By late 2025, Ukraine’s war drags on as NATO sustains a proxy conflict, with mass losses, repression, corruption, and peace rhetoric masking continued escalation.
By Dmitri Kovalevich
Dec 30, 2025
The end of the year 2025 is a time to summarize and assess the hopes and expectations for the future of Ukraine and the deadly proxy war being waged by the Western powers on its soil since early 2022 (in reality, since 2014).
At the beginning of the year, many in Ukraine expressed hope for a swift conclusion to the war against the Russian Federation and its people. Hopes were high that the year would see an end to the forced conscription and political repression being waged by the warmaking, governing regime in Kiev. For many, these hopes were linked to the arrival of a new U.S. administration in Washington that had spoken out in favor of ‘peace’, however vaguely and however uncertain such words appeared.
Sadly, the entire year that followed showed that the governments of the United States and European Union, joined together in the warmaking NATO military alliance, are not at all interested in peace for Ukraine. Despite all the evidence that they are losing their proxy war against the Russian Federation and its people, these two leading components of NATO are choosing to play crafty, seemingly opposed, roles of ‘good cop, bad cop’.
In the Ukrainian conflict, the European Union is the ‘bad cop,’ pressing for the war to continue. Meanwhile, the ‘good cop’ United States that talks of ‘peace’ in Ukraine is pursuing war as the ‘bad cop’ in Latin America, specifically directed against Cuba and Venezuela. Overall, despite all the ‘peace’ rhetoric issued by Washington in 2025, we see the continuation of the longstanding strategy of Western imperialism: to violently suppress states and peoples who dare to show independence and dare to pursue their own independent paths of national and human development.
Ukraine: A battering ram
Ukraine has long since become nothing more than a dependent instrument for imperialist policy. Since 2014, it has been encouraged to act as a battering ram against Russia and, through that, a battering ram against the countries of the Global South, finding fair trading relations with Russia and China.
Over the past year, Ukraine, the battering ra,m has lost tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of soldiers to death and injury in military combat. It has lost thousands of square kilometers of territory, and in the Donbas region in particular, it has lost cities that were heavily fortified since 2014 using funding from NATO.
Endless talk about peace by Western governments and media has now become commonplace, but growing numbers of Ukrainians are realizing there is nothing behind all the talk. A few billion dollars and euros of Western aid are thrown at Ukraine from time to time by hook or by crook, while the violent conscription abductions of male citizens aged 25 to 60 into highly dangerous, oftentimes life-ending, service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue unabated.
Ukrainian and Western politicians have become so accustomed to restricting civil liberties and pocketing military aid for their own enrichment that they now use the term ‘peace’ to scare people, just as they once used the term ‘war’. Valery Zaluzhny, the former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and ambassador to London since July 2024, is warning of civil war in Ukraine if peace is concluded. He warns that after the proxy war by NATO and Ukraine against Russia ends, about one million soldiers returning home may well find themselves highly vulnerable to a post-war economy lacking jobs, housing, and social services. According to Zaluzhny, this increase in violence and crime on the streets of the country, joining great political destabilization, creates dangers of deepening civil war.
Alexander Dubinsky, a former legislator from Zelensky’s party, asks a logical question in a brief message on Telegram on December 16. He asks, ‘Is not a civil war already taking place in Ukraine, as violent, military conscription continues and 300,000 trained soldiers, many of whom likely armed, have deserted?’ He notes the “300,000”’ figure for desertions is the “official” number but is highly likely a low estimate.
In December 2025, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office moved to classify all data on the number of desertion cases, arguing that such information could damage Ukraine’s image and discredit the country if it appears in the public realm.
Dubinsky believes that every second Ukrainian soldier is now on the run. He wrote back in late September that Zelensky’s party-machine majority in the country’s legislature (whose electoral mandate expired 20 months ago) had passed a law decreeing that deserters shall remain as “counted” in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU). He explained, “This makes it possible to create the appearance of a large army, the maintenance of which requires large sums of money from the EU and the USA.”
