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AS 2025 APPROACHES, Putin’s criminal war in Ukraine grinds on. In November and December, Russia ramped up its winter offensive – reinforced by troops from North Korea – in an attempt to occupy more territory in the Donbass. As I write, Putin’s forces are within 5km of the strategically important town of Pokrovsk and are attempting to surround it.
At the start of Christmas week, Russian troops claim to have taken Novopustyanka and Uspenivka as they advance on Kurakhove. To avoid encirclement, Ukrainian forces have commenced a tactical withdrawal from the village of Trudove.
The fighting has been very intense. Ukraine’s armed forces claimed that over a series of heavy engagements near Kurakhove and Porkrovsk, over 2000 Russian soldiers were killed in one day on 17 December. This would make it the largest single daily loss of life for Putin’s forces since the war began.
For the Kremlin, the stakes could not be higher. Ukrainian troops still occupy a swathe of Russian territory in Kursk. Russian attempts to dislodge them from the Rodina have thus far failed. Russia’s so-called ‘meat-grinder’ campaign in Donetsk has failed to deliver any major breakthroughs. Ukraine’s incredibly courageous defence has largely held – but at a terrible cost of human life on both sides.
British and US intelligence sources estimate that Russia has lost an average of between 1,000 and 1,200 troops, killed in action – each day – in November and December. Ukraine does not publish its own losses but it has been suggested recently that Kyiv has lost up to 100,000 of its troops as we approach the third anniversary of the war.
In my view, such losses on both sides are unsustainable. Apart from the brutal and indefensible loss of life – pre-empted by Putin’s criminal actions – after three years, the Kremlin has not achieved the unambiguous ‘victory’ its ‘three-day’ ‘special military operation’ was originally designed to deliver.
As US president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration date approaches on 20 January, Putin will make frantic attempts to strengthen his hand in any potential ‘negotiation’ to end, or pause, his offensive on Ukraine. In an attempt to terrorise the civilian population, Putin has – in contravention of international law – fired hypersonic missiles and drones at civilian targets and infrastructure throughout Ukraine. In his annual address to the Russian people, he also hinted at a ‘high-tech duel’ with ‘the West’, threatening to fire Oreshnik intermediate range ballistic missiles – raising the spectre of attacks at targets in Europe beyond Ukraine’s borders.
In his annual press conference, however, Putin also hinted at the prospect of talks to end his disastrous military fiasco in Ukraine. He has stated that he is ‘open to talks with Trump’ and indicated that ‘we will have things to discuss’. In a telling line, he stated that he was satisfied that he was ‘getting closer’ to achieving his ‘war aims’ in Ukraine and that he was ‘ready to negotiate’.
He used the same line when commenting on the routing of his forces from Syria. Forced to flee their bases in Tartus and Latakia as Syrian rebel forces ousted Putin’s puppet Bashar al Assad – Putin stated that he had ‘no regrets’ and that Russia had ‘reached its goals’ in Syria. I would take this as a euphemism for defeat and the similarity in his rhetoric and language on Syria and Ukraine is telling. Moscow’s increasingly shrill disinformation and floridly threatening language are perhaps the rhetorical last straws of a bully who knows that time is running out. Sadly, as Trump’s presidency looms, Ukrainian soldiers and civilians will continue to pay a price for Putin’s fragile ego.
Russia’s dramatic exit from Syria – in a manner not dissimilar to NATO’s expulsion from Afghanistan by the Taliban – is a major strategic, diplomatic and political blow to Russia’s prestige. Led by Sunni jihadist Ahmed al-Sharaa – formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani – Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) managed to collapse Bashar al-Assad’s regime in just 12 days.
Formerly of Al-Qaeda, al-Sharaa led his militia army on a remarkable ground campaign that saw them sweep from Aleppo in the north of Syria through Idlib, Hama, Homs and An-Nabk right into the heart of Damascus. Assad’s Syrian Arab Army collapsed and Assad and his family fled the country on 8 December.
It is believed that Assad’s forces – which underpinned his bloody, iron grip on Syria for decades – collapsed due to a number of factors. Firstly, Assad relied upon Russian support in Syria – including air power – to keep the Sunni insurgency at bay. When Putin embarked upon his disastrous military adventure in Ukraine, it pulled vital military assets away from Syria. As Putin’s Ukrainian invasion went awry – he reduced the number of Russian fighter jets in Syria from over 70 to just 12. Moscow’s capacity to project power in the Middle East – and to prop up Assad’s regime – was fatally undermined by Putin’s miscalculated assault on Kyiv.
In addition to this, Israel’s savage assault on Hezbollah in Lebanon also robbed Assad of an important Shia ally in Syria. Israel’s war on Lebanon and attacks on Syrian and Iranian military infrastructure disrupted Teheran’s influence in Syria. An ally of both Putin and Assad, Teheran’s capacity to intervene meaningfully in Syria has been greatly eroded by Netanyahu’s brutal military interventions in the region.
