As the third year of war in Ukraine nears a close as the new year approaches and ahead of the Feb. 24, 2025, anniversary date, new battle lines have once again been established after Russia made advances in the east and Kyiv opened a new battlefront, this time in Russia.

The war that had already plagued Europe, the U.S. and, to an extent, the Middle East, costing a whopping $278 billion in aid for Ukraine, including nearly $87 billion from Washington, expanded to Asia in 2024 as geopolitical rivalries in the Indo-Pacific began playing out through proxy in Ukraine. 

SETTING THE TONE

2024 began with a heated fight in Congress over whether the U.S. should supply more military aid to Ukraine, a fight that highlighted major divisions in the Republican Party and Kyiv’s deep reliance on Washington’s military support.

The monthslong debate, which finally ended in April, had major implications for Ukraine when it came to its ability to defend against Moscow’s missiles and its ability to counter Russian offenses. In 2023, Russia was unable to make any major advances despite the sheer number of men the Kremlin has long been able to throw into its war machine.

But 2024 politics in the U.S. changed the reality of war for Ukraine.

The stalled supplies not only significantly increased Ukraine’s vulnerabilities in the east, particularly in Donetsk, it enhanced frustration from Kyiv, NATO allies and those who argued that defending Ukraine is in the U.S.’s security interest. It escalated attention around the Biden administration’s strike bans on U.S.-supplied long-range missiles, which the president eventually lifted in November. 

As U.S. politics at home grew increasingly volatile ahead of the presidential election, uncertainty mounted over what another Trump White House could mean for Kyiv; a question that has already had other geopolitical consequences.  

COST OF WAR

In late April, the House passed a $61 billion military aid package for Ukraine that pushed U.S. financial commitments to $183 billion since Russia first launched its invasion in 2022. The package was meant to prompt an immediate surge in the delivery of military equipment and supplies, which, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, had fallen to 10% of what it had been the year before. 

The European Union in June officially began membership talks with Ukraine after determining Kyiv had met the necessary requirements to join an economic and political partnership by countering corruption, reining in political lobbying, increasing transparency around officials’ wealth and bolstering the rights of national minorities. 

By the July NATO Summit in Washington, D.C., some members began ramping up pressure on the Biden administration, along with other allies like the U.K. and Germany, to lift any and all strike restrictions enforced on Ukraine, which prevented Kyiv from hitting military targets and weapons depots deep inside Russia, a move Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy repeatedly said was needed to better stop Russia’s missile and drone attacks.

Moscow in September looked to secure its defense budget for 2025, and the federal government submitted a plan to its State Duma that called for $183 billion to be allocated for national security and defense next year, which amounted to some 41% of its annual expenditures, according to the Institute for the Study of War.

That figure appeared to have been whittled down by the time it reached Russian President Vladimir Putin’s desk in early December as he signed off on a 13.5 trillion ruble plan ($124 million), and it accounts for 32.5% of Russia’s 2025 budget, according to the Associated Press. 

In October, the G-7 finalized a $50 billion loan to Ukraine that would be paid using frozen Russian assets, and on Christmas Eve, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Kyiv had received its first $1 billion from the U.S.

The U.S. has agreed to send Kyiv $20 billion in frozen asset profits to be used for Ukraine’s military and reconstruction assistance through 2025.

President Biden has vowed to fast-track as much military assistance to Ukraine as he can during the final days in office.

ESCALATION

Throughout the war, Russia has relied on a heavy missile and drone campaign to brutalize the entirety of Ukraine. But in 2024, Moscow escalated its aerial attacks targeting towns and cities, particularly in eastern Ukraine, ahead of its infantry advances, even if it meant the complete decimation of urban areas.

2024 saw more battlefield movement than 2023, though according to data provided by the Institute for the Study of War, this was largely seen in the second half of the year, a price for which Russian paid heavily.

November proved to be a particularly brutal month, with Russia seeing its highest battlefield losses ever with 45,720 casualties reported in November, which was up from nearly 42,000 in October, along with an estimated $3 billion worth of military equipment, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense. 

Moscow also twice set the record for the greatest number of drone strikes it levied against Ukraine in a single campaign since the war began, first with 145 drones fired overnight on Nov. 9, followed by 188 strikes beginning the night of Nov. 25.

After more than a year of a relatively stagnant front line, Russia in May launched a new front in Kharkiv, which Ukraine had liberated in 2022, though the Kremlin’s renewed offensive largely failed. 

By early August, Ukraine made international headlines when it launched a surprise ground incursion into Russia’s Kursk region. It was an apparent attempt to divert forces from eastern Ukraine to the Kremlin’s home turf and give it a bargaining chip when the time comes for peace negotiations.

