Let me remind you what Vladimir Putin said at the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022:

The Biden Administration has not given up on Ukraine war. A meeting of the Ramstein Format Meeting is scheduled to take place in Germany on Thursday, chaired by the outgoing US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, to address Ukraine’s defence needs, which the Ukrainian President Zelensky will also address. 

Any deal will come, if one does, after Trump is sworn in

France is among several Western nations aiding Ukraine with both training and weaponry in a bid to turn the tide in its nearly three-year-long war with Russia. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, France has delivered military equipment and weaponry valuing more than 2.6 billion euros, in addition to training nearly 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers, according to the country’s defense ministry. Over the last few months, a French military task force trained a brigade of Ukrainian troops on effective fighting tactics and how to use French-supplied military weaponry, including the tank-destroying AMX-10 armored vehicle. French and Ukrainian officials have referred to the AMX-10 as a “light tank,” but it lacks the large-caliber armament and tracks typically equipped on tanks. Its light aluminum armor left it vulnerable to Russian artillery. Better described as an armored reconnaissance vehicle, Ukraine initially struggled to effectively use the AMX-10 in its frontline defenses, instead adapting the vehicle’s operations to the Ukrainian battlefield.

About 1,700 soldiers from a Ukrainian unit equipped by the West and trained in France went AWOL before firing a shot.

Andrew Day and Connor Echols cover the foreign policy news of the week. In this episode, Day and Echols also discuss how progressives should approach Trump’s foreign policy. Plus: Anatol Lieven joins to discuss Russia-Ukraine peace talks.

The shame of American military assistance in Iraq and Afghanistan is that while our troops and their local allies were fighting bravely, the leaders of our so-called allies were getting rich. We have seen something even worse in Ukraine: While Ukrainian military personnel and civilians fight valiantly in a fierce contest for independence, Ukrainian leaders have gotten fabulously wealthy.

Vladimir Putin has seemed unusually amenable of late. In November, Kremlin sources revealed the Russian President’s openness to discussing a ceasefire deal and, earlier this month, Putin said he was ready to compromise over Ukraine in talks with incoming US president Donald Trump.

In 2023 the situation in Ukraine had developed into what looked like a stalemate. But 2024 proved that bigger things had been in the making. In 2024, after taking Avdivka, the Russian forces began to deliberate and steadily move forward.

Stepped up attacks by Russia are heightening longstanding concerns over how Ukraine manages its military and countering assumptions that Moscow’s offensive would slow, soldiers and military analysts say.