If one thing is certain to happen in 2025, that would be the most obvious one - President-elect Donald Trump is going to change the war in Ukraine. More than three years, we are seeing the war in Ukraine, sadly. Russian leader Vladimir Putin has no signs of ending the war, while the entire international community ponders the next move from the US. How should we understand the outcome of the war? Will Trump end the war by making strategic moves? Is 2025 going to be about Ukraine and Russia?

Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”