How the war in Ukraine could end in 2025

“I must say that the situation is changing dramatically,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said at his year-end press conference in December. “There's movement all over the front line. Every day.”

In eastern Ukraine, Moscow's war machine is gradually moving mile by mile across the wide open fields of the Donbass, enveloping and conquering villages and towns.

Some civilians flee before the war reaches them. Others wait until shells start exploding all around them before packing what they can carry and boarding trains and buses to safety further west.

Russia is gaining ground faster than at any time since it launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, despite Kiev's impressive record of well-publicized asymmetric attacks against its powerful neighbor.

As the invasion reaches the end of its third year, at an estimated cost of one million people killed or wounded, Ukraine appears to be losing.

Meanwhile, in faraway Washington, the unpredictable Donald Trump, unknown for his love of Ukraine or its leader, is about to take over the White House.

It feels like an inflection point. But can 2025 is this really the year that this devastating European conflict will finally end – and if so, what might the end look like?

Trump's promise to end the conflict within 24 hours of taking office is a typically grandiose boast, but it comes from a man who has clearly lost patience with the war and America's costly involvement.

“The number of dead young soldiers lying in the fields everywhere is staggering,” he said. “It's crazy what's going on.

But the new US administration faces two challenges, according to Michael Coffman, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“First, they will inherit a war with a very negative trajectory, without a huge amount of time to stabilize the situation,” he said in December. “Second, they will inherit it without a clear theory of success.”

The president-elect has given some clues in recent interviews about how he intends to approach the war.

He told Time magazine that he “strongly” disagreed with the Biden administration's decision in November to allow Ukraine to fire US-supplied long-range missiles at targets in Russia.

“We're just escalating this war and making it worse,” he said.

On December 8, he was asked by NBC News whether Ukraine should prepare for less aid.

“It's possible,” he replied. “Probably, of course.”

But to those who fear, as many do, that America's new leader is inclined to withdraw from Ukraine, he offered hints of reassurance. “You can't reach an agreement if you give up, in my opinion,” he said.

The truth is that Trump's intentions are far from clear.

And so far, Ukrainian officials have dismissed any talk of pressure or the suggestion that Trump's arrival necessarily means peace talks are imminent.

“There is a lot of talk about negotiations, but this is an illusion,” says Mihailo Podoliak, adviser to President Zelenskiy's chief of staff.

“There can be no negotiation process because Russia has not been made to pay a high enough price for this war.

For all of Kiev's misgivings about the talks, as Russian forces continue their relentless advance east, it's clear that President Zelensky wants to position himself as someone Trump can do business with.

The Ukrainian leader was quick to congratulate Trump on his election victory and wasted little time sending top officials to meet with the president-elect's team.

With the help of French President Emmanuel Macron, Zelensky also secured a meeting with Trump when the two men visited Paris for the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral.

“What we're seeing now is a very smart strategic exercise by President Zelensky,” his former foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, told the Council on Foreign Relations in December.

Zelensky, he said, “signals constructiveness and willingness to engage with President Trump.”

With few obvious signs of the Kremlin making similar gestures, the government in Kiev is clearly trying to get ahead of the game.

“Since Trump hasn't fully explained how he's going to do it, the Ukrainians are trying to give him some ideas that he can present as his own,” said Orysya Lutsevich, head of the Ukraine Forum at Chatham House.

“They know how to work that ego.”

Even before the US election, there were signs that Zelensky was looking for ways to boost Ukraine's appeal as a future partner for a president-elect like Trump, who is both instinctively transactional and unwilling to continue to guarantee broader European security.

As part of his “Victory Plan” unveiled in October, Zelensky suggested that battle-hardened Ukrainian troops could replace US forces in Europe after the war with Russia ends. And he offered the prospect of joint investments to exploit Ukraine's natural resources, including uranium, graphite and lithium.

Such strategic resources, Zelensky warned, “will strengthen Russia or Ukraine and the democratic world.”

But other elements of the Ukrainian leader's victory plan – NATO membership and his call for a “comprehensive package of non-nuclear strategic deterrence” – appear to have met with a lukewarm response among Kiev's allies.

