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Since everything is looking like a Trump win now, what are your actual predictions for the trajectory of the Ukraine war?
As far as I'm concerned, the doomsaying consensus predicting something like an end to supplies, forced armistice followed by Russia rearming to strike later with accumulated force struck me as unfounded and downright strange. If we even accept the premise that Trump would in fact cut supplies and force a truce, it's not at all clear to me that this would be to Ukraine's disadvantage. If anything, UA currently seems to be the side that would greatly benefit from a pause, as they could actually train up their masses of conscripts (probably to a higher standard than is available to Russia, judging by performance of "elite" Ukrainian vs. "elite" Russian troops) rather than burning them as fast as they can be equipped and give their backers time to actually ramp up production of crucial high-tech equipment such as air defense platforms, where it's clear that in the limit the West's ability to produce would outstrip Russia's ability to attrite but they just happen to be stuck on the back foot. Meanwhile, it's not clear how well Russia's losses and departures and weird 8D economic sprezzatura would even hold up under a sudden few months of deafening silence if the guns were to rest, and they don't really have all that much slack left to ramp production up further.
Conditional on Trump forcing a truce, my modal scenario is actually that in a year's time a stronger Ukraine steamrolls a weaker Russia, while conditional on everything continuing as before I would now expect Ukraine losing more and more until its will to fight is broken and it feels compelled to sign a much less advantageous treaty of its own accord. Why is the former scenario not even being treated as a possibility by respectable publications? Is it just that they all tried to convert some pro-Ukraine goodwill into anti-Trump sentiment?
Mostly the same trajectory as the last year: Russia continues to make slow, steady, and small gains in the Donbas while continuing to overheat its economy, western aid comes in fits disrupted by internal politics, and the Ukrainians continue not to cascade-collapse. Some pro forma attempt at peace talks are attempted, but Russia's inability to compel war termination, the wrong-actor coordination issue of various Russian war demands, and Putin's own habit for strategic procrastination in hopes of a more favorable deal later lead to the failure of talks and a more or less continued western sustainment of Ukraine. Already-underway western industrial expansion continues, and starts to approach Russian production of some key items (particularly artillery ammo), but falls behind 2023 predictions of the 2025 catch-up because of (a) implementation issues in 2023/2024 and (b) the addition of major North Korean arms flows into Russia.
On looser predictions of what 'new' things happen... Putin attempts new and probably counter-productive pressure efforts to try and coerce the Europeans / US into concessions but which also further undermine casefire prospects. If Russia manages to seize the administrative boundaries of the Donbas, Putin attempts to declare a unilateral ceasefire and end the war declaring it won and that Russia would only be fighting in self defense, but I also expect any such effort to fall flat and Russia to attempt to build coercive leverage by attacking elsewhere, further undermining ceasefire prospects. European aid efforts shift as Europeans deal with consequences of Trump. What those shifts mean varies from country to country, but efforts led by France at least to consolidate European military aid at an EU level in the name of European strategic autonomy.
As for talks themselves... maybe late 2025, but probably inconclusive.
Trump is a wild card, but less because there's any particular reason to believe that Trump would cut supplies to force a truce and more that he's been deliberately unforthcoming and his margin of winning from last night means he has previously-non-existing incentives to continue support.
That narrative that Trump would compel a truce is largely based on the reporting covering two non-Trump Trump advisors whose Ukraine proposal was included limits to aid if Ukraine refused to participate in talks, but which also included a lot more aid for Ukraine in general and conditioned nothing on accepting terms Russia was willing to agree to. In short, viewer projection is required to assume what Trump's view of a reasonable deal is, and that the Russian offer would meet it, and that Trump would / could compel Ukraine to accept it, and most of these viewer perceptions were deliberately shaped so during the US election season.
By contrast, Trump has not expressed his own view of Ukraine war termination in any meaningful way in the last two years, and probably won't for another half-year yet as Trump's political priorities are domestic rather than foreign. For Trump to prioritize Ukraine means putting it ahead not only of Israel-Palestine, which he had a personal hand in due to the Israel-Arab normalization efforts he led, but also domestic priorities including domestic agency staffing and removing Biden/Obama opponents. This is not 2016 where Trump thought the opposition would go away, and I have not heard a compelling reason why Trump should care more about ending Ukraine than other issues, particularly when tying support to Ukraine to his own domestic priorities is probably the most credible way of breaking the Democratic attempts at party unity.
