2024 analysed: Zelensky's year
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. Today with me, Alex Dibble and James Hansen. As the year draws to a close, we're bringing you a series of episodes that analyse 2024 from a security perspective and from the perspective of individual world leaders. Yesterday, we discussed what the past year has meant for Vladimir Putin.

Today, we're looking at Volodymyr Zelensky. It's been another eventful year for the Ukrainian president. He's had to contend with manpower shortages, delays to Western military aid and territorial losses in the East. But he's also launched an audacious incursion into Russian territory and shuffled his military leadership. Our guest today is The Times' correspondent Maxim Tucker, who's been covering the war in Ukraine since the start.

Maxim, has Zelensky's year been good, bad or somewhere in between? I think it's been a difficult year for Zelensky. We've seen the optimism of last year's gradually start to fade away. This realisation that despite the enormous casualties that Ukraine has been able to inflict on the Russian forces...

that Russia is still going and still creeping forward and it's still using many of the same kind of attrite and advanced tactics they were using this time last year. And Ukraine, despite having almost all the armaments now that it's been asking for, and the ability to use them in the way that it wants to, is still not able to hold the Russians at bay. And that's largely because

delays in providing that ammunition and armaments and the restrictions on Ukraine using them that have caused Ukraine also to suffer a lot more casualties than it needed to and Ukraine now really running low on manpower. In other regards, politically, it's been quite a good year for Zelensky because he's been able to consolidate his power inside the government. He's dismissed a lot of

cabinet ministers and replace them with people that are loyal to his chief of staff, Andriy Yerimak. And he's got more power, I'd say, than perhaps any president in

since independence in Ukraine. But at the same time, that has caused some people some consternation within Ukraine. People are talking about the fact that corruption is still not being addressed sufficiently. There are more allegations of corruption than before. And people are starting to talk about what about a reset? If there is a ceasefire agreement, are we going to have some kind of elections in Ukraine as part of that? Because Zelensky is now

over his mandate and the people around him were obviously exhausted, but determined to hang on to power at the same time. 2024 began with hopes that the US Congress would quickly approve President Biden's $60 billion military aid package. But opposition from Republicans meant that didn't get approved until April and then wasn't delivered until much later in the year. How much of an impact did that delay have on Ukraine's war efforts?

I think it's cost Ukraine a lot of lives. And if all of the things Ukraine had been asking for had been delivered at the moments that Ukraine was asking for them, then Ukraine had a real chance last year with its counteroffensive of taking back some ground and, you know, really inflicting a heavy punch to the Russians. Now, the delays...

for months and months over the negotiations of that package, just to put Ukraine on the back foot. There were forces who were running out of ammunition, limiting their usage of mortar shells to a handful a day, not striking Russians when they saw them advancing, only having criteria of there has to be 10 Russians in this area before we start hitting them. And that obviously allows the Russians to make creeping gains.

Now, there is more ammunition coming to the front, but it is not being distributed evenly. And obviously, with the uncertainty that Trump's inauguration will bring, the Ukrainians are having to ration some of that ammunition still because they're not sure what they'll get afterwards. So they don't know how long the war is going to last. It's only sensible to make sure you keep back some of your supplies. But the inevitable result of that is that you take more casualties that you're less able to stop the Russians advancing in certain areas.

And they're still suffering problems as a result of that. And, you know, we've seen even with these kind of very significant shifts in US and UK policy to provide attack missiles to allow storm shadows to hit inside the Kursk region on Russian soil and the provision of F-16s. These are still coming through in very small numbers.

And it's still not enough to make a significant change to the battlefield. And that's very frustrating for Ukrainians because they feel that at one point they really could have won this war if they'd had all the help that they'd asked for. And now it's slipping away from them.

And in August, Zelensky took a big gamble and invaded Russian territory by launching an incursion into Kursk. Ukrainian troops have managed to hold on to some, but not all, of that ground in the months since. So has it been a success or is it too early to tell?

I think the Ukrainians were hoping for the shock value that that would bring home to the Russian population and that people would see that Russian borders were not secure and this war is really going to have an adverse effect on them. And maybe that would bring them to the peace table. And I think a secondary objective is obviously having some kind of territory which you can swap back as part of any ceasefire negotiations. But they haven't done...

very well to hold on to. About a third of the territory has been lost. They didn't get as far as they might have hoped to get.

