2025: THE YEAR THE WAR RADICALLY CHANGED

The Trump regimes arrival transformed the global security and military landscape in an unprecedented way. I think the Russians thought they were going to find they had complete carte blanche to get on with whatever it was they wanted to do and Trump would just let them. That in actuality didn’t happen. As the year wore on they found America to be less reliable and less cooperative, but only because Trump was so full of his own ego, and imagined achievements. Russia just didn’t fit in.

So they changed their approach and pandered to Trump’s egotistical views leaving us with the disastrous 25th February White House meeting with Zelensky where things reached a new low, and Russia capitalizing off the back of it.

Over time Zelensky and his supportive allies in Europe worked out a way of handling Trump-47 and they’re still doing it now. You give him what he wants and then tell him why it can’t be, the famous ‘Yes, but…’ approach. Trump is just out for whatever he can get out of this whole saga. He’s not bothered about death or destruction, just what he can make out of it and what will make him look good. The thing is after nearly a year of it we all know how this works, and we all just play along.

In the meantime Putin, even yesterday, 18th Dec, yet again emphasized the war will not end, unless Ukraine surrenders, and none of the offers on the table are acceptable. At the same time we face the reality that the Americans really don’t mean to defend Ukraine with any guarantee – the ‘Article 5 lite’ proposal, because they’re already busy walking it back and squashing the very notion.

Despite the disruptions caused by the election of a right wing president in Poland – he’s not been as disruptive as anyone imagined. He’s probably seen the intelligence reports and knows exactly where the problem lies. Fico in Slovakia is largely powerless with little impact on the EU and Orban is increasingly sidelined. He’s more panicked about how he survives the opposition winning in next April’s elections – so is aiming to create an executive presidency rather than a ceremonial one, where he can elevate himself to and stay on, spoiling the party for as long as possible.

The arguments over the frozen Russian assets were a messy moment but they got around it. Ukraine gets its money and stays in the game. There was no choice for Europe, they wouldn’t walk away now.

Perhaps the most significant aspect is this year Europe+ knows exactly where it stands in respect of the United States. That was written out in no uncertain terms. We get the message. Let’s hope the Americans get ours – we may appear like a pack of various sized dogs playing in a park like we have no idea what’s going on, but don’t threaten the pack. Because when the chips are down, except for the obvious problem Hungarian and its Slovakian micro-breed ally, we won’t back down or back off. Russia and America have tried to demean Europe and ignore it, but that hasn’t worked out at all. We push our way in and we will be heard. Putin can call us piglets as much as he likes – ‘sticks and stones’ and all that, but despite his hybrid war and drones and GPS jamming and threats and bombings and sabotage guess what? We’re still here!

The EU had some incredibly hard won victories this year. The defeat of the AfD in Germany, the arrival of a man with integrity, Bundeskanzler Merz after the hand wringing fool Schulz was ousted. Ursula Von Der Leyen finally seems to have found her metier in the EU Presidency after being a mediocre German politician. President Macron found his spine and understood the realities of Putin. Right wing Italy played a surprisingly supportive role for Ukraine and continues to so. Spain and Portugal seem quietly asleep and partly oblivious at the other end of Europe.

The biggest victory though was in stopping the Russian inspired presidential candidate in Romania where the courts found excessive fraud and lies online had twisted the results and then forced a re-run. Moldovans rejected the Russia-Chinese bot farm inspired propaganda and chose freedom, democracy and the EU moving forward.

The Baltic states now all in NATO, with the EU, presented an unequivocal front against Russian behaviors and intimidation. Sweden has been a remarkable new ally, seeming to my eyes to have flourished as member of a unified group and been the quiet leader of the pack, while President Alexander Stubb of Finland is one of the most extraordinary intellects to occupy the leadership role in that country ever.

The Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians have exemplified what it means to stand up against bullies both in word and deed. Denmark has led the way, backed up by Norway and Britain along with other countries in financing Ukraine’s domestic weapons production, and where that’s not viable they’re producing it in their own factories.

We don’t extol our virtues loudly enough. Poland has been an exemplary ally for all of us, Ukraine especially. The security and trans-shipment of billions of euros of equipment and weaponry has been down to them, along with direct aid.

The EU+ has built its factories, upped its production and exceeded every possible target for small arms and 155mm shell production – in fact so much so that we’re in excess of target and supplying Ukraine’s needs as well as refilling our own stocks. You don’t hear any whining about that from anybody anymore. The Czechs were key to helping Ukraine transition to full supply and they now produce almost half their own needs. Come on everyone, this is something to celebrate. We did it! Everyone doubted us, everyone scorned us, but we did it together.

We worked with Ukraine to find a way of intensifying drone interceptor defence – the other day the first jet powered drone interceptor designed to catch the jet powered Shaheeds flying at 450kph+ were put into use. Never mind increasingly intensive and widespread availability around the country of the new systems to protect Ukraine’s skies.

Ukraine is building a huge part of its own weapons base now, from artillery to vehicles. It’s not enough but the point is they’re so far ahead of where they were in 2022 it’s another world. Secret factories using dispersed unit production and single point single item finishing for larger vehicles have been remarkably successful.

The development of the drone war on both sides has been significant, but more so for Ukraine. They have their own companies producing their own drones in the air on sea and on land, reaching far further and far deeper than Russia ever imagined. There’s no way on Earth the Russians expected to be dealing with this level of tactical drone warfare, and even less so the strategic war which is dragging them closer and closer to defeat. Their oil industry has been brought to its knees by drones – nobody on earth imagined that scenario. And it s not just that, because key strategic bases, factories and storage sites have been hammered too. And we can all see it, Russia knows it’s hurting, no matter how hard they try to pretend otherwise. Just mention Operation Spiderweb!

