“We want to end the war, not freeze it.” There are just a few days left until the beginning of 2025 which will immediately introduce various innovations on the international political level, obviously starting with the return of Donald Trump in the White House, but it is Vladimir Putin which in these hours seems to want to dictate the line for the new year and to unravel one of the most intricate issues: that of the war in Ukraine with its disruptive effect since Putin himself announced his “special military operation” in February 2022 invading the neighboring country. Almost three years and tens of thousands of deaths later, the Russian president said that Moscow now wants to end the conflict, not just freeze it, thus surpassing, in words, Donald Trump’s infamous plan that he seems to be aiming for precisely to this. To put an end to the war, Putin also proposes a physical place to negotiate: Slovakia, led by the prime minister Robert Fico, who in recent days met the Russian president in the Kremlin despite the chorus of criticism and doubts expressed by several countries, including EU partners, offering to host the talks. Option, Putin explained in response to journalists, which is fine in Moscow. This is fine with Moscow because today it looks at the border from a position of strength, the same one that allows the Kremlin not to respond to the indignant reactions to the attack launched in Ukraine in the early hours of Christmas morning: over 170 missiles and drones, a dead and damage to the electricity infrastructure which risks heavily damaging the Ukrainian civilian population in the coldest weeks of the year.
For the President of the United States, Joe Bidenit was an “outrageous” act. For this reason he made it known that he had asked to speed up the delivery of weapons from Washington to Kiev in these last days of his presidency. Putin, however, insists, stating that among the resolutions for 2025 is to complete “all the objectives of the special military operation” and therefore achieve “success on the front line”. Then the warning: «We always respond in a mirrored way. They use certain weapons against us, we use the same ones”, he warned, saying he was ready to use the Oreshnik super missile again “if necessary”. Again in the last few hours the Ukrainian president Voldymyr Zelensky for his part, he assured that “Ukraine is doing everything possible to ensure that 2025 becomes a year of just and lasting peace for our country and for the entire world”. And the admissions in recent weeks on the difficulties at the front and, above all, on the fact that on a military level we must now give up on retaking Donbass and Crimea open the window into which a more substantial attempt to bring the parties back to a negotiating table could slip through. Putin’s words were preceded, among other things, by those of his Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov: «A ceasefire in Ukraine at this point would lead to nothing, while reliable agreements are needed», said the head of Russian diplomacy, who appeared to be optimistic about a dialogue with the imminent Trump administration: «If the signals coming from the Washington’s new team to restore the dialogue interrupted by the US after the start of the special military operation will be serious, obviously we will respond to them. The dialogue was interrupted by the Americans, so they should take the first step.” But on one condition: the hope that the new White House “understands the reasons that led to the war in Ukraine”, Lavrov hoped.