Ukraine faces 2025 exhausted and full of uncertainty in key year for the war

Ukraine is seeing out 2024 exhausted and battered, but it is holding on. The situation on the front lines of a conflict that has returned the feared scenario of open war to Europe is critical. Moscow’s superiority in weapons and troop numbers has allowed the invading army to make territorial advances, although it has not yet resulted in significant victories. Kyiv, which is unable to replenish its already exhausted battalions after almost three years of war and is absolutely dependent on American weapons, is eyeing the imminent arrival of Donald Trump in the White House with uncertainty, with the president-elect impatient to end the conflict. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, who defends fighting to the end to recover all the occupied territories, assumes that at some stage he will have to negotiate. He resists, however, any agreement that does not include guarantees of long-term security for Ukraine.

There is a general lack of trust in Russian President Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. Viktoria Kurepova, a 57-year-old military doctor, visited the memorial to the fallen on Maidan Square in Kyiv on Thursday, with her mother, daughters, and granddaughter. This is the symbol of the first uprising against Russian interference and in favor of EU integration at the end of 2013. “If we freeze the conflict, Russia will attack again. We don’t know when, but we know they will,” she said.

The past year of war has been a tough one for Ukraine. Defense analyst Mykola Bielieskov explains in a meeting room at the CBA Initiatives Center, guarded by armed soldiers: “We performed a miracle in 2022, but the war of attrition is based on weapons, money, and personnel.” In all three areas, Russia is outperforming Ukraine. “Socially, confusion, frustration and anxiety are increasing,” he adds.

Moscow has not achieved its objective of occupying the entire territory of Donetsk, the key area of the current fighting, but it has made some progress at a good pace in recent months. It now controls more than 19% of Ukraine and is putting the front line under constant pressure, with a balance of forces in some sectors of 10 Russian soldiers for every Ukrainian defender. The Russian army is approaching Pokrovsk, an essential logistical crossroads, and some sources say Kurakhove has practically been taken. The fighting is fierce.

On the military balance sheet for 2024, some experts criticize the Ukrainian incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August, where Kyiv’s forces are losing ground. Oleksiy Melnyk, co-director of the Razumkov Centre for International Relations and Security Policy, defends the operation: “Russia is expending bombs in Russia [to try to repel Ukrainian troops on its territory], it is destroying Russian houses and there are Russian internally displaced people, not Ukrainians [...] Ukraine needs as many asymmetric actions as possible,” he argues, recalling another “humiliation”: the victory over the Russian fleet in the Black Sea.

As Trump’s inauguration on January 20 approaches, both sides are stepping up their operations to come to the negotiating table in a position of strength. In recent weeks, there have been at least 200 clashes a day on the front lines, and on many occasions the number has exceeded 250, compared to the average of 150 previously. Russia is not sparing any resources. It has launched 13 large-scale attacks against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure this year and is punishing the entire country with daily bombings. In November, it sent a message to the West in the form of an experimental ballistic missile, the Oreshnik, and on December 20, it challenged Kyiv’s defences by attacking the city center.

Ukraine is urging its allies to provide more weapons to achieve peace through strength on the front. Outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden gave the green light in November to launch long-range missiles against targets on Russian soil, a decision he had previously avoided in order to prevent an escalation of the war. Experts agree, however, that such strikes have little ability to change the course of the conflict. “In a war of attrition, the most important thing is the constant and massive supply of resources and systems,” says Bielieskov. “We have about 50 ATACMS and 50-60 Storm Shadows. Their use is effective, but there are about 100 of them. Only this morning Russia sent the same number [to attack Ukraine],” said Melnik a few hours after a large-scale attack on Christmas Day.

In a war of attrition, which requires troops in sufficient numbers to wage it, Ukraine faces one of its greatest difficulties: a lack of soldiers. The Prosecutor’s Office has recorded nearly 100,000 cases of abandonment of positions or desertion so far in the war, in addition to casualties incurred at the front. This is a figure that Kyiv does not usually report, but which Trump put at 400,000 a few days ago (and Zelenskiy later reduced).

