Ukraine could have won the war in 2022 had the West delivered the weapons it eventually sent much later, Admiral Rob Bauer, who chaired NATO's Military Committee from 2021 to 2025, told Euromaidan Press at the GLOBSEC 2026 forum in Prague.
"If we had done something else in 2022 with regard to the weapons that we gave, you might have won," Bauer said—the most direct concession yet from a senior NATO figure that the alliance's incremental approach to arming Ukraine was a strategic mistake.
It carries weight because it comes from the officer who oversaw NATO's military response during the war's opening phase. His account confirms what Kyiv has argued since 2022: that Western caution, not Ukrainian capacity, set the ceiling on what Ukraine could achieve.
No strategy to win
Bauer was blunt that victory was never the stated goal. "It was never formulated as, 'We're doing this so that Ukraine can win the war,'" he said. Nor was it framed around Russia losing. What emerged instead was a promise to support Ukraine "for as long as it takes"—endurance, not victory.
He traced the gap to how the alliance decides. "You need one nation that says 'no' and it's 'no,'" he said, explaining why NATO never deployed troops, never admitted Ukraine, and never did more than it did.
The cost of waiting
The delay had a price Ukrainians paid on the battlefield. Had the tanks, HIMARS, ATACMS, and F-16s arrived in the spring or summer of 2022, when Ukraine was retaking ground, Russia "would be in a much more difficult spot," Bauer said. Instead, the long Western debate gave Moscow time to build the defensive works that stalled Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive.
He did not spare his own side: "I think we should have done more."
Bauer now argues Ukraine must be admitted to NATO, warning that excluding "the biggest nation with the latest experience in war with the Russians" would compound the original error. He made the remarks in a wide-ranging interview that also covered Russia's 2022 nuclear threats.