Ukrainian political scientist Kost Bondarenko, who resides in exile abroad, is cited on Telegram by Politnavigator online media outlet on December 11 concerning the decision to classify data on military desertions. He notes this decision was taken to reduce desertions, and goes on to explain: “When those who are unsure, those who are preparing to desert or go AWOL, see the true figures, they realize that they are not alone, that there are hundreds of thousands and more of others like them. In such conditions, chances are good that nothing will happen to them should they choose to walk or run away.”
Bondarenko believes the AFU is undergoing processes similar to those leading to the disintegration of the imperial Russian army over the course of 1917.
Despite the mounting evidence of military collapse, the Ukrainian political elite is displaying a stubborn belligerence, refusing to consider any concessions in any peace talks that may take place. Encouraged by the EU countries’ ‘peace plan’ (in essence, a plan to continue the proxy war), deputies in the Ukrainian legislature and officials in the government apparatus are eager to show their Western sponsors that they are ready to fight to the last Ukrainian… on condition they continued receiving lucrative funding.
Regime head Volodomyr Zelensky is himself effectively presenting the US. administration with a large bill as a condition for accepting some of the concessions contained in the evolving U.S./EU ‘peace plan’ (in reality, a plan to ‘manage defeat’). He wants the U.S. and its European allies to indefinitely finance an 800,000-strong army, pay billions of US$ equivalent in compensation to the families of those killed or seriously injured, and invest billions in the reconstruction of Ukraine.
End to warfare dreaded by Ukraine’s elite
Despite the corruption scandals engulfing the Zelensky-led regime in Kiev, the regime wants indefinite Western financing of the Ukrainian elite and its plans for continued war. Foreign financing has long been the very lifeblood of the regime.
Every high-ranking official in the governing regime in Kiev is dreading the cessation of hostilities and the end of conscription because this would end the financial flows from the West, from which they profit handsomely. Should the funding pipeline dry up, that would leave only ‘pennies’ of potential government revenue to be squeezed from Ukraine’s workers and farmers, already bled dry by the catastrophic economic conditions caused by the war.
The high life that many of Ukraine’s elite are today enjoying in the hotels and casinos of Monaco and other ‘prime’ European locations would no longer be possible. Having tasted the ‘good life’, surely this elite will never go back to earning modest incomes by growing cucumbers, operating poultry farms, or other normal economic or social enterprises. Worse than that, even, would be the loss of legal protection for the elite from war crimes, accusations of financial embezzlement, and countless other criminal acts. A new governing regime will be created from a peace settlement process, and Russia has already compiled dossiers to mete out harsh penalties against those accused of war crimes.
In this regard, the Ukrainian publication Liberal wrote in mid-December that, in reality, Ukraine’s entire economy is based on the theft of Western aid. This stands in contrast to the economies of countries that are based on genuine economic pursuits such as tourism, financial and social services, mineral extraction, and high-tech manufacturing.
“The plundering of Western military aid is the foundation of Ukraine’s economy,” Liberal writes, emphasizing that ever since the time of Viktor Yanukovych (the elected president of Ukraine who was overthrown in a violent, pro-Western coup in February 2014). “The country has forgotten how to produce and earn money from productive economic enterprise.”
“Like it or not, life is beginning to flourish around the embezzlement, kickbacks, laundering, and offshore transfer of Western funds. The criminalized subculture of embezzlers is surrounded by dealers, prostitutes, stylists, and clowns. Everyone is supported. Everyone spends money. Offices and financial institutions are open, and stolen money is hidden in the shadows there, and its traces are lost.”
Liberal concludes, “By attacking corruption surrounding military supplies, the U.S. administration isn’t simply destroying Zelenskyy’s power structure. It is attacking the country’s very economic foundation.”
