On the last day of 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent President Obama a hopeful New Year's Eve message.

Putin praised the two nations for sharing a "spirit of partnership and respect for each other's interests" that year. And over the next year, he said, Moscow was "determined to pursue constructive relations" with Washington.

But, like just about everyone else, Putin didn't keep his New Year's resolution. By March, he had annexed Crimea. A month later, he publicly owned up to supporting pro-Russia separatists in Ukraine. In July, those separatists shot down a civilian airplane, killing all 298 people on board. Russia imposed a yearlong ban on U.S. food imports in August, and shut down dozens of its McDonald's locations in September.

This maelstrom of events has made 2014 the worst year for U.S.-Russia relations since the Cold War years, before Mikhail Gorbachev came into power. Washington and Moscow aren't talking, and a civil war rages on in Ukraine, the flames fueled by Russia. There's no hope for another "reset" now, and there won't be for a long time.

And that seems just fine with Putin, says Michael McFaul, the former U.S. ambassador to Russia. "He's just decided that confrontation with the U.S. is important to his domestic standing, and I don't think that's changing," McFaul, who left his post in February, tells National Journal. "He's not going to change his mind about the United States. That's the thing I think we're left to live with for as long as he's in power."

The U.S. and Russia could still cooperate—on counterterrorism, in Iran, in space exploration. But we can't expect the White House to change Putin's world view. "That, to me, is naive," McFaul says.

The Obama administration tried, though. It repeatedly sanctioned Russia's politicians, its biggest banks, defense firms, and energy companies. It cut Putin out of multilateral meetings and summits. Its top negotiators made deadlines for Russia to pull out of Ukraine that came and went.

The administration says sanctions are working. And they might be, if the goal is to weaken Russia financially. The ruble fell 50 percent this year, and the Russian economy is in free-fall. But if the goal is to change Putin's course in Ukraine in 2015, the sanctions aren't getting it done. Putin is not going to acquiesce to the West—which, he said last week in his usual defiant, nationalistic voice, is trying to destroy Russia. "Once they've taken out his claws and his fangs, then the [Russian] bear is no longer necessary. He'll become a stuffed animal," he said. "The issue is not Crimea, the issue is that we are protecting our sovereignty and our right to exist."

U.S.-Russia relations are going to be stuck for a long time, McFaul says, and probably for the rest of Obama's term. The two nations are engaged in a new cold war, says Angela Stent, the director of Georgetown University's Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies. There's no nuclear threat, but Russia is again distancing itself from the West.

"This isn't yet a global rivalry because, obviously, the United States is much stronger—militarily, economically—than Russia is," Stent says. "But it's a rivalry in [Russia's] backyard, in the post-Soviet space." That space, where Russia's intervention in Ukraine continues, is what will matter in 2015. And that is where there may be nothing for the U.S. to do.

The beginning of the end for the current U.S.-Russia relationship came before the annexation of Crimea, and before Putin wished Obama a happy 2014. Stent dates it back to August 2013, when Putin gave former NSA contractor Edward Snowden asylum; McFaul traces it to Putin's reelection in 2012. Both agree the events of 2014 have snowballed dramatically, and that the outlook for 2015 is grim.

"I think the expectations that anything could improve are virtually nil," Stent says.

The prediction for 2016, for a reset brokered by a new president, is even worse.

"I don't know who's going to be president, so I need to be careful about that," McFaul says. "But of the candidates on both sides, I don't see who's going to be the one that makes that happen."