Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday evening that Ukraine should fight in 2025 on the “battlefield” but also to the “negotiation table” to put an end to nearly three years of Russian invasion and a year 2024 marked by major Russian advances. “Every day of the coming year, we will have to fight for a strong enough Ukraine. Because only such Ukraine will be respected and heard. Both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. he declared in his New Year’s address to the Ukrainian nation. “Let 2025 be our year. The year of Ukraine. We know that peace will not be given to us as a gift, but we will do everything to stop Russia and end the war,” he added in his speech broadcast on social networks.
Trump 'willing and able to end Putin's aggression'
The year 2024 will have been difficult for Kyiv: the Russian army has advanced into Ukraine by almost 4,000 square km in 2024 facing Ukrainians in difficulty, or seven times more than in 2023, and the coming year will be he uncertain announcement for Kyiv, in particular due to questions about the sustainability of American support, as Donald Trump comes to power on January 20. The world's leading economic power is Ukraine's primary donor and arms supplier, and a reduction in this aid (another 6 billion announced on December 30) could have immense consequences. “I have no doubt that the new American president is willing and able to achieve peace and end Putin's aggression”assured Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday evening, who always demands security guarantees for his country before any negotiations with Moscow.
For weeks, speculation has been rife about possible future peace talks, after nearly three years of a war that has left hundreds of thousands dead and injured on both sides.
The Ukrainian president said he wanted “a just peace” in 2025, but his country ends the year on the defensive, facing a Russian army which is advancing despite significant losses. The consequences for Ukrainians remain immense: millions of displaced people and refugees, and incessant Russian bombings, particularly those targeting energy infrastructure, regularly plunging civilians into darkness and cold.
Ukrainian setbacks
In his New Year's speech on Tuesday, Vladimir Putin, who still demands Ukraine's surrender, its renunciation of NATO membership and the Ukrainian territories it annexed, did not explicitly mention the war in Ukraine but praised Russian soldiers for their “courage and their bravery”. In detail, its men have advanced 3,985 square kilometers in 2024, according to AFP's analysis of data provided by the American Institute for the Study of War (ISW), as of December 30. That is almost seven times more than in 2023 (584 square kilometers).
Less numerous and less armed, the Ukrainian forces have been retreating at an accelerated pace since this fall, particularly in the East: November (725 square kilometers) and October (610 square kilometers) were the two months during which the Russian army was taken the most territory since March 2022 and the first weeks of the invasion. On the other hand, Ukraine can bank on the fact that its army has occupied several hundred square kilometers of the Russian region of Kursk since August, a thorn in Vladimir Putin's side. In an interview with Liberation, the right-hand man of Ukrainian President Andriy Yermak explained that Ukraine must “be strong and find ourselves in a situation where we will speak as equals” with Russia.
During the night from Monday to Tuesday, Ukraine was again targeted by 21 missiles and around forty attack drones, of which seven and 16 respectively were able to be shot down. The Russian army claimed to have struck “a military airfield and an enterprise of the military-industrial complex” Ukrainian. On the Russian side, a Ukrainian drone attack caused a fuel fire in an oil depot in the Smolensk region, 500 kilometers as the crow flies from Kyiv, according to the regional governor.
