US Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll has used warnings about Russia’s accelerating missile production to press European diplomats to accept a swift settlement of the war in Ukraine, tying the threat of future strikes on European cities to the need to endorse a contested White House peace plan.
Driscoll told European representatives in the Ukrainian capital that Moscow is now producing long-range missiles faster than it can fire them, building up a growing stockpile that Ukraine’s air defences may soon struggle to contain.
This is not merely rhetoric. Ukrainian military intelligence estimates that Russia has expanded capacity to produce roughly 2,900 cruise and ballistic missiles a year, while analysis of Ukrainian Air Force data indicates that 2,061 such missiles were launched at Ukraine last year, leaving hundreds in reserve. Independent experts, including Fabian Hoffmann of the University of Oslo, have warned that ballistic missiles are already being launched faster than Ukraine can obtain interceptors such as Patriot and SAMP/T, raising the prospect that Kyiv could at some point run short of defensive missiles.
This shift in the military balance has been linked directly to diplomacy. European officials who attended Driscoll’s briefing say the implication was clear: the longer Ukraine resists a settlement, the greater the risk that Russia’s growing arsenal could inflict decisive damage not only on Ukraine’s energy grid but, in time, on other European states. That framing marks a notable departure from past US practice, where Russian rearmament would normally be treated as a problem to be constrained – through sanctions, export controls and military support to Ukraine – rather than as a reason to press the victim of aggression to compromise.
The context is the Trump administration’s evolving peace initiative. An initial 28-point draft, developed with limited Ukrainian input, envisaged Ukraine ceding substantial territory in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia and Crimea, accepting strict limits on its armed forces and renouncing NATO membership. European leaders and Kyiv criticised the plan as heavily weighted towards Russian interests, and it was subsequently revised after talks in Geneva between US and Ukrainian delegations.
This first plan drew on a Russian “non-paper” transmitted to the Trump administration in October, after meetings involving Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, presidential adviser Jared Kushner and Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund. A later leaked recording, published by Bloomberg, showed Witkoff discussing with Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov how to shape and present a Ukraine plan to Donald Trump in terms advantageous to Moscow.
The Kremlin, however, has given little sign that it regards even the more Russia-leaning elements of the original plan as sufficient. Moscow has reiterated that any settlement must reflect its stated goals, including recognition of its claimed annexations and guarantees that Ukraine will not join NATO. Russian officials have also signalled that, while they are willing to engage with contacts such as Witkoff, they do not intend to make major concessions.
This raises a broader strategic question for Europe. If the war were halted on terms that did not require Russia to disarm, reduce its armed forces or curb its missile production, the continent could face a neighbour with a rapidly expanding long-range strike capability and fewer political constraints on using it as leverage. Analysis by Chatham House and other think-tanks notes that Russia has already ramped up production of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, while signalling plans to manufacture up to 120,000 glide bombs and millions of drones in the coming years.
European defence specialists warn that this trajectory could, over time, enable Moscow to threaten or overwhelm the air defences of states beyond Ukraine, and to combine that threat with demands for political concessions. If Russian leaders conclude that missile stockpiles have become a decisive factor in Western decision-making, they may be incentivised to expand them further and to make new demands, not only in relation to Ukraine but also to NATO’s posture and membership.
There is precedent for such ambitions. In December 2021, before the full-scale invasion, Russia presented draft security treaties to the United States and NATO calling for a halt to alliance enlargement, a withdrawal of NATO forces and weapons from much of Eastern Europe, and a binding guarantee that Ukraine and other former Soviet republics would never join the alliance. Western governments rejected these proposals as incompatible with the principle that countries are free to choose their own security arrangements, but Russian officials have continued to refer to them as part of their desired end-state for European security.
Some European diplomats now fear that a settlement driven primarily by concern over missile stocks could reopen elements of that 2021 agenda in a new form. They argue that if the West accepts the logic that Russian rearmament requires concessions today, it may face similar arguments in future over NATO deployments, sanctions policy or the status of other countries bordering Russia.
At the same time, the United States and European Union are attempting to exert pressure on Russia’s war-fighting capacity through sanctions, particularly against its energy sector. In October, Washington imposed its first major package of sanctions under the current administration on Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil producers, citing Moscow’s lack of serious engagement in peace efforts. European and transatlantic analyses suggest these measures, combined with EU moves to curb imports of Russian fossil fuels and tighten enforcement against sanctions evasion, are beginning to squeeze the revenues that finance Russia’s military-industrial base.
