It was unusual for him to make such a statement under such severe pressure.
Russian President Vladimir Putin used the weekend’s sacred May 9 Victory Day parade, which commemorates the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany, to make some remarkable remarks. It said he believed the conflict in Ukraine was “nearing an end.” The comments, the first indication that Putin’s war of his own choosing may be coming to a close, were extremely brief and came after a lengthy lament over failed negotiations to launch the 2022 invasion.
However, this person is not one to speak easily or irregularly. This is not US President Donald Trump, who is in his audience. Putin’s rare departure from his normally unsatisfying position may have been designed to maintain the illusion that Kremlin leaders have long sought to maintain that peace in Ukraine could soon be brokered.
And yet, on a day when Moscow was fully militarily flexible, the president chose not to sound the maximalist trumpet that “special military operations” must continue until their goals are achieved. (Spoiler: These goals of demilitarizing Ukraine and seizing the eastern Donbass region are far from being achieved.) Rather, Putin seemed to be echoing the prevailing sentiment in Russia, supported by recent opinion polls, that the war needs to end immediately.
There was another twist to President Putin’s surprising maneuver. He proposed that Gerhard Schröder, who served as German chancellor from 1998 to 2005, when Putin was on his honeymoon with the West, be his point of contact for future direct negotiations with Europe. Schröder, who served as chairman of the board of Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipeline project until he resigned in the wake of the invasion in 2022, has remained close to President Putin. The association has discredited him in the eyes of many, and while the immediate reaction to the idea in Europe was reportedly weak, the idea could make its way to Washington, D.C., further complicating any real efforts to move peace.
It’s easy to view Putin’s new diplomatic rhetoric through the prism of the past year of stagnation and toying with a false peace. However, the perception that President Putin’s rule cannot survive anything short of a near-total victory in Ukraine has been undermined by recent widespread criticism across Russia of the war’s conduct, duration, and horrific human and economic cost. Whispers are emerging among Moscow’s elites that Putin may not survive the war at all (politically).
It’s hard to see the parade on Red Square as anything other than a stunning humiliation of the Kremlin, a literal fortress. Prior to this event, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy issued a “decree” authorizing a moment of vandalism that belies the idea that Kiev feels it is outnumbered.
The absence of Russian military equipment at the parade is in stark contrast to previous violent displays of force, when Western weapons experts looked at the latest tanks and noted small updates. Moscow only received troops this year, but they are also increasingly in short supply.
It has long been a pessimistic, even fanciful, hope of Europeans that Russia might one day collapse in Ukraine. In the absence of serious European or NATO military involvement in the war, the continent’s only strategy was to apply pressure and hope that Moscow would break through before Kiev. With Trump back in the White House last year, Europe had few other options.
The evolution of the four-year war has been marked by successes and failures for both sides. Due to Moscow’s initial failures, territories were captured, held, and then lost. Then, due to its desperate obstinacy, parts of the front were slowly captured and Ukraine’s limited manpower was destroyed. Last year, Kiev appeared to be in crisis, lacking resources and the full support of its most important ally, the United States. But the smell of this latest development of fortunes is different for two reasons.
First, Russia’s morale is clearly declining. It only occurs in a police state when a decidedly disillusioned population begins to identify itself as the majority and confidently raises its head above the battlements. Putin has previously survived intense criticism of his wars, when a short-lived coup led by Yevgeny Prigozhin stalled as dramatically as it began in 2023.
But he has struggled to bring middle-class students into his fold, having run out of poor Russians and convicts to register, then losing in poorly planned “meat grinder” raids.
The Russian economy is feeling really stressed right now. The elites are clearly so irritated that President Putin feels he has to placate them with suggestions, reported in state media on Saturday, that the war may be nearing an end. A lot can still change, and with Russia reportedly building up its forces along the front, progress may yet be made. But the Kremlin is in trouble.
The second change lies in the fate of Ukrainians. They also lack soldiers, perhaps more severely, but robots are plentiful. Russia’s almost negligible progress on the front is largely due to Kiev finding ways to attack, resupply, evacuate, and intercept Russian attacks with drones and drones.
It’s a truly astonishing feat, and its importance in modern warfare was underscored in March when wealthy Gulf states rushed to Zelenskiy to help protect their skies from Iranian drones. President Trump said last year that he didn’t have any, but he now really has the “cards” to keep fighting.
Moscow has previously caught up on technological gaps, often within months, and Ukraine should heed the Russian metaphor of “drinking champagne too soon.”
But even as the Iran war deprives Ukraine of the world’s attention it urgently needs, a summer looms in which Kiev is on its feet rather than on its knees. This is a remarkable story of survival in the face of overlapping odds, as there was no other option.
Meanwhile, President Putin’s apparent belief that the nation’s resources are limitless is slowly being revealed as an old folly. All wars end, and perhaps Putin has finally realized that.