The campaign was the largest attack on Russia since World War II, and by mid-October the Pentagon had confirmed that North Korea had deployed troops to Russia, with some 11,000 North Korean soldiers believed to be fighting Ukraine in Kursk, the first foreign nation to send in troops since the war began. 

Though North Korea is not the only nation to aid Russia in its invasion, Iran has for years been sending Shahed drones. In September, the U.S. accused Iran of supplying Russia with short-range ballistic missiles. 

Ukraine is estimated to have lost 40% of the land it initially seized in Russia, according to reports last month. But North Korea is also reported to have endured heavy losses, with Zelenskyy claiming this week that 3,000 North Korean troops had been killed in the fighting while others face extreme logistical shortages, including access to clean water, the Associated Press reported. 

China has also been accused of aiding Russia by covertly sending it military support in the form of microelectronics and semiconductors, among other items.

YEAR END

North Korea’s direct involvement in Russia’s war has further highlighted the divisions in the Indo-Pacific that have arisen in recent years, not only in the face of Chinese aggression, but Pyongyang’s, which is a dynamic that has become caught up in the largest war Europe has seen since World War II as Japan and South Korea increasingly back Western allies and view the Russia-North Korea alliance as a threat.

North Korea’s deployment of troops to Russia reportedly prompted South Korea to consider escalating its non-lethal aid by mulling over a supply of missiles. Japan on Christmas Day sent Ukraine $3 billion in frozen Russian assets, adding to the $12 billion Tokyo has provided to Kyiv. In addition, Japan also pledged to support Ukraine’s energy sector, which Russia routinely targets.  

Russia once again solidified its primary winter strategy by attacking Ukraine’s energy infrastructure on Christmas Day by firing 184 drones and missiles across the country, according to Ukraine’s air force. The attacks sparked mass blackouts amid freezing temperatures in multiple regions, including Kharkiv in the north, the central Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava areas, as well as Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine.

Zelenskyy condemned the attacks as ‘inhumane.’

Former President Trump said on the campaign trail that he would end the war before even entering office. Since winning the election, the president-elect’s confidence in his ability to do that appears to have shifted. 

Speaking at his first press conference this month since securing a second term, he said, ‘We’re trying to get the war stopped, that horrible, horrible war that is going on in Ukraine with Russia. We’ve got a little progress. It is a tough one, it is a nasty one.’

Trump has said he will work to secure a peace deal between Putin and Zelenskyy, which the Ukrainian president this month suggested he would be open to, though there are major stipulations on which Putin is unlikely to agree, such as a future for Kyiv in the NATO alliance. 

Additionally, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed Trump’s calls for a ceasefire and said a ‘ceasefire is a road to nowhere,’ suggesting Trump could face a tough diplomatic future.

Several ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ emerged in 2024 as the year comes to a close after Republicans took control of Congress in the November election and several prominent Democrats ended up on the losing side.

President-elect Donald Trump

Pundits in the media largely wrote Trump off after he left office and argued his political career was over in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and House impeachments. That critique intensified after he found himself facing indictments in several different jurisdictions and battling with several prominent Republicans during the GOP primary. 

However, Trump weathered the political storm while surviving two assassination attempts and won back the White House in November in what many described as the greatest political comeback in American political history.

Trump will be sworn in as the 47th president of the United States on Jan. 20 for a term that will be bolstered by Republican control of the House and Senate for at least the next two years.

VP Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz

President Biden made history this summer when he dropped out of the presidential race amid pressure from many within his own party and essentially handed the reins to his vice president despite calls to hold an open primary process.

After several months of campaigning along with a spending blitz of $1 billion, Harris ultimately failed to make the case to voters that the Biden-Harris administration policies should be continued with four years of a Harris presidency. 

Harris lost both the popular vote and the Electoral College to Trump, and Republicans down the ballot secured enough seats to keep control of the House and retake control of the Senate.

Harris was widely criticized for her decision to select Walz as her running mate, with many political experts making the case that Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro was the optimal choice. Walz had been labeled by many media outlets as a personable and popular governor who brought ‘Midwestern charm’ to the ticket but also consistently brought negative attention to the campaign with a series of gaffes and controversial statements about his past military service. 

‘Historically, vice presidents have little impact on a presidential candidate’s fate,’ Rob Bluey, president and executive editor of the Daily Signal, told Fox News Digital last month. 