Both of these factors – and aided by Turkey, itself a predominantly Sunni country – provided HTS with a unique opportunity to collapse Assad’s regime in December. From a regional perspective, this now means that the Shia axis of influence – both ideologically and territorially – from Teheran through Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut has now been broken. Iran – suddenly – no longer has a land corridor through which to support, reinforce and re-supply Hezbollah in Lebanon. This – and the fact that Russia has been expelled from Syria – will have major implications for the balance of power in the Middle East in the coming years.
Despite their hard-line Salafist Sunni origins, HTS has promised not to turn Syria into an Islamic State governed by harsh Sharia laws – as is the case with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Their new minister for education, Nazir Mohammed al-Qadri has said that ‘education is a red line for the Syrian people, more important than food and water … the right to education is not limited to one specific gender. There may be more girls in our schools than boys’. This would seem to signal a differentiation from their Taliban counterparts in Afghanistan. Time will tell.
President-elect Trump has likened the HTS sudden rise to power as an ‘unfriendly takeover’ of Syria by Turkey. Using the metaphor of a ‘hostile takeover’ in business, Trump’s advisors have clearly briefed him on Erdogan’s role in replacing Shia hegemony in Syria with a secular Sunni regime. It is not clear what the medium term implications of this will be. The US has doubled the number of its troops in Syria to 2000 and has stated that they will not tolerate a resurgence in Salafist Sunni ‘Islamist’ activity in the country – notably among the remnants of Islamic State or ISIS, 10,000 of whose fighters languish in Kurdish prisons in the north east of Syria.
The fate of the Kurdish autonomous region in the north-east of Syria is also in doubt. Controlled largely by the Syrian Democratic Forces or SDF – with links to the outlawed PKK in Turkey – it is believed that Erdogan may mount a fourth ground incursion into northern Syria in order to create a 30 km ‘buffer zone’ along its border with Syria. The fragile peace in Syria at present may prove transitory.
While the interlinked events in Ukraine and Syria unfold – a grinding war of attrition in the former, and a sudden volte face in the latter – the agony of Gaza continues. Netanyahu’s genocidal actions in Gaza continue. As the New Year approaches, over 45,000 Palestinians have been slaughtered. Over 70% of the dead are women and children. Almost 4000 of the Palestinian children murdered since the 7 October attacks by Hamas have been under five years old. Over a thousand have been babies under one year old. Netanyahu’s actions in Gaza constitute the slaughter of the innocent. His actions are almost biblical in their savagery – infanticide, femicide and urbanicide accompanied by mass starvation – on an unprecedented scale this century. Netanyahu’s charge of ‘anti-semitism’ against any criticism of his illegal actions is the rhetorical refuge of a morally corrupt man and an ethically bankrupt government.
Despite the ceasefires between Hezbollah and the IDF in Lebanon, the Lebanese people continue to suffer. A total of 3,580 Lebanese people, mostly civilians and a high concentration of healthcare workers and first responders have been killed by the Israeli Defence Forces. Netanyahu – like Putin in Ukraine – has explicitly and deliberately declared the civilian population as a ‘legitimate target’. This is contrary to the international laws of armed conflict and international humanitarian law. We are living through a profound historical and existential moment – where genocidal actions are being carried out openly in defiance of the international rules-based order. Netanyahu seeks to ‘normalise’ genocidal actions against the Palestinian people – classed by his cabinet colleagues as ‘human animals’.
If the international community continue to fund and supply ammunition and weapons for this genocidal slaughter – if the world tolerates this – we are all complicit. And we will all, in time, pay an as-yet unknowable and terrifying price for our complicity.
In January 2025, President Donald Trump will lead the United States at a time of unprecedented conflict and geo-political instability. At a moment like this, the global community – all of humanity – needs strong ethical leadership. I will leave it to the reader to decide whether such ethical leadership and moral courage reside among our current crop of world leaders.
For its part, as we enter 2025 and negotiations for Ireland’s next government – our outgoing Taoiseach and Tanaiste have shown considerable moral courage with regard to the appalling conflicts raging across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Ireland has shown itself to be a strong voice for peace and reconciliation in the world. A powerful advocate for the rules-based order that we need to survive as a species. Whilst this is most commendable, in such a febrile environment – an environment which will deteriorate – Ireland’s new government must, as a priority, dramatically invest in our security, intelligence and defence in order to vindicate our militarily neutral sovereign status.
Dr Tom Clonan is a retired Army Officer and former Lecturer at TU Dublin. He is an Independent Senator on the Trinity College Dublin Panel, Seanad Éireann.
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