My personal prediction is that this is actually the main interest that will motivate Trump regarding Ukraine, and will push him to provide aid conditional on Democratic policy concessions rather than conditional on Ukrainian acceptance of Russian terms. The Ukraine (and to a lesser extent, Gaza) wars will complicate Democrat efforts to recreate the 2016 maximum-anti-trump opposition stance, since that iteration lacked the Ukraine (or Gaza) wars that the ruling party could frame budgetary opposition to as hindering. With the Democrats deeply divided by the Gaza War, and heavily politically invested in the Ukraine War, supporting funding will be a way to break off Democrats to support / bolster narrow Republic majorities, which in turn gives Trump more leeway within the Republican coalition.
Since that will be most relevant in fiscal year budget negotiations, which will be taking place across mid-2025, and which also provide the negotiating leverage of Ukrainian aid to raise against Russia, I wouldn't expect Trump to make a priority of Ukraine until fall 2025 at the earliest.
Further- and even more important to the timing- is the Europeans.
Just from a Putin acceptable-terms perspective, Putin is a strategic procrastinator who often delays when he thinks he can wait out a foe for better conditions and thus better terms. This will most notably come with the end-of-September 2025 German elections, in which the current pro-Ukraine coalition will likely be replaced with something... well, more plausibly less pro-Ukraine. My position across 2024 was that Russian was over-extending its economy and military expenditures (including manpower, material, and monetary) in unsustainable ways to maximize perceived Russian gains in a period of relative industrial advantage and to hopefully shape elections (such as the US one). This same line of logic applies into 2025 for the German as well- the industrial gap momentum will possibly be reversing by the end of 2025, providing the window of relative advantage, and the Germans are the key stakeholders in the European Union budget providing equally-critical economic assistance. Whatever Trump may / may not be willing try to compel, Ukraine could likely be compelled to concede more with a less favorable German government.
So this means that 'serious' talks won't occur until likely until November 2025, when (a) the nature of the new German government has been identified and thus a sense of how much Putin can push for on that end, and (b) when Trump has been able to make political hay out of Ukraine aid to divide Democrats and bolster his domestic priorities.
Post-Posting Major Edit: And in other news that may throw this entirely out of whack, within hours of posting this the German government entered a stability crisis when the German Chancellor fired the Finance Minister, setting the ground for a snap election. This obviously changes the previous predicted timeline reasoning, as a snap election could be held in January-March, but removes the October delay incentive.
I maintain the premise that peace talks in the year are dependent on currently unknown factors (i.e. Trump), but this now also depends on the results of the German governing coalition come Spring.
Good write up. Most IRL Trump supporters I talk to, especially younger ones, seem to be of the opinion that we shouldn't be sending any aid to Ukraine because it's not our war, etc., etc., and I think that general sentiment on the Right has seeped into discourse about Trump since he's been ambiguous on the issue. Trump's actual statements, though, lead me to believe that he still thinks of himself as a master negotiator and that he has the kind of influence with Putin that the Democrats don't, and accordingly he will be able to hammer out a settlement that both sides can live with.
Kudos to Trump if he can pull this off, but I'm pessimistic about the chances. The biggest problem is that any settlement would likely involve freezing the front lines where they are now, and it isn't in Russia's interest to do that. Problem number one is that they're currently making progress — slow progress, but progress — and any pause gives the Ukrainians the opportunity to further entrench their front lines. Problem number two is that the Ukrainians control part of Kursk, and while the area controlled isn't huge, I doubt Putin would be willing to put any of his own territory under semi-permanent Ukrainian control. He can dilly-dally when it comes to retaking it, but publicly acceding to its continued occupation would have negative political consequences.
As far as Kursk is concerned, there could theoretically be some horse trading involved, but it's unlikely that Zelensky would be willing to give up his greatest strategic asset in exchange for a comparably sized piece of the Donbas. Trump could certainly use the threat of withdrawing aid to force a deal down Zelensky's throat, but he'd probably only do this if the deal objectively made sense, i.e., if Zelensky was turning down obviously favorable terms because he wanted to continue the war. As much flack as Trump has gotten for cozying up to Putin, I highly doubt that he'd be willing to give up the store in Ukraine. Add in the probable necessity of some kind of security guarantee for Ukraine, and you have a recipe for failure.
In short, I think the end result of all of this is that Trump tries to hammer out a deal, Putin makes demands that are obviously preposterous, the talks fail, Trump comes back and claims he made progress, and the current levels of military aid continue unabated.
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