‘But in the case of Tim Walz, it proved to be a disastrous decision that doomed Kamala Harris from the moment she made it. Not only was Walz ill-prepared for the national spotlight and media scrutiny, but Harris passed over several better options. Given how little Americans knew about Harris or her policy positions, they were right to question her judgment on this big decision.’

Elon Musk

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO officially threw his support behind Trump shortly after the former president survived being shot during a failed assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July.

Musk quickly became a fixture on the campaign trail and spoke at a rally at the site of the assassination attempt. 

‘As you can see, I am not just MAGA. I am Dark MAGA,’ Musk joked at the rally in October, a nod to the Dark Brandon meme. He called the upcoming Nov. 5 election ‘the most important election of our lifetime.’

Over the past few months, Musk has positioned himself as a key voice in the Trump administration and has been seen at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida several times – some outlets have reported that he is living on the property – and his influence has grown to the point that liberal pundits are accusing him of being the ‘co-president.’

Musk, along with former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, was appointed by Trump to lead the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency, which has already made waves in Washington, D.C., with elected officials on both sides of the aisle supporting the agency’s stated goal of slashing government waste.

George Soros

The Soros money machine that has propped up progressive lawmakers and district attorneys across the country suffered significant losses in blue California on election night as voters overwhelmingly rejected progressives on the issue of crime.

California voters overwhelmingly voted in favor of Prop 36 that rolled back key provisions of Proposition 47, which was advertised by Democrats in the state as progressive crime reforms that would make the state safer. 

When Proposition 47 passed in 2014, it downgraded most thefts from felonies to misdemeanors if the amount stolen was under $950, ‘unless the defendant had prior convictions of murder, rape, certain sex offenses, or certain gun crimes.’

Progressives suffered another major loss in Los Angeles, where District Attorney George Gascón, who co-authored Prop 47 and was backed by Soros, was defeated by former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman as crime was seen as a top issue of the election cycle.

In another loss for Soros-backed prosecutors in the Golden State, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price was recalled, less than two years after taking office, after backlash for her alleged soft-on-crime approach.

Oakland Democrat Mayor Sheng Thao, who faced heat from her constituents amid rising crime, was also ousted from office after her recall effort passed with 65% of the vote.

In San Francisco, where crime has been a major concern with voters, Democrat Mayor London Breed lost her re-election campaign.

‘I think that this is broader than just a message from people who care about crime,’ Cully Stimson, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation and co-author of the book ‘Rogue Prosecutors: How Radical Soros Lawyers Are Destroying America’s Communities,’ told Fox News Digital.

‘This is a massive mandate and cry for help from the general population that we want our state back, we want our counties back, and we want our cities back and that our failed social experiments have had enough time, and they’re an absolute, abysmal failure.’

Vice President-elect JD Vance

The popular narrative among left-wing pundits during the presidential election cycle was that Trump’s VP pick, Ohio GOP Sen. JD Vance, would alienate voters with a personality they deemed to be unlikable.

Contrary to that narrative, Vance solidified himself as a formidable force in conservative politics, appearing on a variety of podcasts, holding frequent press conferences and putting forward a debate performance that several polls suggested he won.

Vance held a 34% favorability rating when he joined Trump on the ticket. That number shot up over the next few months, and Real Clear Politics reported in mid-November that his favorability rating had shot up to 44%.

‘I thought people would be more unnerved by JD Vance,’ MSNBC host Rachel Maddow told Semafor this week.

Vance, 40, will be the third-youngest vice president in American history when he is sworn in next month. As Trump is prevented by the Constitution from seeking another term in office, Vance is already viewed as a front-runner for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination.

‘We are getting four more years of Trump and then eight years of JD Vance,’ Donald Trump Jr. said in October on the campaign trail. 

The younger Trump, who’s a powerful ally of the vice president-elect, is extremely popular with the MAGA base.

‘The vice president will be in the catbird seat, no question about it,’ longtime Republican consultant Dave Carney recently told Fox News Digital. 

Democrat Senate incumbents

On their way to taking control of the Senate, Republicans successfully unseated several Democrats who had spent decades in the chamber.

Sen. Sherrod Brown had represented Ohio in the Senate since 2007 before falling in November to his Republican challenger, businessman Bernie Moreno. Brown, considered one of the most vulnerable members of the Senate heading into the election, had attempted to paint himself as a moderate to Ohio voters who ended up voting for Moreno in a state that Trump carried by 11 points.

Democrat Sen. Bob Casey, who comes from a prominent family in Pennsylvania politics, has represented the state in the Senate since 2007 and had long been considered one of the toughest incumbents to defeat until he lost to GOP challenger Dave McCormick in November.

