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Ukraine: Zelensky wants to fight in 2025 on the “battlefield” and at the “negotiation table”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Tuesday evening that Ukraine should fight in 2025 on the “battlefield” but also at the “negotiation table” to end nearly three years of Russian invasion and a year 2024 marked by significant Russian advances. “Every day of the coming year, we will have to fight for a Ukraine that is strong enough. Because only such a Ukraine will be respected and heard. Both on the battlefield and at the negotiating table,” he said. – he declared in his New Year’s address to the Nation. The year 2024 will have been difficult for kyiv: the Russian army has advanced in Ukraine by nearly 4,000 km2 in 2024 in the face of Ukrainians in difficulty, i.e. seven times more than in 2023, and the coming year promises to be uncertain for kyiv, in particular due to questions about the sustainability of American support. For weeks, speculation has been rife on possible future peace talks , after almost three years of a war which left hundreds of thousands dead and wounded on both sides. The Ukrainian president said he wanted “a just peace” in 2025, but his country is ending the year on the defensive, facing a Russian army which is advancing despite significant losses. “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. 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. For his part, the president Russian Vladimir Putin welcomed the progress of his troops in mid-December, ensuring that he had “the initiative” at the end of a “pivotal” year. In his New Year’s speech on Tuesday, Vladimir Putin had no side not explicitly mentioned the war in Ukraine but praised the Russian soldiers for their “courage and bravery”. In detail, its men advanced 3,985 km2 in 2024, according to AFP analysis of data provided by the American Institute for the study of war (ISW), closed on December 30. That is almost seven times more than in 2023 (584 km2). Fewer in number and less armed, the Ukrainian forces have been retreating at an accelerated pace since this fall, particularly in the East: November (725 km2) and October (610 km2) were the two months in which the Russian army took the most territory since March 2022 and the first weeks of the invasion.- “Achieving peace” -In this context, the outstanding questions remain numerous. The coming year “will determine who wins”, warned the Ukrainian president in November, hoping to obtain a “just peace” in 2025. In kyiv, his wish is shared by the population: “I want “peace is finally achieved for Ukraine, that people stop dying,” Kateryna Tchemeryz, a teacher, told AFP. “Everyone has only one wish, one dream: that Ukraine wins and everyone our territories be reconquered,” insists Tetiana, a civil servant who did not wish to give her last name. And this, while Russia already occupies nearly 20% of Ukrainian territory and the return to power in the United States on January 20 of the unpredictable Donald Trump further increases uncertainty. “I feel a certain anxiety,” admits Kateryna Tchemeryz, the American president-elect who called for an “immediate” ceasefire and promised to obtain a peace agreement, without ever detailing her plan. However, the United States is the leading donor and supplier of weapons to Ukraine, and a reduction in this aid could have immense consequences. “I have no doubt that the new American president is willing and able to achieve peace and put an end to Putin’s aggression,” declared Tuesday evening Mr. Zelensky, who is still asking for guarantees of peace for his country. security before any negotiation with Moscow. In his sleeve, he benefits from the fact that his army has occupied several hundred square kilometers of the Russian region of Kursk since August, a thorn in the side of Vladimir Putin. But the latter now has the support thousands of North Korean soldiers. He has also increased the threats of world war, if the West strengthens their support for Ukraine, with more longer-range missiles. – Russian and Ukrainian strikes – The master of the Kremlin still demands the surrender of Ukraine, his renunciation of membership in NATO and the Ukrainian territories that it annexed. During the night from Monday to Tuesday, Ukraine was again targeted by 21 missiles and around forty attack drones, including seven and 16 were able to be shot down. The Russian army claimed to have struck “a military airfield and an enterprise of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex”. On the Russian side, a Ukrainian drone attack caused a fuel fire at an oil depot in the Smolensk region, 500 km away. as the crow flies from kyiv, according to the regional governor.bur/alf/lrb/dth/mm