Maxim Buzhansky, a legislator from Zelensky’s party machine, calls the current approach an “immature Ukrainian formula,” which he summarizes as ‘The worse the military situation becomes, the more that everyone will owe us.’
War and Russophobia have become a veritable cult ideology for the Ukrainian elite. Utter the usual anti-Russian phrases and round up ‘slaves’ on the streets of Ukraine to be thrown into the trenches, and in return, you gain profits from trading in war that are much greater than what could be earned from drug trafficking or other illegal trade.
The ‘generosity’ of the Kiev regime’s Western partners is far from altruistic. In exchange for support from Western lobbyists and laudatory articles in the Western media, all contributing to continued allocation of funding, Kiev talks continuously about ‘Russian aggression’ and presents to a gullible world a vision of the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine as a ‘civilizing mission’ against the ‘barbarians’ to the east.
The elections chimera in Ukraine
At the beginning of 2025, many in Ukraine were expecting presidential and parliamentary elections to take place sometime during the course of the year. But this did not happen.
In order to feign consent with the Trump administration’s twists and turns over ‘peace’, the Ukrainian regime is talking about staging national elections for the presidency and legislature sometime in 2026. The last national election took place in April 2019; the terms of those elected at that time, including regime head Zelensky, were limited to five years.
Ukrainian media have reported in December that the Office of the President (Zelensky) has already held a working meeting to discuss and plan an early election, and is now preparing a corresponding bill. But it is clear in advance to everyone today in Ukraine that a wartime election in 2026 can only be a sham. Many media outlets are emphasizing that the initiative is not related to any real plans to hold elections but is simply a reaction to Trump’s negative musings in which he notes that Ukraine has not held a national election for a long time, the inference to many being that the country cannot, therefore, be considered to be a democracy any longer.
Simply put, as in the case of talks about peace, we are dealing with an imitation of activity, or a will to readiness at most. The constant imitations performed by Ukrainian regime figures promising to do this or that is due to the fact that many of them are actors and bloggers by profession. But their gestures are also founded in the fact that they no longer have any real leverage to influence Western imperialism (whose ultimate goal, let us remember, is to earn as much money as possible by plundering the natural and human resources of most countries in the world).
More Western arms and warmaking
On December 17, at a meeting at Rammstein U.S. military base in Germany (the 32nd such meeting by NATO countries since 2022 discussing their financing and arming of Ukraine), 15 states made new commitments to supply large quantities of weapons to Ukraine in 2026, according to Ukraine war minister Denys Shmyhal. NATO countries will continue to fund the war being waged in Ukraine.
However, as leading officials of the Russian government and armed forces have been pointing out and reminding, the West is running out of resources to wage its proxy war. Financial, material, and technical shortnesses and obstacles are bearing down on their militaries. According to numerous independent estimates, the losses from death and serious injury to the Ukrainian armed forces have long exceeded one million people and continue to grow. Who in Western Europe will step forward to fill that breach in today’s political conditions?
That is one large reason why NATO leaders are preparing their citizens for direct conflict with Russia, sounding this out with one proposal and another, then gauging domestic reaction. NATO chief Mark Rutte said in a speech in Berlin on December 11, “We must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured.”
Ironically, Rutte’s speech was delivered in Germany, where references to “grandfathers and great-grandfathers” who fought in World War Two can only mean past service in the armies of Nazi Germany and those of its European allies at the time: Italy, Romania, and Finland. A lot of them committed to a catastrophic invasion and war against the Soviet Union beginning in June 1941.
British Chief of the Defence Staff Air Richard Knighton chipped in several days after Rutte’s speech with his own view, saying that British families must be prepared to send their sons and daughters to war against Russia.
Unfortunately, all the trends currently observable in Ukraine suggest that the current proxy war will continue into 2026. This will be accompanied by constant talk of ‘peace’ and the drafting of dozens more ‘peace plans’. But all of this is merely intended to conceal NATO’s desperate drive, against all odds, to maintain the existing system of Western hegemony and unequal colonial trade.
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