McCormick, a 59-year-old businessman, defeated Casey by a razor-thin margin of 0.2% after riding Trump’s endorsement and dissatisfaction with the economy that Biden and Harris presided over for four years.

‘We heard a common refrain. The one message we heard over and over again is we need change. The country is headed in the wrong direction. We need leadership to get our economy back on track to get this horrific inflation under control,’ McCormick said after the election.

Montana Sen. Jon Tester, who also joined the Senate as a Democrat in 2007, met a similar fate in November after losing his seat to former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy.

Tester had taken up more moderate stances in recent years, openly breaking with the Biden-Harris administration on several issues throughout the years, but it was not enough to persuade voters in Montana, where Trump won by almost 20 points.

Fox News Digital’s David Rutz, Paul Steinhauser and Cortney O’Brien contributed to this report.

Politics in 2024 was nothing short of unprecedented. 

Now that the U.S. has put a bow on the year, Fox News Digital looks back on the biggest political news stories that turned Washington, D.C., on its head. 

Biden’s drops out of presidential race at 11th hour after increasing scrutiny of his mental acuity

The year kicked off with President Biden in the driver’s seat of the Democratic Party as he keyed up a re-election effort in what was shaping up to be a second matchup against now-President-elect Donald Trump. 

In February, however, Biden’s 81 years of age and mental acuity fell under public scrutiny after years of conservatives questioning the commander-in-chief’s mental fitness. Special counsel Robert Hur, who was investigating Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents as vice president, announced he would not recommend criminal charges against Biden for possessing classified materials after his vice presidency, calling Biden ‘a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.’

The report renewed scrutiny over Biden’s mental acuity, which rose to a fever pitch in June after the president’s first and only presidential debate against Trump. 

Biden faced backlash for a handful of gaffes and miscues in the days leading up to his debate against Trump, including former President Obama taking Biden’s wrist and appearing to lead him off a stage during a swank fundraiser, and also abroad when Italian Prime Minister Giogia Meloni guided Biden back to a group of world leaders when he appeared to wander off to give a thumbs-up to a parachutist during the G-7 summit. 

When the big debate day arrived, Biden missed his marks repeatedly, tripping over his responses and appearing to lose his train of thought as he squared up against Trump. The disastrous debate performance led to an outpouring of both conservatives and traditional Democrat allies calling on the president to bow out of the race in favor of a younger generation. 

The White House for weeks defiantly insisted that Biden would ‘absolutely not’ drop out of the race, with his communications team and campaign daily combating the claims and speculation.

On July 21, Biden issued a tweet that Sunday afternoon announcing he would bow out of the race.

Kamala Harris ‘installed’ as Democrat presidential nominee

Biden endorsed Vice President Harris to pick up the mantle shortly after dropping out of the race in a separate social media post published on X, formerly Twitter. 

Biden’s exit from the race, when there were only about 100 days left before Nov. 5, was the first time the presumptive nominee of a major political party withdrew from the election after winning primaries. 

Harris soon launched her truncated campaign, flanked by staffers from the Obama administration and campaigns and also a handful of holdovers from Biden’s campaign. 

Harris earned the nomination of the party despite not running in the primaries, sparking some calls, including from Democrats, that the process was ‘undemocratic.’ High-profile Democrats from the Obamas to the Clintons threw their support behind Harris, while former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said Harris’ nomination was fair by arguing the nomination process was ‘open’ and Harris ‘won it.’ 

‘We do not live in a dictatorship,’ left-wing group Black Lives Matter declared over the summer. ‘Delegates are not oligarchs. Installing Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee and an unknown vice president without any public voting process would make the modern Democratic Party a party of hypocrites.’

Harris previously ran for the White House during the 2020 election cycle, but she dropped out in early December 2019, two months before the 2020 Iowa caucuses.

Trump assassination attempts

Before Trump was elected president, he faced two assassination attempts in July and September that rocked voters and the election cycle. 

Trump took the stage at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 for what was intended to be a rally in the crucial swing state. Then shots rang out. 

Trump was seen dropping to the ground during the rally before he quickly stood up, a bloodied ear apparent, while surrounded by Secret Service agents.

‘Fight, fight, fight,’ Trump was seen shouting to the crowd with a raised fist as he was escorted off the stage. 

One man, Corey Comperatore, lost his life while protecting his family from the attack, and two other people were seriously injured. 

The would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper. 

The attack unfolded just days before the Republican National Convention kicked off in Milwaukee. Despite initial speculation the RNC would be upended by the attempt, Trump appeared throughout the week with a patch over his injured right ear before formally accepting the nomination in a speech. 

