Notes on Three Years of Russia-Ukraine War

As of today, Monday, February 24, 2025, the Russia-Ukraine war is three years old. The question is, will this war end soon? Hilal or a sign of the end of the deadly war between the two countries that were once united in the Soviet Union empire slowly began to appear, marked by good initiatives from parties such as Russia, the United States - both members of the UN Security Council who have a strong influence on determining the world political map - some time ago began to negotiate a settlement of the war. It started with the communication between the 47th US President Donald Trump who called Russian President Vladimir Putin to open a conversation about a solution to the Russia-Ukraine war. The conversation between the two leaders then continued with the holding of official diplomacy between representatives of Russia and the United States in Saudi Arabia to negotiate a roadmap for resolving the war. This is at least a good sign that in the third year, the Russia-Ukraine war is coming to an end. However, the goodwill of Russia-United States was responded cynically by Ukraine, which felt excluded because no representatives of the Ukrainian side were invited to participate in the negotiation process.

Source: CNN

Ukrainian President Zelensky has publicly stated that his country will not accept any outcome of the US-Russia negotiations if Ukraine is not involved. This then led to tensions between Zelensky and Trump. The two then engaged in mutual attacks, Zelensky said Trump had been enveloped in Russian disinformation due to Trump's statement that Ukraine started a war with Russia because Ukraine provoked Russia by insisting on becoming a member of the NATO defense pact and this was not wanted by Russia. Zelensky's statement was responded to by Trump calling him a dictator, a drain on US money, and a bad president. Realizing that Ukraine's position was weakening, after his tensions with Trump surfaced, Zelensky began to soften by being willing to draft an agreement with the United States to strengthen US-Ukrainian relations, one of which was to allow the US access to Ukraine's rare earth mineral reserves such as nickel, graphite, lithium, gallium, titanium, indium.

This is in compensation for the hundreds of billions of US dollars that the country has spent in supporting Ukraine's defense against Russia during Joe Biden's administration. Although Ukraine has explicitly objected to the U.S. war settlement initiative because the U.S. does not appear to support Ukraine's demand that its territory be restored to its pre-war borders with Russia in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea, Ukraine seems powerless to resist President Trump's persuasion for a Zelensky-Putin unification to bring the war to an end. Consequently, Ukraine is likely to lose territories such as Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv, Zaporizhzhia to Russia. Based on data, since the special military operation launched by President Putin on February 24, 2022 until now Russia has controlled 68,050 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory. Based on CNN analysis, during the three years of war, Ukraine has lost 11 percent of its sovereign territory. Otherwise, the war will continue to rage, destruction, damage, and casualties will continue to fall. Ukraine has only to choose, is the war over or is it the other way around?