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entrepreneurs like you. Sign up for your $1 a month trial at Shopify.com slash setup. Hello and welcome to this year-ending episode of Battleground with me, Patrick Bishop and Saul David.

In this last offering, we'll be ranging over the big moments and the conflict in all its various dimensions

and trying to

see what they tell us about how 2025 will unfold. We leave the old year and edge of the new one

in a very feebrile atmosphere, charged with a feeling that the end may be drawing near for good or for bad.

Will 2025 see a cessation of hostilities of some sort in Ukraine?

We'll be gazing into our crystal ball, as well as ranging over the great shaping events of

2024 on the military, political and diplomatic fronts. But, Saul, let's start with the battlefield.

What did they look like a year ago?

Well, we all remember, don't we, Patrick, the much-vaunted Ukrainian summer offensive in 2023.

And that, for a few heavy moments, seemed like it might bring a breakthrough in the collapse of the Russian forces.

Well, by the end of the year, of course, that's a distant memory. It had failed

essentially because Russia was too well dug in to be swept aside by a Ukrainian force that basically

lacked enough weight to punch through. I mean, there was that time delay, of course. It didn't

actually start until the summer. It probably should have been launched in the spring. And by that time,

by the summer,

the Russians had built this incredibly sophisticated series of defenses, huge minefields,

...