‘The amazing thing is that prior to the shot, if I had not moved my head at that very last instant, the assassin’s bullet would have perfectly hit its mark and I would not be here tonight. We would not be together,’ Trump said in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. 

‘Bullets were flying over us, yet I felt serene. But now the Secret Service agents were putting themselves in peril. They were in very dangerous territory,’ Trump continued. ‘Bullets were flying right over them, missing them by a very small amount of inches. And then it all stopped. Our Secret Service sniper, from a much greater distance and with only one bullet used, took the assassin’s life, took him out.’

Weeks later, on Sept. 15, Trump faced an assassination attempt while golfing at his Trump International Golf Club in Florida. 

Trump was safely escorted from the green at his golf club in West Palm Beach that Sunday afternoon after suspect Ryan Routh allegedly pointed a rifle toward the 45th president just outside the perimeter of the club. Routh fled the scene but was apprehended shortly thereafter on I-95. 

Routh allegedly waited in the bushes near Trump’s golf course for 12 hours ahead of the attempt on the former president’s life.

Routh has pleaded not guilty in the case, which includes charges such as the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate and assault on a federal officer. His attorneys are reportedly considering an insanity defense as court proceedings continue. 

Trump’s conviction and political ‘comeback’ 

While juggling his successful re-election effort, Trump spent much of the year battling criminal charges and legal cases, including sitting trial for weeks in the New York v. Trump case. 

​​Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in the Manhattan case in May. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office worked to prove that Trump falsified business records to conceal a $130,000 payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election to quiet her claims of an alleged affair with Trump in 2006.

Trump maintained his innocence in the case and called it a ‘sham’ and ‘witch hunt.’ The guilty verdict was slammed by both Trump and legal experts as an example of ‘lawfare’ promoted by Democrats in an effort to hurt his election efforts ahead of November. 

Trump plowed ahead with his election effort despite the guilty verdict, completing a massive political comeback when he defeated Harris at the polls.

Heading into Election Day, the polls were tight and both Trump and Harris zeroed in on locking down votes in key battleground states, most notably Pennsylvania. Final results from the election were expected to take days, harkening back to the 2020 election cycle during the pandemic, but Trump’s decisive win was declared late on election night. 

Trump took the stage to accept victory after Fox News projected he would win Pennsylvania, which carries 19 electoral votes, as well as Wisconsin, Georgia and North Carolina. Trump ultimately notched 312 electoral votes to Harris’ 226 and also secured the popular vote. 

‘Every citizen, I will fight for you, for your family and your future. Every single day, I will be fighting for you. And with every breath in my body, I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve and that you deserve. This will truly be the golden age of America. That’s what we have to have. This is a magnificent victory for the American people that will allow us to make America great again,’ he said just before 2:30 a.m. after the election. 

Anti-Israel protests erupt on college campuses 

During last year’s college school year, agitators and student protesters flooded college campuses nationwide to protest the war in Israel, which also included spiking instances of antisemitism and Jewish students publicly speaking out that they do not feel safe on some campuses. 

Radicals on Columbia University’s campus in New York City, for example, took over the school’s Hamilton Hall building, while schools such as UCLA, Harvard and Yale worked to clear spiraling student encampments where protesters demanded their elite schools completely divest from Israel. 

Terrorist organization Hamas launched a war in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, which initially fanned the flames of antisemitism on campuses in the form of protests, menacing graffiti and students reporting that they felt as if it was ‘open season for Jews on our campuses.’ The protests heightened to the point Jewish students at some schools, including Columbia, were warned to leave campus for their own safety. 

On Penn’s campus, Fox News Digital exclusively reported in May that anti-Israel radicals were passing around multiple guides directing agitators on how to break into buildings, ‘escalate’ protests, create weapons and even administer first aid.

‘Let repression breed more resistance. We will not disavow any actions taken to escalate the struggle, including militant direct actions. Our notion of ‘safety’ in the imperial core is built on centuries of corpses, and this liberal framing of ‘safetyism’ prevents us from escalating and winning, which is our duty to Palestine and us all. We keep us safe by escalating. Don’t hesitate to take more risk,’ one how-to guide dubbed ‘FLOOD THE GATES: ESCALATE’ read.

The college protests and war in Israel became a focal point of the presidential race as well as down-ballot races, with Republicans repeatedly condemning antisemitism on college campuses and demanding peace be restored to colleges.

College administrators from top schools such as UCLA, Rutgers and Northwestern were grilled by lawmakers over their handling of antisemitism on campus, while Trump warned school leaders if they allow antisemitism to run rampant, they could lose accreditation.