It is not just the war beyond the frontline either. The front itself has changed drastically. Just look at the situation in Pokrovsk and Kupyansk. The later bothered Putin so much he tried to make it appear that Zelensky wasn’t there when he clearly knows he was. He actually commented on it and that’s something that he never does unless it rattles him. He knows it was real, we know he knows, and he knows that we know he knows, and that gets to him.

The fact that Ukraine has been able to carry out an offensive and retake a sizable piece of land, reclaiming a city in the middle of a Russian offensive has been truly remarkable. The strategy and tactics behind it have been brilliant. Even more fantastic has been the use of F-16 and Mig-29 to deliver aerial strikes on key parts of the Russian defences – who imagined that four years ago? We all did, but now it’s a reality!

Pokrovsk is the epitome of how the war has changed. The Russians modified their tactics along the entire front. They have effectively lost their armor and their IFV/APC reserves to exaggerated combat losses caused by their own tactical inferiority and carelessness. To call the Soviet legacy squandered would be generous. I can think of a few Cold War era generals rolling in their graves over the travesty that’s unfolded.

The whole of the Nazi invasion of Russia on 22nd June 1941 to the Russians accepting their surrender in Berlin on May 9th 1945 was 1,417 days. From 24 February 2022 to today, 19 December 2025, it has been 1,394 days. The span will equal 1,417 days on 11 January 2026.

This is what modern Russia is capable of: nothing even approaching its past glories regardless of how much aid in received in WW2. It’s a deeply embarrassing, monumental failure that will go down in the history books as a military disaster for Russia. It will take decades for it to recover properly and equitably – if its leaders can let that happen.

But I digress, because the war itself has changed. The frontlines are not trenches anymore, more hyper-flexible zones of control for the Ukrainians, and an infiltration system that uses huge manpower reserves to sustain and is subject to horrendous losses from drone attacks for the Russians. Pokrovsk is not even vaguely like Bakhmut.

The later was a steady frontline slog, infantry against infantry with artillery as the god of the battlefield. The devastation was horrendous, and it still is. It’s just achieved differently. Now there are glide bombs. Who even mentions HIMARS these days? Just a normal part of daily ops. Drones – the fiber optic kind are all over the place, laying down millions of kilometers of plastic filament cable that is an environmental disaster waiting to happen in the coming years. It’s so bad you can’t walk in some fields from the weight of the cables, the tree canopies are covered creating an aerial cage. Men live in dugouts, you don’t dare walk about in daylight hours because you will be seen and you will die. Your eyes and ears are the drones, your defence is drones, your attack is through drones.

This remarkable change has allowed Ukraine to challenge the Russian occupation of Pokrovsk, defend Myronrahd and supply it by drones, to the point that they rarely have any physical presence in the city, the drone machines make the life of the Russian infantry a misery. The Ukrainians are very good at it, they know what they need to do and how to do it. The Russian losses are prodigious, the only way they can advance is with men. Many men have to die to make even the slightest move stick, and the fact is it’s reached the point where the advance has stalled. The Russian VDV 76th Airborne Division was moved up from Zaporhizia to Pokrovsk recently – the last of Russia’s main reserves. Ukrainian operators noted this morning that they were ‘shredding the 76th’. It seemed utterly unprepared for what it was facing. Long gone are the elite soldiers who once made up the 76th soldiery. The new men are nothing like the old professionals.

The war has changed indeed. Russia is entangled in a destructive web of its own failings, grotesque hubris and mind numbing inhumanity that knows no bounds.

Ukraine is suffering from partial exhaustion, political pressure from outside that’s almost as inhumane as the rest of the war, as civilian life is continuously targeted by Russian drones and missiles. But they don’t bend. They don’t break. They are both incredible in their capacity to withstand this enemy and ingenious in the way they have adapted and learned and created totally new technologies to fight this war.

President Zelensky has been relentless in his pursuit of keeping Ukraine free, you can see it in his eyes sometimes that it’s grinding him down, he’s aged 20 years in four. But he bounces back, he seems to be leaping from one place to another fighting the fight inside and outside Ukraine. He must sleep while he walks. He is true leadership. The people who betrayed him and Ukraine with their corruption are despicable. Yet he carries on, because Ukrainians must carry on.

This war will end. It will stop suddenly and in a way none of us have yet foreseen even though we can predict its likely origin. I honestly don’t give Russia a year, if Ukraine can step up the strategic war to the level needed, they can bring Russia down.

I know people say I’m to pro-Ukraine, that I see this through a lens that’s unreasonably pleasing. Let them say it. It’s not my fault that I have faith in what is right and that right wins in the end, one way or another, because the order of things requires natural justice and balance. Russia doesn’t bring balance, it presses its weight on the scales to create the exact opposite, but Ukraine and its allies weigh considerably more. Balance will be achieved and Russia will fail, balance will return. At least to that relationship. For the rest of us the balance is still out of kilter – we need to see the end of Trump, the end of Putin, the flaying of the extreme right that will retreat once their support system, Russian money and propaganda and Trumps mouth, are silenced. Trump will dig his own grave, he has been for years, and it’s fast becoming obvious he’s a liability now even to those who voted for him. Russia has to face a day of reckoning and it’s not going to be pleasant.

Yet the war will be won. One way or another. And then we face our next challenge. Rebuilding Ukraine and defending it and ourselves without America, while dealing with a commercially predatory China on the cusp of resolving its Taiwan issue one way or another.

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I wish all of you seasons Greetings and a Happy New Year. Blog posts will resume in the new year. I will continue to post on BlueSky .

The Analyst

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