Brendan Cole
Vladimir Putin's confirmation that he would run again for president in 2024 was predictable but could there be any surprises next year in the war he started in Ukraine?Russians go to the polls from March 15, less than a month after the full-scale invasion marks its second anniversary. Both sides seem resigned to a long conflict, with the high numbers of casualties, equipment losses and economic damage since it started on February 24, 2022 set to escalate.
Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymr Zelensky maintain maximalist goals that preclude talks to end the war imminently and experts have told Newsweek the fighting is likely to continue into 2025.
Outlier events cannot be ruled out, such as the brazen challenge to Putin's authority by Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin, whose death in a plane crash followed his seizure of military facilities in Rostov-on-Don and a march on Moscow. Also, the Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed rumors about Putin's health.
"The only way I can foresee the Ukraine war possibly ending in 2024 is if Vladimir Putin dies," Beth Knobel, professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University, and former CBS News Moscow bureau chief, told Newsweek.
"It is theoretically possible that Russia could take advantage of a change in leadership to try to declare victory and just hold onto the land it grabbed since February of 2022," she said. "But even if Putin dies, I think there's only a miniscule chance that Russia would back off from the war, because it has already invested so much of its national image in winning."
A widely anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive that started in June aimed at recapturing Russian-occupied territory, has not made the progress Kyiv's allies wanted.
Ukraine's commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi's assessment that fighting had entered a "stalemate" was rejected by Zelensky amid rumors of a split between the country's most prominent figures, and reports of a reshuffle of top brass in the New Year.
"With the stalled counter-offensive, there is widespread pessimism about Ukraine's chances to defeat Russia and regain the occupied territories," Peter Rutland, professor of Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at Wesleyan University, in Middletown, Connecticut, told Newsweek. "However, that does not mean that there are likely to be serious peace talks and a possible end to the war in 2024.
"Russia's goals are not confined to holding the occupied territories—they want to see a compliant political regime installed in Kyiv, and they still believe this is possible. At the very least, Putin is going to wait until the November 2024 election, to see if Donald Trump returns."
Former U.S. President Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin shake hands at the G20 Osaka Summit 2019, in Osaka, Japan, on June 28, 2019. Trump has called for an end to continued U.S. funding for Kyiv to fight Putin's aggression.
Trump and the GOP
The Republican primary front runner has been announced by Kremlin propagandists as Moscow's favored White House resident-in-waiting, not just because of his railing against congressional support for Ukraine. Trump also described Putin as "very smart" following the full-scale invasion and has rejected U.S. intelligence assessments that Putin had interfered on his behalf in the 2016 election.
"The U.S. will pull the plug on Ukraine under another Trump administration, pure and simple," said Chris Dolan, professor of political science at Lebanon Valley College, who has written about U.S. support for Ukraine and NATO. "But I think Joe Biden will manage this relatively well. The current struggle in Congress over foreign aid, I think, will be settled but perhaps not super soon. This is more about domestic politics and electoral pressures."
Zelensky's visit to Washington, D.C., on December 12, was lower key than the red-carpet treatment he previously received. Instead of the $61 billion he was asking for, he got a renewed pledge by President Joe Biden and a $200 million chunk of military assistance for air-defense interceptors, artillery and ammunition.
But congressional Republicans want Ukrainian aid to be tied to sweeping immigration reform. The Israel-Hamas war that started on October 7 is competing for attention as well.
"Additional aid and weapons deliveries to Ukraine will be disrupted with the ongoing conflict in the Middle East and the United States about to enter an election year," said Isil Akbulut Gok, associate professor at the Department of Government at Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, Connecticut.
"I believe that the war may stretch well into 2025 and the international support for both sides would prolong the war as neither Ukraine nor Russia can achieve major breakthroughs and declare victory," Gok told Newsweek.
Mert Kartal, an associate professor of government at St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York, believes Biden could try to bolster military support for Ukraine in spring 2024, leveraging a Ukrainian victory as part of his presidential campaign.
