Playing for time

But the conflict in Ukraine is just one part of a complex and rapidly changing geopolitical environment which neither Russia nor the EU, let alone Ukraine, fully control. The main reason for this is Donald Trump, who will return to the White House at the end of January 2025. 

He already has an outsized influence over the calculations Moscow and Brussels make. But his determined — if detail-free — push for an end to the war in Ukraine is seen with scepticism on the other side of the Atlantic. This holds for Brussels as much as in Moscow.

European foreign ministers on 16 December reiterated their determination to support Kyiv no matter what. Kaja Kallas, the former Estonian prime minister — now EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security — was unequivocal when she stated that European military support needed to increase. The key would be to enable Ukraine “not just to hold on, but to tilt the balance to their favour because Putin will not stop, unless he’s stopped”.

In a further sign of the EU toughening, rather than softening, its stance on Russia, the foreign ministers adopted the bloc’s 15th sanctions package. This is one of the most significant sanctions packages to date, targeting 54 individuals and 30 entities and blacklists an additional 32 companies for circumventing existing sanctions.

On 18 December, Zelensky met with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, another negotiation sceptic. Like Kallas, he is keen to “focus on the business at hand … to make sure that Ukraine has what it needs to prevent Putin from winning”. 

Rutte’s words echo those of António Costa, the new president of the European Council, who similarly noted that the EU needs “to stand with Ukraine for as long as necessary and do whatever it takes for Russia’s invasion to be defeated and international law to prevail”.

In the meantime, Putin, during his annual phone-in, was full of his usual bluster about Russia winning in what he continues to call a “special military operation” in Ukraine. The main purpose of this event is to reassure ordinary Russians that things are by-and-large on track towards achieving Russia’s war aims. 

The irony that this is the third such event in a row — after 2023 and 2022 — at which Putin has touted Russia’s superiority and imminent victory appears lost on both the president and his audience.

This message of the Kremlin seeking a military victory, and confident in being able to achieve it, was further underlined by a meeting on 16 December of the board of the Russian Defence Ministry. Here Putin outlined continued investment into the country’s armed forces, now totalling 6.3% of GDP. 

While he sounded a note of caution that the Kremlin “cannot increase this expenditure endlessly,” he was also unequivocal in reiterating that “the state, the Russian people are giving everything they can to the armed forces to fulfil the tasks we have set”. These tasks, in Putin’s view, include the defeat of “the neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv, which seized power back in 2014” and “to drive the enemy out from our territory”.

At least in their public pronouncements, leaders in Moscow and Brussels seem strangely aligned in their determination to keep fighting, regardless of what kind of deal Trump might propose.

For Putin, the logic in doing so is that he clearly believes that he has the military momentum behind him. His forces made daily gains of around 30 square kilometres of Ukrainian territory in November alone. Western permission to strike targets deep inside Russia have made little impact so far. Russia’s latest air campaign against Ukraine’s critical national infrastructure, meanwhile, has caused unprecedented damage.

For the EU, the logic is different. EU leaders fear abandonment under Trump and are as yet unable to agree on credible security guarantees for Ukraine in the event of a ceasefire, let alone a full peace settlement. A Trump-brokered deal, therefore, carries too many risks. 

The main concern exercising minds among European leaders is the prospect of Putin using a mere break in the fighting to regroup and rearm and then posing an even greater threat to European security in the future.

Support for Ukraine to continue defending itself against Russia’s aggression, it is hoped, will allow the EU and European NATO members to avoid the kind of existential fight that Ukraine has been facing since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

All of this leaves Ukraine significantly exposed, both to diplomatic pressure from the incoming Trump administration to make a deal and to military pressure from Russia to accept the loss of around 20% of Ukrainian territory that Russia has illegally annexed since 2014. There will also be political pressure from Ukraine’s European allies to keep fighting a fight that Europe is desperate to avoid.

As we head into 2025 and Trump 2.0, this leaves Zelensky with no good options and few dependable allies. The best that Ukraine can hope for is playing for time. Zelensky will need to placate Trump. He’ll need to be open to the idea of negotiations with Russia while avoiding a collapse of the frontlines before a ceasefire can be achieved.

If Europe, in the meantime, gets serious about its own defence, this might finally lead to the EU and Kyiv’s European NATO allies standing on their own feet and providing the continent, and Ukraine, with credible deterrence against Russia.

So far, they have talked the talk. In 2025, they will need to prove that they can walk the walk.