“The war this year will continue and become even more brutal than it was.”, — write: www.pravda.com.ua
On the eve of the new year, “Ukrainian Pravda” appealed to the laureates of the award “UP.100” with a request to evaluate the past year, record where the country and society are now, and share expectations for 2025. We will publish the thoughts of our laureates in the coming days.
Thank you very much to “Ukrainian Pravda”, which invited me to express my thoughts on expectations for 2025. I will start from the end: the war this year will continue and become even more brutal than it was; peace will not come; there will be no elections.
It will become even more difficult for the country and its defenders. Politicians who do not understand and do not feel the battlefield, in the hope of quick elections, will try to campaign by flirting with the civilian population and supporting the military (but neither the first nor the second will be sincere). And the civilian population, misled by the fact that peace is supposedly approaching with the elections, will increasingly distance itself from those who defend their peaceful existence.
Now I will try to explain why I think so.
The war will continue because, firstly, it is profitable for the Russian Federation. They are advancing along almost the entire front line. They also rebuilt the economy, learned how to circumvent sanctions, and the Russian economy continues to make a lot of money. The ratings of their dictator are very high, he managed to convince his population of the necessity of this war. Propaganda is deployed very widely, the existing power is not threatened.
Secondly, the administration of Donald Trump does not really have any really strong arguments that would quickly convince the Russian Federation to sit down at the negotiating table with demands that would be at least approximately acceptable to Ukraine (the reasons are just mentioned above: promotion, money and ratings).
The world is no longer unipolar, and the US no longer has the undisputed influence it once had, although it remains perhaps the most influential global player. Any possible construction of peace with the additional involvement of other countries (Europe, China, India, Iran, Korea) will not happen quickly. I will not dwell on this for a long time – each country has its own interests.
Thirdly, the situation on the battlefield is also very important, which is completely underestimated and not understood by either Western or, unfortunately, Ukrainian politicians, businessmen, and citizens. But there is a war going on and the situation on the battlefield is a huge component of the puzzle of peace negotiations. It is HERE that OUR negotiating position is formed. It is HERE that we can really influence something. Therefore, I am sure that the enemy will increase its efforts and the war will take even more brutal and innovative forms.
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What to do? I will not be original. The simplest analysis of the situation suggests that we should focus on our military capabilities and capabilities. We have a very strong and dangerous enemy, it is evolving. It is happening slowly, but quite systematically. But we definitely do not need to repeat their path. We have to build our own.
Everyone likes to say a clever phrase about “big and small Soviet armies”, but during almost 11 years of war, very few people took enough radical steps to turn the Ukrainian army into a “small modern one”. Only radical and no other actions in this direction can be effective in the current conditions.
Talks about the fact that changes and reforms are not on time because of the war and there is a risk that everything will fall apart do not stand up to constructive criticism or historical comparisons. It is precisely this time, as it does not sound cynical, that is the most favorable for changes both in the Defense Forces of Ukraine themselves and in all branches of the economy and state administration that provide them.
Recently, in Ukraine, there has been a lot of criticism (both constructive and not so) towards our military and political leadership for the lack of such reforms. Oftentimes, critics who say the supposedly right things suggest entrusting direction to people who have nothing to do with possible positive change.
And in general, it is necessary to start from the fact that you have ideas, to formulate clear steps for their achievement, and already for these steps to find people with sufficient competences. Personal relationships should not be an argument, and “loyalty” should be one – to the state of Ukraine.
As a person who has been engaged in “war” at various levels (but always voluntarily) since 2014, I assert: the military will not be able to take radical steps alone. And this is logical, because it is very difficult to rebuild a system in which you have lived all your life and have never seen another. No matter what anyone says, they need the help of our political leadership, the whole country, the whole nation, all of us.
An effective, trained, motivated army should not only change the situation on the battlefield and create a position for negotiations, but also be the strongest guarantee of our security in the future. Unfortunately, I must state that we continue to wage war at the expense of the heroism of the Ukrainian people and that the national security sector of Ukraine has not undergone extensive systemic changes.
Speaking of any peace talks, we understand that perhaps this peace will not last long. For the next 50 years, maybe more, we Ukrainians will live with the constant threat of invasion from the Russian Federation.
We must always remember that in this world we are the only ones most interested in the existence of the state of Ukraine and nobody in the world OWES us anything.
We gladly and gratefully accept help, but we must work first of all on ourselves, without relying on someone’s promises or even obligations under agreements such as the Budapest Memorandum or similar. They were signed in other conditions, by other people.
In addition, historical practice suggests that no document will be able to distract the aggressor from implementing his insidious plans. And we and our descendants will have to live next to the aggressor for the rest of our lives.
What to do? This may be strange to hear, but to me this question seems to be the easiest of all the others presented above. After all, there are enough caring and intelligent people in Ukraine (both in the army and in civilian life) who, united in teams according to direction, are able to COMPLETELY and forever change all processes, first of all, in the army and around it.
We have a very wide range of opportunities for obtaining material assistance and basic knowledge from our partners. The prevailing opinion is that “they should study with us.” But this is an illusion. We can give a lot to our Western partners in terms of adapting their military standards to the scale of modern warfare, to the modern level of robotics and battlefield monitoring.
But the main thing is that today we do not have a SYSTEM of military training and education that would provide the sphere of national security with qualitatively trained personnel. Motivated leaders who understand not only the algorithms of military planning and battlefield management, but also have knowledge of modern personnel management, logistics, finance, reporting and analysis, etc.
We have not been able to change the attitude towards people in the army, we are not doing enough to educate and develop leadership based on dignity and professionalism, for patriotic education. Yeah, that seems like a long way, huh but no other exists. I am absolutely sure of that. And we can significantly reduce it if we use all available opportunities correctly.
The main thing is that this requires political will, which will quell the career, financial and political ambitions of various officials and not only individuals. Attracting the brightest minds, finding bold and creative solutions, creating algorithms for step-by-step actions – all this is a matter of technology. We must finally find the strength to stand on these rails.
So my vision is that the 25th year can be both a year of qualitative breakthrough for us and a year of decline and loss if we don’t put enough effort into the breakthrough.
I always believe in the best for Ukraine and will continue to do everything for it together with like-minded people!
Vsevolod Kozhemyako