“There is a clear problem and the government has not been able to solve it,” says Melnik, who has more than two decades of military experience. In April, the age of conscription was lowered from 27 to 25, but the issue of demobilization of those who have served for a while, one of the demands of the population, was not resolved: “People are extremely tired, physically and psychologically; they are not career soldiers, they are mobilized civilians.” The United States is pressuring Kyiv to lower the conscription age to 18, but Zelenskiy is resisting. “They are asking us to mortgage our future. It is not fair. What we need is more weapons, more training,” notes Bielieskov.

The ‘Trump factor’

The change in the U.S. administration is tinged with uncertainty. Ukraine has already experienced the consequences of the temporary shutting off of the military aid tap, with the months-long Republican blockage of an aid package in the Senate. “It allowed Russia to take the initiative,” Melnik stresses. Trump’s entourage has advocated ending the billions of dollars in aid to Kyiv.

Keith Kellogg, the future U.S. special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, who is eagerly awaited in Kyiv in January, has given mixed signals on the issue. In April he proposed making aid conditional on forcing a ceasefire that would freeze the front line, which would include the ceding of the occupied territories to Moscow. In exchange, he proposed offering security guarantees to Kyiv, but ruled out its entry into NATO.

Zelenskiy has abandoned his maximalist positions this year, but insists that the only way to achieve a fair and lasting peace is through the Atlantic Alliance. “Ukraine is traumatized by Minsk 1 and 2. We must ensure that Putin abides by the agreements,” stresses the defense expert from the CBA Initiatives Center, a close collaborator of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, referring to the agreements that were pushed through in the Belarusian capital after Russia took Crimea in 2014. “If not, in five, seven or 10 years, we face disappearance,” insists Bieleskov.

Faced with the doubts generated by Trump’s election victory, the EU is supporting Ukraine while studying alternative security guarantees to the Alliance, such as the French proposal to design a peacekeeping mission using European troops. But as the Ukrainian president said in Brussels on December 19, without the U.S. “it is very difficult to maintain support for Ukraine.” “The EU has money, but not capabilities: missiles, ammunition, artillery shells. The United States is still indispensable,” explains Bielieskov.

Although it is far from certain that the Republican magnate’s entry into the war will work out well for Ukraine, after three years in which many consider that Biden’s help has arrived either too late or insufficiently, there is some hope in the “Trump factor” as a disruptive element. According to a survey by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), published last Friday, 45% of Ukrainians believe that Trump’s victory brings peace closer, compared to 14% who believe it moves it further away.

Experts rule out the possibility of tangible results from possible negotiations before the summer. Vadym Denysenko, executive director of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, reminds us that even Trump “is no longer talking about solving the problem in one day.” “There are several elections in 2025: Canada, Germany... and Poland and Denmark will hold the EU presidency. The Ukrainian political class hopes to capitalize on this,” explains Ivan Gomza, director of the Department of Public Policy at the Kyiv School of Economics. But as the political scientist says, “Russia has given signs that it does not want to stop. It wants to change the world order, not a piece of Donbas. If it can, it wants to bite off parts of the EU as well.”

Many see Trump as the only leader capable of twisting Putin’s arm. Not so Gomza. In a café in Kyiv’s Podil district, he recalls that the businessman will be facing a former KGB agent accustomed to bending wills. The Russian president said last Friday that he is willing to hold talks in Slovakia, but no one is under any illusions about his real intention to negotiate. With his military superiority on the front, he does not need to.

According to Denysenko, the only thing that can stop Putin is the battered Russian economy. Ukraine dreams of its collapse in the near future. The analyst points out that the final straw would be a reduction in the price of oil, which “represents 40% of the Russian budget.” “It is at about $70 a barrel. If it falls to $50, it would be a big problem.” His hope is that Trump, with Saudi Arabia, will do everything possible to lower the price for a few months, but this is only a wish. “It is enough that Putin believes it is possible,” he says.

The year of exhaustion is coming to an end in a few days. The Kurepovas from Kharkiv are ending it with a visit to Kyiv. Asking them how they are after the Christmas attack, which devastated the city, immediately triggers tears in the group, with the other half of the family at the front. They want 2025 to be the year of peace, like everyone else, but not at any price: “We have to keep fighting until the end. All those people who have given their lives for our freedom... we can’t let it be for nothing,” says the military doctor. “Many people are exhausted. There is a lot of uncertainty. But deep down, we remain strong,” she says.

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