Matthew Luxmore

And this is something that is a very big thing for the Trump administration, particularly for Vice President J.D.

Vance, who

this week visited Budapest to shore up his ally in Europe, Orbán, who both the US and in fact Russia as well really hope stays in power because he can be someone who can push their divergent interests inside Europe.

Orbán has described Hungary as an illiberal democracy and he's in many ways been a thorn in the side for the EU

vetoing various resolutions relating to the war in Ukraine and other things relating to budgets and migration.

Many European Union leaders, they say this privately, would quite happily see him go.

Ukraine is still very, very vulnerable to a potential backlash from Trump if he chose to do that as a response to the fact that the negotiations are not moving forward.

Well, the front lines in Ukraine are really pretty static.

They have been for the past year.

Russia has made some quite limited gains through the course of last year, far less than in 2022, the first year last.

of the war.

And really, Ukraine has regained more territory since 2022 than Russia has taken.

So you can't really speak of a great battlefield success for Russia.

It's also happening at a colossal loss of life for Moscow's forces, something to the tune of what Western officials say is 30,000 soldiers dead per month.

So Russia's capacity to keep this going is

being questioned by some defense analysts.

But for Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, this is really a question of his legacy after a quarter of a century in power.

And he really has an obsession with bringing Ukraine under Moscow's sway.

As for Ukraine, the Ukrainians, who have been very resilient over the past four years, weathering a real intense barrage from Russia that has cut heating to millions of homes and also water to so many people.

The public opinion surveys in Ukraine show that people are not willing to sign away territory to Russia, and they're willing to keep fighting if they have to.