US President Donald Trump’s return to the White House raised hopes that he could quickly broker a deal to end the war in Ukraine. However, Trump does not have much leverage over Vladimir Putin. He cannot lower the price of oil without hurting domestic producers in the United States. Russia is already one of the most sanctioned countries and the annual trade with the US is negligible for both countries. Given Ukraine’s insufficient number of troops, Trump also cannot flood the country with weapons – there are not enough trained hands to use them.
Trump lacks leverage over Moscow, and Ukraine is running out of time. Ever since Ukraine’s 2023 counteroffensive failed to knock Moscow out of the war by compelling it to accept a deal favoring Kyiv, Russia has steadily captured more Ukrainian land. Over the past year, Russian troops have been slowly clawing through eastern Ukraine, capturing the fortresses of Avdiivka, Kurakhove and Velika Novosilka. The list goes on.
Territory alone does not define the war’s trajectory. Moscow’s main achievement last year was not that it occupied several rusty Ukrainian towns, but that it persuaded the West that the idea of Ukraine winning the war was unrealistic, even outlandish.
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However, Russia cannot afford to wage the war in Ukraine in the same fashion indefinitely. It will likely run into difficulties by the end of 2025. To continue, it would need to execute a forced mobilization, breaking its pact with society (the war is out there; you can go on with your lives). Or it would need to sacrifice its economic stability, with essentially the same effect.
Moscow’s local victories have come at a great cost in Russian troops and equipment. While the Kremlin has been able to replenish most of its losses through an effective top-down recruitment system, the pool of Russian recruits willing to risk their lives in exchange for $40,000 in sign-up payments has been shrinking. According to the recent Russian budgetary data, the number of new recruits has been going down gradually. Russia is also facing a similar issue with equipment. It has relied on Soviet stockpiles, which, according to various assessments, will run low by the end of 2025.
The Russian economy has been under a lot of strain, too. While the country’s output expanded by 4% in 2024, Moscow has burned through piles of cash to sustain its war machine, effectively mortgaging its future development. The Kremlin has pushed the economy beyond its natural pace, even though the head of the Central Bank has been trying to slow down this process.
Overall, thanks to largely uninterrupted oil and other commodity exports to China, India and Turkey, the Kremlin has successfully weathered the storm. Sanctions and other constraints imposed on the Russian economy have only enhanced creativity and, in some cases, even helped Russia boost domestic production of consumer goods. As usual, the West underestimated the resilience of the Russian economy and the Kremlin’s determination to push through.
Russia’s economy is facing limits. But, the country will not collapse, even if its resources to continue fighting at the same pace will eventually fizzle out. Last year, Vladimir Putin admitted that military expenditures are high and must be spent more effectively, signaling that the economy has been stretched to its limit. Many Russian companies, including in construction and retail, are now facing possible bankruptcy due to prohibitively high interest rates. Annual inflation has been pushing toward double digits. The Central Bank, under adept leadership, has been under significant pressure to lower interest rates and will likely be compelled by the business community to start doing so by the end of 2025.
However, in a war of attrition, everything is relative – and however dire Russia’s problems are, they pale in comparison with Ukraine’s situation.
In Ukraine, press gangs are hounding men on the streets to fill gaping holes on the front lines. More than a third of the country’s 2025 budget should come from foreign governments and organizations, whose goodwill is uncertain with Trump’s arrival. Support for the country’s leadership and overall morale has been declining amid a lack of good news from the front lines and elsewhere. The number of people who trusted President Volodymyr Zelensky, for instance, went down from 90% at the start of the war in May 2022 to 52% in December 2024.
A fundamental reality is that Russia’s population is almost five times larger than Ukraine’s, and its economy is more than ten times bigger. Ukraine, therefore, needs at least a break much more urgently.
Trump’s election is an additional factor, but the war would be winding down even under a democratic administration. Trump is likely to push for a quick deal — one that might not last — instead of addressing fundamental issues that made this war possible in the first place. That deal can lead to a change of government in Ukraine, or at least to a tough reelection campaign for Zelensky. At the end of January, Putin said that Zelensky cannot sign any peace treaty because he did not face re-election at the end of his five-year term in May 2024. Days later, the US president’s special envoy, Keith Kellogg, suggested that elections in Ukraine are possible and indeed desirable after a ceasefire. We can thus see a two-fold process: a ceasefire followed by elections in Ukraine followed by a peace deal.
On the day of Trump’s inauguration, Putin said that he wants to achieve “a lasting peace” that would address “the root causes of the crisis” instead of “a temporary ceasefire”. What are these root causes? The bitter conflict was borne out of the imperfect Soviet collapse and was further instigated by Western and Russian intransigence over a mutually acceptable post-Cold War security architecture in Europe. The invasion itself — undeniably Putin’s responsibility — was also influenced by the West turning a blind eye to Moscow’s perceived insecurities.
Without these fundamental issues being addressed, no permanent deal in Ukraine is possible. A long-lasting solution would require much more significant compromises and serious commitments from all sides. For Putin, this is not only about Ukraine, it is mostly about Russia’s place in Europe and the West and the end of what the Russian elite sees as post-Cold War humiliation. For Ukraine, it is about its peaceful existence as a sovereign state. For Europe, it is about its borders and identity over the next historic period.
Clearly, neither side in this conflict is ready to make significant compromises yet, but both Russia and Ukraine, backed by the West, cannot continue the war with the same intensity indefinitely. Equally important, the situation is not symmetrical: for Ukraine, the situation is, indeed, more precarious.