NATO membership, in particular, remains an obstacle, as it was well before Russia's full-scale invasion.

For Kiev, this is the only way to ensure the future survival of the country against the predatory Russian enemy, which seeks to subjugate Ukraine.

But despite announcing last July that Ukraine was on an “irreversible path to full Euro-Atlantic integration, including NATO membership”, the alliance is divided, with the US and Germany still reluctant to extend an invitation.

President Zelensky indicated that if the membership offer were to be extended to the entire country, within Ukraine's internationally recognized borders, he would be willing to accept that it would initially only apply to territory under Kyiv's control.

This, he told Sky News in November, could end the “hot stage” of the war, allowing a diplomatic process to resolve the issue of Ukraine's final borders.

But, he said, no such proposal has yet been made.

If not NATO, then what? With the possibility of Trump-led peace talks looming and Ukraine losing ground on the battlefield, the international debate is all about strengthening Kiev's shaky position.

“It is extremely important that we have strong, legal and practical guarantees,” Andriy Yermak, President Zelensky's chief of staff, told Ukrainian public television on December 12.

Ukraine's recent past, he said, had left a bitter legacy. “Unfortunately, in our experience, all the assurances we had before did not lead to certainty.”

Without concrete mechanisms similar to the concept of collective defense embodied in Article 5 of NATO's founding treaty, observers fear there will be little to prevent another Russian attack.

“Zelensky understands that there can't just be an open ceasefire,” says Orisja Lucevic.

“This should be a truce plus. It would be suicide for Zelensky to simply accept a ceasefire and not have any answer as to how Ukraine is protected.”

In European policy forums, experts are looking for ways in which Europe can help shoulder this heavy responsibility.

Ideas include deploying a peacekeeping force to Ukraine (a proposal first floated last February by Macron) or the involvement of the British-led Joint Expeditionary Force, which brings together forces from eight Scandinavian and Baltic countries, plus the Netherlands.

But Coffman is skeptical. “Security guarantees that don't include the United States because one of the guarantors is like a donut with a giant missing middle in it.”

It's a view echoed in Kyiv.

“What alternative can there be? There are no alternatives today,” says Mr. Podoliak.

Pieces of paper like the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. (on the post-Soviet borders of Ukraine) or the Minsk agreements of 2014-15. (which seek to end the war in Donbass) are useless, he argued, without the added threat of military deterrence.

“Russia needs to understand that as soon as it starts aggression, it will receive a significant number of strikes in response,” he says.

In the absence of agreement on Ukraine's long-term future, its allies are doing what they can to shore up its defenses.

In December, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said “everything” was being considered, including the delivery of additional air defense systems, in part to protect the country's battered energy infrastructure from a renewed wave of coordinated Russian missile and drone attacks.

As Ukraine continues to experience severe labor shortages, UK Defense Secretary John Healy said the government may be ready to send British soldiers to Ukraine to help with training.

For its part, the outgoing Biden administration appears determined to deliver as much congressionally approved military aid to Ukraine as possible before leaving office, although reports suggest time may be running out to send it all.

On December 21, it was reported that Trump would continue to provide military aid to Ukraine, but would demand that NATO members dramatically increase their defense spending.

Kiev's allies have also continued to tighten sanctions against Moscow in the hope that Russia's wartime economy, which has proven stubbornly resilient, may finally break.

“There was deep disappointment that the sanctions didn't just wreck the Russian economy beyond repair,” said a US congressional source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

After multiple rounds of sanctions (fifteen from the EU alone), government officials have become cautious about predicting their successful impact.

But the latest indicators are increasingly worrying for the Kremlin. With interest rates at 23%, inflation above 9%, a falling ruble and growth expected to slow dramatically in 2025, the strain on the Russian economy has rarely looked more acute.

Putin puts on a brave face. “Sanctions are having an effect,” he said at his year-end press conference, “but they are not key.”

Along with Russia's staggering losses on the battlefield — Western officials estimate that Moscow is losing an average of 1,500 people killed and wounded every day — the cost of this war may yet drive Putin to the negotiating table.

But how much more territory will Ukraine lose – and how many more people will be killed – until that point is reached?

Best Photo Credit: Getty Images

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