The third year of the war is coming to an end. And the number of dead and wounded, according to rough estimates, exceeds a million. Ukraine seems to be losing. The Russian military machine is slowly making its way through the steppes of eastern Ukraine, capturing village after village, city after city.
Meanwhile, in faraway Washington, the unpredictable Donald Trump, who has no warm feelings for either Ukraine or its president, is preparing to move back into the White House.
A turning point seems to be approaching. But will the war really be stopped in 2025, and if so, what will the finale be? This question is asked in a survey article by the BBC.
Are the negotiations now an illusion?
Trump said he would end the war within 24 hours of taking office. Beyond his usual bravado, this request comes from a man who is clearly fed up with this war and the heavy costs America is paying for it.
"The number of young dead soldiers lying in the fields - it's terrible. It's crazy what's happening there," Trump said.
But on the way to ending the war, the new US administration, according to military analyst Michael Coffman of the "Carnegie" Endowment, will face a double problem. "First, they will inherit a war that is on a very negative trajectory and they won't have much time to stabilize it. Second, they will inherit it without a clear strategy for success.”
Trump has hinted several times in various interviews what exactly he plans to do about this war. He told Time magazine that he strongly disagrees with the Biden administration’s decision to lift Ukraine’s ban on American missile strikes against targets deep inside Russian territory. “We are simply contributing to the escalation of this war and making it even worse,” the president-elect said. On December 8, in an interview with NBC, when asked if Ukraine should prepare to reduce the amount of aid, he replied, “Maybe. It’s entirely possible, of course.”
At the same time, Trump has made statements that may seem reassuring to many who fear that the new US president will abandon Ukraine. "If you give up, you won't be able to reach an agreement," he once said.
But overall, Trump's intentions are unclear.
The Ukrainian leadership is now dismissing any suggestion that it is under pressure and that Trump's coming to power will inevitably lead to peace talks.
"There is a lot of talk about negotiations, but this is an illusion. There can be no negotiation process because Russia has not yet been forced to pay a sufficient price for this war," said Mykhailo Podoliak, an adviser to the head of the Ukrainian president's office.
Zelensky's smart strategic move
President Zelensky clearly wants to be seen as someone Trump can talk to. Immediately after the election, he congratulated Trump on his victory and wasted no time in sending senior members of his team to negotiate with Trump's team. Zelensky then met with Trump himself, when French President Emmanuel Macron invited them to the opening of the restored Notre Dame Cathedral.
"We are witnessing a very smart strategic move by President Zelensky," former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba told the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations in December.
There are few signs that the Kremlin is ready to make such gestures, and Kiev is clearly trying to stay on the crest of the wave.
"Trump is not explaining how he will act, and the Ukrainians are trying to give him ideas that he can then present as his own. "They know how to play on his ego," says Orisya Lutsevich, head of the Ukraine Forum at the Chatham House Institute for International Affairs.
The Victory Plan and the Finale?
Donald Trump is known for his businessman mentality and willingness to pay less to protect Europe, and Zelensky, even before the US election, seemed to be looking for ways to make Ukraine more attractive to him as a potential partner.
In his "Victory Plan", published in October, Zelensky suggested that after the war with Russia, the battle-hardened Ukrainian army could replace American troops in Europe. He also proposed that Western allies jointly develop Ukraine's resources, including uranium, graphite and lithium. These strategic resources, Zelensky said, "will serve to strengthen either Russia or Ukraine and the democratic world."
Other points of the "victory plan" - Ukraine's admission to NATO and the deployment of a "non-nuclear strategic deterrent package" on its territory - were received coolly by the allies.
But the most serious disagreement is caused by the issue of Ukraine's admission to NATO. For Kiev, joining NATO seems to be the only way to ensure the country's survival, to protect itself from Russia, which is clearly determined to conquer it.
The alliance itself, although it states that "Ukraine's path to full integration into the Euro-Atlantic community is irreversible", at the same time remains divided on the issue of a formal invitation to Ukraine. The United States and Germany are still against it.
President Zelensky said that if NATO agrees to accept all of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders, then he would be ready to accept that for now NATO membership applies only to the territory under Kiev's control.
In an interview with Sky News in November, he said that this would put an end to the "hot phase" of the war and will move on to negotiations about where Ukraine's borders should ultimately be.
Kiev's precarious position
And if not NATO, then what? The prospect of Trump-initiated peace talks is becoming more and more real, Ukraine continues to retreat on the front lines, and the discussion in the international community on the Ukrainian issue is now focused on how to strengthen Kiev's currently precarious position.
"It is extremely important for us to end this war with a just peace, with strong legal and operational guarantees, since, according to our, unfortunately, experience, all previous guarantees did not provide us with real security", were the words of Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian presidential administration, on December 12.
As commentators warn, only specific mechanisms, similar to the principle of collective defense enshrined in Article 5 of the NATO Charter, can prevent a new Russian attack.
"Zelensky understands that he cannot agree to a pure ceasefire. There should be a "truce plus", says Orisya Lutsevich, "It would be suicide for Zelensky to simply agree to a ceasefire without answering the question of how exactly Ukraine will be protected".
Experts in European political forums are considering how exactly Europe can take on part of this difficult task.
Among the options are the deployment of peacekeeping forces (Macron was the first to make this proposal) or the inclusion of the Joint Expeditionary Force, which, under the leadership of Great Britain, is formed by the eight Nordic and Baltic countries and the Netherlands.
Michael Kofman believes that such guarantees will not be enough: the United States should be one of the guarantors.
Mikhail Podolyak also agrees with him. He is convinced that without a real threat of military intervention from Ukraine's allies, all documents with verbal guarantees will turn out to be meaningless papers, as the Budapest Memorandum and the Minsk agreements turned out to be.
"Russia must understand that as soon as it starts a new aggression, it will receive a significant number of strikes in response," says Podolyak.
Britain, Biden and the role of the West
Although there is no agreement on the future of Ukraine, its allies are doing what they can to strengthen its defenses here and now.
The outgoing Biden administration is trying to transfer to Ukraine everything it can with money that has already been approved by Congress. However, according to reports from the United States, there may not be time to capitalize on all the allocated funds.
On December 21, reports emerged that Donald Trump intends to continue helping Ukraine, but in return will ask European NATO countries to significantly increase military spending.
Ukraine's allies continue to tighten sanctions against Russia, hoping that its war-torn economy will eventually collapse - although it stubbornly refuses to do so.
But recently its performance has become increasingly worrisome for the Kremlin. With interest rates on loans exceeding 20%, inflation exceeding 9%, the falling ruble, and economic growth expected to slow sharply in 2025 - the problems in the Russian economy are becoming more acute.
However, Putin assures that everything is fine. At his big press conference at the end of the year, he admitted that the sanctions were having some impact on the Russian economy, but they were far from decisive.
Russia is suffering heavy losses on the front: Western analysts (apart from the Ukrainian General Staff) say that on average it is losing 1,500 killed and wounded every day.
The overall cost of this war may eventually force Putin to the negotiating table.
The question is how much more territory Ukraine will lose by then, and how many human lives it will cost.