NEWSWEEK 2025 Will Be a Pivotal Year for Ukraine and Russia | Opinion Published Jan 03, 2025 at 7:00 AM EST By Daniel R. DePetris

 NEWSWEEK

2025 Will Be a Pivotal Year for Ukraine and Russia | Opinion

Published Jan 03, 2025 at 7:00 AM EST

By Daniel R. DePetris

Fellow, Defense Priorities

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2024 was a rough year for Ukraine.

Outside of a Ukrainian offensive in Russia's Kursk region that began over the summer, surprised the Kremlin, and forced the Russian army's high-command to scramble a defense inside its own territory, Moscow now holds the advantage in the nearly three-year long war. Russian troops continue to maul Ukrainian defensive positions in Donetsk, with the critical transportation hub of Pokrovsk increasingly under threat of encirclement. The Kursk operation, which the Ukrainian government hoped would re-allocate Russian forces away from the east, has instead devolved into another attritional grind, with Ukrainians at the front increasingly questioning whether the offensive was a smart play.

Support for a full Ukrainian military victory, meanwhile, is getting more precarious in Europe with every passing day. According to a poll released in late December, backing for a negotiated end to the war has risen in Sweden, Denmark, the U.K., Germany, Spain, France, and Italy over the last 12 months. All of this, combined with Donald Trump's return to the White House on Jan. 20, is having an impact on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's calculations. The same man who once insisted that nothing short of total victory over Russia was acceptable is now talking about forging a settlement that would allow Moscow to retain the roughly 20 percent of Ukraine it now occupies, albeit temporarily.

Ukrainian soldiers 

Ukrainian soldiers of the 1st Separate Assault Battalion Da Vinci take part in a training exercise in the Dnipropetrovsk region, on Dec. 12, 2024, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine. ROMAN PILIPEY/AFP via Getty Images

Just because Ukraine is struggling doesn't mean Russia is close to victory. Despite what Russian President Vladimir Putin may tell the Russian public during his monotonous press conferences and New Years Day speeches, everything isn't going well in the motherland.

There's no disputing that militarily, the Russians are on the upswing. Russia captured approximately 1,500 miles of territory in 2024, seven times more than 2023, the year when Putin had to fight back an internal rebellion from Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner mercenary group as well as a Western-backed Ukrainian counteroffensive. But gains on the ground have come at an extremely high cost. While assessing casualties during wartime is more art than science, it's safe to say that hundreds of thousands of Russians have been lost to death or injury since the war began in February 2022. In October, the U.S. intelligence community stated that Russia sustained at least 600,000 casualties; Kyiv says the Russians have lost more than 430,000 over the last 12 months alone.

Regardless of the figures, the numbers point to an undeniable reality—even a country as big as Russia can't endure a war of attrition for eternity. No nation has unlimited military resources. Although Russia's manpower issues aren't as acute as Ukraine's—Zelensky is still refusing to lower the draft age to 18, to the outgoing Biden administration's annoyance—Putin will have to make difficult decisions if the war continues at its current pace. The last thing Putin wants is to order another mobilization, which would inject anger and panic into a Russian population that has been largely placated since the war started. The first (and last) time Putin did this, in September 2022, roughly 300,000 eligible men left Russia, choosing to live a life in self-imposed exile instead of risking death at the front in a war they didn't believe in. The Russian government is avoiding mobilization like the plague, engendering clever (but still desperate) ways to pad the ranks. To date, the Kremlin is offering high bonus checks to entice enlistment, granting legal status for military service, and dangling pardons for criminals who join the war in order to replenish losses. But how long can that realistically go on?

The Russian economy is beginning to overheat as well. To the Russians' credit, U.S. and European sanctions haven't dented Russia's economic output as much as Western policymakers anticipated. The West may no longer be importing Russian oil and gas, but Russian officials have been adept at finding alternative markets in Asia—India and China have been scooping up Russian crude at a discount—by utilizing vessels that aren't connected to the Western banking system. The International Monetary Fund assessed that Russia's GDP grew by 3.6 percent last year, higher than the United Kingdom, Germany, and France.

Even so, the Russian economy is beginning to show signs of distress. Most of the economy at this point is in service of the war effort. Russian men of productivity age that would ordinarily be at their jobs in the civilian economy are instead fighting at the front, translating into a shortage of workers. The inflation rate is near 10 percent, and the price of common household staples have increased. The Central Bank of Russia has held the interest rate at 21 percent, but the high rate is a strain on businesses that are no longer borrowing as much as they used to. Complaints from Russia's business community and the Putin-aligned oligarchs will inevitably get louder if the rate is heightened or even stays where it is.

All of which is to say that 2025 will be a pivotal year for both Ukraine and Russia.

Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a syndicated foreign affairs columnist at the Chicago Tribune.