They don’t make world leaders like they used to, as far as Vladimir Putin is concerned. Talking to a Kremlin-friendly gathering of journalists at his traditional end-of-year press conference earlier today, the Russian president spoke with fond nostalgia of the old gang, saying he’d like to spend more time with “people close to me”, such as the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl, the former French president Jacques Chirac and Silvio Berlusconi, late prime minister of Italy. High office aside, these men have another thing in common: they are all now dead.
Whether this was Putin’s way of saying that the only good European leader’s a dead European leader or whether it was an arch reflection on having outlasted all three is not clear. What is clear, though, is that if he were to visit the countries they led next week, he’d be liable for arrest under the warrant issued by the International Criminal Court in 2023 on charges concerning the alleged illegal deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.
Stefan Wolff, of the University of Birmingham, watched Putin’s press conference as it unfolded. He reflects here on what it tells us about his intentions for the war in Ukraine in 2025 and how that contrasts with the messages emerging from meetings between Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and top EU leaders, including European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, and the new president of the European Council, Antonio Costa.
Wolff observes that the rhetoric from both camps continues to insist on their maximalist war aims. Putin vows to get rid of “the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, which seized power back in 2014” and “to drive the enemy out from our territory”. EU leaders, meanwhile, are talking of upping aid to Kyiv to enable Ukraine “not just to hold on, but to tilt the balance to their favour because Putin will not stop, unless he’s stopped”.
But of course all that could change “in one day”, if incoming US president Donald Trump is as good as his word. And this, says Wolff, is the spectre that looms ever larger. A Trump-brokered peace deal, he says, “carries too many risks” including the “prospect of Putin using a mere break in the fighting to regroup and rearm and then posing an even greater threat to European security in the future”.
Read more: Ukraine war: as 2025 approaches, Kyiv is left with few good options and allies in a Trump 2.0 world
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Putin’s war machine, meanwhile, lost a key figure this week when the man in charge of its Radiation, Chemical and Biological Protection Forces, Lt Gen Igor Kyrillov, was killed in a bomb blast outside his Moscow home. Ukraine’s security agency, the SBU, was quick to claim responsibility, saying that Kirillov had been charged in absentia for war crimes over what it said were 4,800 instances of Russia using chemical weapons since the war in Ukraine began in February 2022.
Anneleen van der Meer is an expert in chemical warfare at Leiden University. She’s been tracking reports of chemical weapons use in Ukraine and believes that the invading forces have used both tear gas and chloropicrin, a toxic nerve irritant. While not being as deadly as the sarin allegedly used by the Assad regime in Syria, both will have made things much more unpleasant for the Ukrainian defenders.
Meer also believes that Russia’s use of chemicals – if accurately reported – are likely to have served a dual purpose. On top of any actual military advantage, the use of chemicals – in spite of a ban ratified by almost every country in the world – is designed to send the threatening message that Russia doesn’t feel bound by any of the rules of war: “This has effects beyond the battlefield, provoking fear in Ukrainian defenders but also challenging Ukraine’s own commitment to play by the rules,” she concludes.
Read more: Ukraine war: what chemical weapons is Russia accused of using and why?
View from Washington
One thing on which Putin and the incoming US president Donald Trump would appear to have in common is their attitude to the news media. If they aren’t compliant, they must be enemies of the people.
Trump will at least expect to have a modicum of control of the agenda through his close (for the time being) relationship with Elon Musk, whose social media site X has gradually morphed into what appears to be a personal propaganda machine. Musk has also been tasked, alongside fellow billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, with heading up a new department of government efficiency, which appears not to be a department at all but feels more like a kind of management consultancy group.
It’s a fair assessment of the quality of Trump’s initial appointments that the two billionaires are by no means the most curious choices. Not when compared to former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, who has been accused of sexual assault (which he denies) as well as – by his own admission – having once had an over-fondness for self-medication with alcohol.
Or there’s RFK Jr., Trump’s vaccine-sceptical nominee for health secretary. Or Jared Kushner’s dad, Charles, a lawyer disbarred in three states and real-estate developer, who has been picked as ambassador to France. Kushner senior served time for what the prosecutor called “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he had prosecuted. You can look up Charles Kushner for yourself. Bring a strong stomach to the exercise.
The list goes on. Barbara Yoxon, an expert in international politics at Lancaster University, has been scratching her head on our behalf at Trump’s picks. This looks like something out of the authoritarian leaders’ playbook, whereby he appoints a cabinet whose inexperience is matched only by their loyalty, in order to insulate himself from any potential plotting among his subordinates.
But, loyalty aside, Yoxon believes that picking a cabinet of none of the talents could be a risky business for Trump 2.0. Yes-men tend to tell a leader what he or she wants to hear, rather than what is sensible. With a trade war looming with Mexico, Canada and – possibly most consequential of all – China, as well as major wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and flashpoints pretty much everywhere you look around the globe, this could lead to problems. She concludes: “In this highly dangerous new world, it is even more important than ever that he choose advisers wisely.”
Read more: How Trump's plan to surround himself with inexperienced loyalists could backfire
When it comes to Ukraine, as we know Trump has promised an immediate end to the conflict. It’s clear that all parties to the war are now watching Trump very carefully for clues as to how he might seek to achieve this. On a recent visit to Europe, he caught up with the Ukrainian president who reported their meeting to have been “good and productive”. For his part, Trump posted after the meeting on his Truth Social website that: “There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin,” – adding that: “China can help.”
Writing with his regular collaborator, Tetyana Malyarenko of the University of Odesa, Stefan Wolff notes that while Trump may be keen to involve China in any peace negotiations, the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has his own agenda. And this may not favour bringing hostilities in Ukraine to a swift ending. Tying the US up in a war in Europe plays into China’s hands, they write. Not only will it detract from Washington’s planned military pivot towards Asia, it also suits China to pit Russia and the west against each other in Europe.
The damage the war is doing to Russia’s economy can only serve Beijing’s interests. The “no-limits friendship” between Russia and China is fairly lopsided at present, with Beijing as very much the senior partner. That’s unlikely to change while Russia is mired in Ukraine and that suits XI just fine, Wolff and Malyarenko conclude.
Read more: Trump wants China's help in making peace in Ukraine – he's unlikely to get it
The true meaning of genocide
Leaders across the Middle East will also be factoring in Trump’s imminent inauguration to their calculations. It’s too early to make any kind of informed prediction as to how the situation in Syria might play out. The latest announcement from Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS), the rebel group which led the offensive that ousted Bashar al-Assad, is that rather than aiming for a federal set-up which might give Kurds in the country’s north a degree of autonomy, the HTS preference is for a unified state which would require Kurdish armed groups to disband and disarm, including the US-backed coalition, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). This will please Turkey, but it won’t go down well in Washington. We’ll have more on this in the new year.
One of our other focuses this week has been on a spat between the Irish and Israeli governments which led Israel to withdraw its ambassador to Ireland. Ireland has formally applied to intervene in South Africa’s case in the International Court of Justice over whether Israel is in fact committing genocide against the Palestinian people. Ireland says current international law concerning what comprises genocide has far too narrow a definition – which, it says could lead to a “culture of impunity in which the protection of civilians is minimised”.
International legal scholar James Sweeney of Lancaster Law School explains here how the law of genocide works and how it has been applied in the past.
Read more: Gaza: why it's difficult to reach a legal judgment of genocide against Israel
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