BALANCE SHEET OF THE YEAR || The war was supposed to end in 24 hours, but negotiations are still ongoing and threatening to drag on. For now, Russia is getting almost everything it wants
The war in Ukraine saw a new protagonist in 2025, Donald Trump, who became president of the United States with the almost electoral promise of ending the conflict within 24 hours.
Despite the failure, Ukraine and Russia are involved in indirect negotiations, based on a North American plan without Ukrainian and European participation.
The plan envisaged, in particular, that Ukraine would give up territories claimed by Russia, the presence of an international force and membership in NATO.
I predicted it, because when it seemed that Kiev and President Volodymyr Zelensky were “between a rock and a hard place”, the European Union and the United Kingdom pressed for Ukrainian and European interests to be taken into account.
From this intervention, news followed about new versions of the plan and more conversations.
Trump entered the process humiliating Zelensky when he received him in February, in a style that has marked him: he enters without respecting rules, not even diplomatic ones, before “negotiating”.
The tone changed in subsequent meetings, but always with Zelensky in a position to ask for help, especially military help, which Washington uses to condition Kiev.
The atmosphere with the Russian leader was the opposite, as at the Alaska summit in August, when Trump sponsored Vladimir Putin’s return to the international spotlight.
For some commentators, Putin then achieved a total victory over Trump, who achieved nothing, not even a commitment for a meeting between his Russian counterpart and Zelensky, much less a ceasefire, as he had intended.
On the ground, the Russian army never let up.
He accompanied each diplomatic initiative with bombings that he said were aimed at military targets, even when the images showed residential buildings hit and civilians injured and frightened.
Another preferred target was the electricity grid to make the day-to-day lives of Ukrainians even more unbearable and pressure Zelensky to look for a solution at any price.
Moscow also increased the so-called hybrid war against European countries such as Poland, with suspected drone operations that closed airports and sabotage of railway lines.
One of the consequences was to alarm Europe, which demands the reinforcement of NATO resources and an “anti-drone shield”.
A few weeks before the fourth anniversary of the war, Putin recently reaffirmed that he maintains his initial demands: either Ukraine leaves Donbas badly, or it leaves well.
“It all comes down to one thing: either we liberate the territories through military action, or the Ukrainian troops withdraw and abandon the country,” he said.
The country is Putin’s because he considers Donetsk and Lugansk, the so-called Donbass, to be part of Russia.
A request for assistance from the two regions of eastern Ukraine – whose separatist war was supported by Moscow – was the direct origin of the invasion in February 2022.
Moscow annexed Donbass in September 2022, along with Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, which it joined to Crimea, integrated in 2014.
In December, Russian troops controlled almost 20% of Ukrainian territory, including all of Lugansk and 80% of Donetsk.
Just like a year ago, it remains impossible to anticipate the time and way in which the conflict will end.
In the National Security Strategy, released last week, Washington defined the objective of “reestablishing strategic stability with Russia”, for which it must “negotiate a rapid cessation of hostilities in Ukraine”.
It is within this framework that Trump’s plan for Ukraine falls, which Zelensky recently insisted was entitled to a fair peace.
“In this war for independence, Ukraine (…) won the right to life. And it deserved a fair peace”, said the leader of the country that broke free from Moscow in 1991, upon becoming independent from the Soviet Union.
Trump has assumed that he wants the Nobel Peace Prize and applications for the 2026 prize close on January 31st.
To still use Ukraine as an argument, the 79-year-old Republican will have to accommodate Putin’s will and Ukrainian determination.
