Ukraine closes 2024 exhausted and battered, but resists. The situation on the front lines of a conflict that has returned Europe to the feared scenario of an open war is critical. Moscow’s superiority in weapons and troops has allowed the invader to make territorial advances, although not great victories. kyiv, which is unable to renew troops already exhausted after almost three years of large-scale invasion by Russia and is absolutely dependent on American weapons, watches with uncertainty the imminent arrival of Donald Trump, eager to close the conflict. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who defended fighting to the end to recover all the occupied territory, has assumed that he will have to negotiate. He resists, however, any agreement that does not include long-term security guarantees for Ukraine.
The distrust of the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, is total in the invaded country. Viktoria Kurepova, a 57-year-old military doctor, visited this Thursday with her mother, her daughters and her granddaughter the tribute to the fallen in kyiv’s Maidan Square, a symbol of the first uprising against Russian interference and in favor of the EU at the end of 2013. “If we freeze the conflict, Russia will attack again. We don’t know when, but we know they will,” he said.
This last year of war has been very hard in Ukraine. Defense analyst Mykola Bielieskov explains in a meeting room at the CBA initiative center, guarded by armed soldiers: “We achieved a miracle in 2022, but the war of attrition is based on weapons, money and personnel.” In all three areas, Russia surpasses Ukraine. “Socially, confusion, frustration and anxiety are on the rise,” he adds.
Moscow has not achieved its goal of occupying the entire territory of Donetsk, the key area of the fighting, but it has made some progress, at a good pace in recent months. It already controls more than 19% of Ukraine and subjects the front line to constant pressure, with a balance of forces in some sectors of 10 Russian soldiers for every Ukrainian. It is approaching Pokrovsk, an essential crossroads from a logistical point of view, and some sources consider Kurájove practically taken. The fight is fierce.
In the 2024 military balance, some experts criticize the Ukrainian incursion into the Russian Kursk region in August, where kyiv’s forces are losing ground. Oleksii Melnik, co-director of the Razumkov Center for International Relations and Security Policy Studies, defends the operation: “Russia is spending bombs on Russia [para tratar de repeler a las tropas ucranias en su territorio]it is destroying Russian houses and there are Russian internally displaced people, not Ukrainians.” “Ukraine needs as many asymmetric actions as possible,” he defends, and recalls another “humiliation”: the victory over the Russian flora in the Black Sea.
As Trump’s inauguration on January 20 approaches, the two sides are intensifying operations to reach the negotiating table strong. In recent weeks, clashes on the front do not drop below 200 a day and on many occasions exceed 250, compared to the average of 150 before. Russia does not skimp on means. It has launched 13 massive attacks against energy infrastructure this year and punishes the entire country with bombings daily. 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 defenses by attacking the city center.
Ukraine urges partners to send more weapons to achieve peace through strength on the front. The outgoing president of the United States, Joe Biden, gave the green light in November to the launch of long-range missiles on Russian soil, a decision that had eluded him until then to avoid a war escalation. Experts agree on the limited capacity of these attacks 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 between 50 and 60 Storm Shadow. Its use is effective, but there are around 100. Only this morning Russia sent the same number [para atacar a Ucrania]” Melnik says just hours after a large-scale attack on Christmas Day.
In a war of attrition, which requires troops in sufficient numbers to fight it, Ukraine presents one of its great difficulties: the lack of soldiers. The Prosecutor’s Office has registered nearly 100,000 cases of abandonment of positions or desertion so far in the war, to which are added casualties. This is a figure that kyiv does not usually report but that Trump put at 400,000 a few days ago (and Zelensky later reduced it).
“There is a clear problem and the Government has not been able to solve it,” says Melnik, with more than two decades of military experience. In April, the recruitment age was lowered from 27 to 25 years, 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 pressures kyiv to lower the draft to 18 years old, but Ukraine resists. “They ask us to mortgage our future. It’s not fair. What we need are more weapons, more training,” Bielieskov complains.
The ‘Trump factor’
The change in the US Administration tinges next year with uncertainty. Ukraine has already experienced the consequences of temporarily turning off the military aid tap, with the Republican blockade in the Senate for months. “It allowed Russia to take the initiative,” Melnik emphasizes. Trump’s circle has advocated ending the million-dollar aid to the invaded country.
Keith Kellogg, future US special envoy for Ukraine and Russia who is eagerly awaited in kyiv in January, has given ambivalent signals in this area. In April, he proposed conditioning aid to force a ceasefire that freezes the front line, which contemplates the transfer of occupied territories to Moscow. In exchange, he proposed offering security guarantees to kyiv, but ruled out joining NATO.
Zelensky has abandoned his maximalist positions this year, but insists that the only thing that will allow a just and lasting peace is the path of the Atlantic Alliance. “Ukraine is traumatized by Minsk 1 and 2. We must ensure that Putin complies with the agreements,” emphasizes the defense expert from the CBA initiative center, a close collaborator of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, in reference to the agreements that were promoted in the capital of Belarus after the seizure of Crimea by Russia in 2014. “Otherwise, in five, seven or ten years, we face disappearance,” Bielieskov insists.
Given the doubts generated by Trump’s arrival, the EU supports Ukraine while studying alternative security guarantees to the Alliance, such as the French proposal to design a peace mission with European troops. But as the Ukrainian president said in Brussels on December 19, without the United States “it is very difficult to maintain support for Ukraine.” “The EU has money, but no capabilities: missiles, ammunition, artillery shells. The United States is still indispensable,” explains Bielieskov.
Although it is not clear that the Republican tycoon’s emergence into the war will turn out well for Ukraine, after three years in which many consider that Biden’s help has arrived late and poorly, 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 this 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 that there may be tangible results of a possible negotiation before the summer. Vadim Denisenko, director of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, recalls that even Trump “no longer talks about solving it in one day.” “In 2025 there are several elections: Canada, Germany… And Poland and Denmark will occupy the presidency of the EU. The Ukrainian political class hopes to capitalize on this,” explains Ivan Gomza, director of the Public Policy department at the Kyiv School of Economics. But as this political scientist says, “Russia has shown signs of not wanting to stop. He wants to change the world order, not a piece of Donbas. If it can, it also wants to bite parts of the EU.”
Many see the Republican leader as the only leader capable of twisting Putin’s arm. Not so Gomza. In a cafe in the Podil neighborhood of kyiv, he remembers that the millionaire businessman will face a former KGB agent accustomed to shaping wills. The Russian president said this 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 it.
The only thing that can stop Putin, according to Denisenko, is the battered Russian economy. Ukraine dreams of it collapsing in the near future. The analyst points out that the definitive bomb would be a reduction in the price of oil, which “represents 40% of the Russian budget.” “It is about 70 dollars (67 euros) a barrel. If it fell to 50, it would be a big problem.” Their hope is that Trump, with Saudi Arabia, will do everything possible to lower it for a few months, but this is nothing more than a wish. “It is enough for Putin to believe that it is possible,” he says.
The year of exhaustion is exhausted in a few days. The Kurepovas, from Kharkiv, hurry it up with a visit to kyiv. Asking them how they are after the Christmas attack, which devastated the city, triggers immediate tears in the group, which has 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 continue fighting until the end. All those people who have given their lives for our freedom… we cannot let it be for nothing,” says the mother, a military doctor. “Many people are exhausted. There is a lot of uncertainty. But deep down, we remain strong,” he confides.