Russia-Ukraine attritional warfare dominates today's outlook — a permanent ceasefire remains unlikely within a year as confirmed drone strikes on Russian chemical plants underscore the war's mounting environmental toll. Hungary's post-Orbán transition tests whether EU reintegration hopes can overcome deep Russian energy dependency, while a December 2025 Sandworm attack on Poland's grid elevates the year-ahead cyber threat to European critical infrastructure.

This is the highest-confidence forecast in today's pool. The geopolitician (weight 0.25 but sector Brier 0.11, positive bias 0.12) set P=0.75 and the Skeptic agreed. I move to 0.80 based on independent assessment. Putin's behavioral profile (BVI 5) shows 'de-escalation only via face-saving formula that preserves territorial/political gains' — no such formula exists given Ukraine's stated goals. The event chain is at ESCALATION stage with the dominant density matrix interpretation (45%) being 'Mutual Attrition With Symbolic Ceasefires' — which implies localized pauses but no permanent ceasefire. Historical base rates for protracted attritional wars of 2+ years strongly disfavor rapid resolution: the Iran-Iraq war lasted 8 years, Korea 3 years to armistice (no peace treaty 70+ years later). Both sides have external backers (North Korean troops, Western arms) that sustain combat power. The density matrix purity is low (0.35) indicating high meta-uncertainty on the conflict's trajectory, but all four interpretations converge on continued hostilities. I adjust for my geopolitics overestimation bias of +8pp (bringing my intuitive 0.85 down to ~0.80). Multiple pillars support this: Game Theory (no Nash equilibrium with current payoff structures), Psychohistory (historical parallels with multi-year attritional wars), and Network Theory (alliance structures sustaining both sides). The Skeptic noted that while the causal logic is credible, some specifics are unsourced — I absorb this by not going higher than 0.80.