Editor's note: As the year 2025 comes to an end, CGTN has launched a special series, "Flashback 2025." It offers a year-end review of major developments in 2025 that reshaped geopolitics, geostrategy, and geoeconomics across key regions and the wider international system. The Russia-Ukraine conflict remains unresolved, with Kyiv seeking security guarantees and Moscow pressing territorial and NATO-related demands, while diplomacy shows progress, core issues keep peace uncertain. 

The Russia-Ukraine conflict has seen significant developments in 2025 since its inception on 24 February 2022, continuing to reshape geopolitical realignments and international relations owing to its very complex nature and many parties involved. The roots of this dispute run deep. Contested histories from the world wars to the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union continue to feed contemporary grievances, and the political ruptures of 2014 intensified narratives of exclusion in parts of the east and south. These competing memories and claims complicate negotiations. From Moscow's perspective, NATO expansion and the protection of ethnic Russian communities are central grievances, what Russian officials often describe as the “root causes.”Chinese officials have at times echoed parts of this framing.

In 2025, diplomatic overtures on Russia-Ukraine have largely remained complicated and divided. Russia claims it currently controls about a one-fifth of Ukraine's internationally recognized territory, the bulk of which is in the eastern and southern areas, but much of Moscow's actual progress in the past few weeks is in question by the government in Kyiv and outside observers. Violence continues, especially in the eastern part of the country, and Russian military leaders count on seizing the remaining territories under occupation, apparently a Herculean task to accomplish due to the hard terrain. On the other side, Ukraine has shown it can consistently strike at Russian military and energy facilities, even deep inside Russia, which completely defies the idea that Russia is safe from the conflict.

At Anchorage, President Putin did make some concessions, but in recent days, he has reverted to earlier terms, and after the reported drone incident near his residence on December 28, Moscow warned that it would harden its stance. Some European policymakers appear to favor freezing the conflict while Ukraine rebuilds its military capacity, a return to a Minsk-style logic.

What's currently zooming in on is a 20-point peace plan led by the United States and Ukraine; on December 28, U.S. and Ukrainian delegations met in Florida to push that text forward. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the parties had“almost agreed”on the 20 points and that a separate U.S.–Ukraine security-guarantee document was essentially final, even as discussions about Ukraine's post-war recovery continued. President Trump said only a few issues remained, most importantly, territorial questions in Donbas and whether a ceasefire might pave the way for a referendum on contested areas. He also highlighted talks over the Russian-held Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. The IAEA's Rafael Grossi confirmed a locally brokered multi-day ceasefire to restore power transmission between the plant and the nearby thermal station, a narrow but meaningful technical step forward even as bigger political gaps remain.

Those bigger gaps are real. Moscow rejects European-led security guarantees and says any settlement must address wider questions, above all, NATO's expansion and the architecture of security on Europe's eastern edge. Russian officials told U.S. counterparts on December 28 that past understandings and Putin's prior statements remain central to Moscow's demands. Put simply, many negotiators can agree on most of the package, but the last, hardest questions about guarantees, NATO, and long-term security arrangements are still the ones that could make or break a deal.

Beyond doubt, the Russia-Ukraine conflict has horrendous implications on the energy sector, inflation, and food insecurity, among others. Despite Washington and Kyiv's claims of reaching near consensus on the peace deal, it is far from achieving a breakthrough, at least in the near term. Moscow wants the peace deal finalized on its own terms, with de facto recognition of the existing occupation, including control over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear site, a facility that Zelensky wants handed over to the U.S. Russia is also unwilling to accept that any future attack on Russia would trigger Ukraine's inclusion in NATO, but this condition is also unacceptable to Ukraine; accepting it would be tantamount to inviting a third world war, as Russia has already indicated it might use nuclear weapons as a last resort to defy NATO's advancements and defend its sovereignty. America also feels that if it stops backing Ukraine for now, the latter may end up losing more territory or even the entire country, but the former is not ready to invoke NATO's Article 5. Instead, it is considering a 10-year guarantee, which might not be acceptable to Russia either. The overall conclusion is that the prospects for ending the conflict are very close, but the final obstacles are NATO-style security guarantees, control of the nuclear power plant, and the demilitarized zone.

It reveals how complex and divided the contest is and how the deep-seated trust deficit disrupts the entire situation. Moscow feels itself to be in a better bargaining position owing to its substantial territorial gains, while Europe is divided mainly especially after the announcement of America's new security policy, which signaled limits on further NATO expansion and forced European capitals to reassess their long-term security assumptions.

Now the crux of the matter is whether Europe and the U.S. continue to keep the Ukrainian narrative alive by pumping more security funding against Russia, which apparently will not back down from the security demands of 2022, which the U.S. and Western allies refused to meet then. Despite peace prospects in sight, I predict continued chaos in Russia-Ukraine dynamics in 2026 unless hawkish policies relent enough to make a room for envisioning a world without conflicts.