And Putin's control of Russian media is so overwhelming that he's just shaped a different narrative, ignored much of what's happening in Kursk in the media and kind of presented it as Russia still achieving its objectives. It's still going to wipe out the Ukrainians there. And that has not done the damage I think Ukraine and Zelensky had hoped that it will. Obviously, there's still that.

part of territory is still a bargaining chip for Ukraine, but it's quite a small bargaining chip at this stage. And they'll still have to hold on to it for as long as it takes to have negotiations. Now, of course, Trump has said that he'll end the war in 24 hours. Just a ridiculous, absurd claim. It cannot be ended in 24 hours. It's going to take weeks, possibly months of negotiations in order to get to

even agreeing a picture of what a short-term ceasefire might look like, let alone a lasting peace, which just seems kind of irreconcilable at this point in time. Are the Ukrainians going to set Russian troops on their territory for the next 20 years? They're certainly not going to give away

in the legal status of the territories that Putin wants to annex. But it's interesting that in recent weeks, President Zelensky has started to set out the terms that Ukraine might be prepared to accept for a possible peace settlement. For example, giving NATO membership to parts of Ukraine that are not currently occupied by Russia. And

Has that been the biggest shift in 2024, do you think? That at the start of the year, Zelensky gave the idea of a negotiated peace a pretty short shrift, but by the end of it, he's actively talking about it. Yeah, I think that from talking about things which would boost morale and having a very optimistic outlook to the war, Zelensky has obviously had to radically change his position to be more realistic.

And he's obviously beginning to accept that some concessions will be made because the prospect of Donald Trump is looming. And I think, you know, that realism is now translating to Ukrainians trying to find a way to present something that would be acceptable for them and not having a completely unacceptable ceasefire agreement forced upon them, which would then see the U.S.

withdraw support if they don't accept something that Zelensky could never sell to the country. So now there is some maneuvering, having this conversation with Trump. They're trying to set themselves up for a kind of positive relationship with Trump to negotiate terms that might be favorable to them. But I think, you know, the rest of the West, apart from the U.S.,

should go into this with eyes open, even if there are ceasefire negotiations. I've had years of Russia signing up to a ceasefire deal, which covered the Donbass region and violating it again and again and again, and not just using this period of time to regroup and attack again. And I think the West needs to be doing everything it can to, if there is a ceasefire, not to say that's job done and we'll

pull back from supporting Ukraine. We're all tired of the war, so now we can concentrate on other things. I think it's time to be looking with reality at what could happen if Russia violates a ceasefire and considering that a very likely possibility. And yet, on a more optimistic note for Ukraine, does the blow to Russia's prestige that came from the fall of the Assad regime in Syria earlier this month...

coupled with the ongoing weakness of the Russian economy, not provide some cause for encouragement for Zelensky? Yeah, it definitely shows that Russia is not this kind of all-powerful entity that Putin likes to portray it as. You know, they have suffered serious casualties. They've lost a huge amount of equipment.

And they weren't able to support Syria and they certainly weren't able to support Assad in the short term at a rapid reaction force. They didn't have enough assets in theater to prevent what was happening very rapidly. So I think the Ukrainians will welcome this as it's a sign that

Putin's regime is creaking, it doesn't have this global reach. And, you know, they're hoping that if the West continues the sanctions, this is the other big talking point, right? So if there's going to be a ceasefire agreement, Russia will obviously want to have sanctions lifted as a result of agreeing to ceasefire things.

But Russia will still have troops on Ukrainian territory. So the West should be very clear that it will not lift sanctions until Russian troops completely withdrawn from Ukraine's recognized territories. And if it doesn't, you're just normalizing relationships with Russia,

allowing its economy to strengthen again and sending a message to the world that actually it's okay to do this and you will get a slap on the wrist for some time, but then eventually you can carry on doing business as usual. Maxim, thank you. That's The Times' Maxim Tucker. Tomorrow, we will be looking in detail on Donald Trump's year and analysing it from a global security perspective. So do join us for that. Today, though, that is it from us. Thank you for taking 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of The Times. See you tomorrow. ♪