"At the very least, he would take the necessary steps to prevent Ukraine's defeat before the first week of November 2024. However, persuading the members of the Republican Party, increasingly doubtful about the likelihood of Putin's defeat, will pose a significant challenge," he told Newsweek.
But as GOP lawmakers fight for immigration reform, particularly on the U.S. southern border, ahead of financial support for Ukraine, "it would not be unreasonable to expect Biden to, at the very least, attempt to extend the conflict into 2025."
Ukrainian soldiers fire an anti-tank gun in Avdiivka, Ukraine, on December 7, 2023. The fierce fight for the Donetsk town is likely to rage into 2024.
Putin's commitment
In a rare admission of operational detail, Putin told the Direct Line televised event that 617,000 troops were on the battlefields in Ukraine and the goals of "the special military operation" remain unchanged—namely "the de-nazification of Ukraine, its de-militarization, its neutral status."
A U.S. intelligence report revealed Russia had lost 87 percent of its pre-invasion forces, or 315,000 troops and with a renewed mobilization expected after the election showing Putin's willingness to sacrifice his own people. In December, he approved spending that will see the military take up around 30 percent of Russia's total budget in 2024.
"A long-term negotiated settlement also seems highly unlikely. Having spent so much blood, treasure, and prestige on this war, Putin politically cannot afford anything less than a decisive victory," said Gregory Vitarbo, professor of history at Meredith College, Raleigh, North Carolina.
"Unfortunately, there is a very real chance that the Russo-Ukraine war will last well into 2024 and possibly beyond," he said.
The Nagorno-Karabakh lesson
Meanwhile, Putin can look to the post-Soviet space for an example of how to play the long game, said David Rivera assistant professor of government at Hamilton College, Clinton, New York.
In the fall, Azerbaijani forces defeated Armenian troops and recaptured the disputed region of Nagorno Karabakh, three decades after Baku had suffered a military defeat to Armenia.
"In the shadow of these recent events that Putin knows and understands perfectly well, I expect him to continue his efforts to damage Ukraine's economy, destroy its infrastructure, and even depopulate its territory so that it would not be able to build up its military power and go on the offensive in the future," Rivera told Newsweek.
"If Vladimir Putin is drawing lessons from the decades-long Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, then we should expect the war to continue unabated at least through 2024," he added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is pictured in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., on December 12, 2023. Congressional holdups in providing aid for Kyiv could continue into 2024.
Ukraine's gains
There may have been no lightning breakthroughs in 2023, but Ukraine can point to some gains this year. Kyiv has reclaimed more than half of the land Russia had captured since the start of the war in February 2022 and grabbed headlines by liberating villages and towns in the south and east.
Despite Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Putin's closest EU ally, vetoing a $55 billion support package from Brussels for Kyiv in mid-December, backing from other European allies has been strong.
"I don't think people in the U.S. should assume that Ukraine's continuing efforts to dislodge the Russians hinge entirely on U.S. or even West European actions," said Rachel Epstein, professor of International Relations and European Politics at the University of Denver.
"My sense is that even without outside support, the Ukrainians will continue to fight," she told Newsweek. "Ukraine may shift tactics to deal with a downturn in Western aid, but I don't believe they will surrender."
Ukraine disrupted Russia's operations around occupied Crimea, damaging Russian radars, air defense and ships on the Black Sea. Ukrainians troops have also broken through Russian defenses on the Dnipro River.
Mark Temnycky, a Ukrainian-American journalist and nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center said that delays in 2023 allowed Russia to fortify positions in the south and east of Ukraine, regroup and re-strategize.
"Unless circumstances change, it is unlikely that the war will end in 2024," he told Newsweek. "Despite the slow gains in 2023, Ukrainian morale remains high. The majority of the country still believes that they will win the war, and they will not accept any other outcome than the total removal of Russian forces from Ukrainian lands."
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