As the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, held his carefully stage-managed annual phone-in and press conference to answer questions from journalists and ordinary Russians, EU leaders were hosting Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky in Brussels at their final meeting of the year. Unsurprisingly, the war in Ukraine loomed large at both events.

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 of 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 Monday, December 16, 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 policy) was unequivocal when she stated that European military support needs 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 December 18, 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.

Ukraine war: as 2025 approaches, Kyiv is left with few good options and allies in a Trump 2.0 world

Messages emerging from Moscow and Brussels are that nothing short of victory will do. But a new Trump administration could change all this.

^{The Conversation}