European security.
Ukraine may very well be the first victim of a NATO breakup. As The Times of London suggests in a headline: "Europe should prepare for a scenario where the US makes deal with Russia."
And, indeed, we have already seen several very explicit illustrations of the Trump administration's down-prioritizing of "Europe" and selling out Ukraine. Last week, Marco Rubio threatened that the US might decide—if it thought it necessary—to redirect US weapons, even those already purchased for Ukraine by Europe, to its own war theaters in the Middle East.
In plain language, Rubio was pissed off that Zelenskyy had dared to criticize the Trump administration—and called Zelenskyy a liar after the Ukrainian president had claimed the Americans insisted on Ukraine ceding Donbas. On 25 March, Zelenskyy told Reuters that Washington was conditioning its security guarantees on Kyiv ceding all of Donbas: "The Americans are prepared to finalize these guarantees at a high level once Ukraine is ready to withdraw from Donbas." Two days later in Paris, Rubio called the claim a lie.
The Iran war, Zelenskyy added in his Axios interview, is giving Trump more reason to push harder on Kyiv to give up vital territories.
Overall, the math in the Iran war still runs against Kyiv. But Ukraine is no longer only trying to absorb the war's economic and military consequences. Ukraine has also started to shape them.
