Russia is approaching a grim milestone: by mid-January, President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine may have dragged on longer than the warfare on the Eastern Front that started with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and ended with the autumn of Berlin in May 1945.
Putin is famously obsessed with World War II and official veneration of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany is a part of the ideological glue that holds collectively the Russian state. Putin’s Russia has even seen the rehabilitation of Josef Stalin, the Communist dictator who presided over a ruthless purge within the Nineteen Thirties earlier than main his nation in what is thought in Russia because the Great Patriotic War.
But practically 4 years after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a decisive victory over Kyiv eludes the Kremlin chief: Russia controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory, the warfare is estimated to have cost Moscow greater than a million casualties, and in maybe the largest affront to Putin’s warfare goals, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky remains in power.
But because the yr involves an finish, Putin is projecting confidence that point is on his aspect and that successful is inevitable. Ahead of a summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in December, Putin gave an interview with India Today the place he said Russia would “liberate Donbas and Novorossiya in any case – by military or other means,” doubling down on his demand to amass all of the areas of Ukraine that Russia claims, together with those who his troops haven’t managed to take by drive.
And that bloody-mindedness appears to be a bargaining technique. Putin is unquestionably conscious that US President Donald Trump is set to achieve a deal on Ukraine and the Russian chief has completed all the things in his energy to extract the utmost achieve from Washington’s eagerness to finish the battle.
In his year-end press convention, the Russian president stated his nation was prepared and keen “to finish the conflict by peaceful means” — however not with out boasting that his forces had been “advancing across the whole of the front line.”
Putin’s causes for projecting swagger are clear. For starters, the Kremlin chief has been in a position to watch as a once-unified Western entrance supporting Kyiv confirmed critical fractures after Trump took workplace in January.
In February, US Vice President JD Vance shocked European leaders on the Munich Security Conference with a speech excoriating Washington’s transatlantic allies. That spectacle was adopted by a very public dressing-down of Zelensky by Trump and Vance within the Oval Office.
A number of months later, one other public-relations coup for the Kremlin adopted with the summit assembly in Anchorage, Alaska, between Putin and Trump. While the summit fell in need of yielding a thaw in US-Russian relations, it was greater than a picture alternative for Putin: The Russian president was in a position to play for extra time in his relentless warfare of attrition towards Ukraine.
But Putin’s obvious reluctance to interact extra severely in peace efforts after Anchorage did finally check Trump’s endurance. An invitation to a second US-Russian bilateral summit in Budapest fell via and the Trump administration slapped sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies. The US president, who usually has phrases of reward for Putin, expressed frustration with his Russian counterpart.
Still, sufficient ice seems to have been damaged between Washington and Moscow to permit an unconventional US diplomatic effort led by Trump’s former enterprise affiliate Steve Witkoff and his son-in-law Jared Kushner to advance.
Following Witkoff and Kushner’s go to to the Kremlin in early December, a flurry of high-level diplomacy involving Zelensky and European leaders ensued, with a lot speak about hammering out the finer factors of a potential settlement.
By mid-December, Trump’s prognosis was optimistic, with the US president telling reporters that “we’re closer now than we have been, ever” to a peace deal.
But at yr’s finish, Putin nonetheless seems to occupy the function of potential dealbreaker: While Zelensky gained an audience with Trump at Mar-a-Lago final weekend to speak via a revised peace deal, the Kremlin chief bookended that assembly together with his personal telephone calls to the American president.
And the Russian place on peace talks now seems to be hardening. In his dialog with Trump on Monday, Putin knowledgeable his American counterpart about an alleged Ukrainian drone assault on his Valdai residence in Novgorod area, in line with a readout given to Russian state radio by Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov additionally telegraphed outrage over the claimed assault – which Zelensky dismissed as “a complete fabrication” – by saying that “Russia’s negotiating position will be revised” amid the continuing peace course of.
Some Kremlin-watchers are skeptical about Putin accepting a deal that may cross any of his crimson traces. The contours of such a deal are nonetheless rising, however the Russian aspect has lengthy been clear about the primary sticking factors.
Most just lately, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ryabkov reiterated them in an interview with ABC News: No give up of any Ukrainian territory that Moscow lays declare to, and no NATO boots on the bottom in Ukraine after the warfare ends.
“Lavrov, Ushakov, (Kremlin spokesman Dmitry) Peskov, and Putin himself (who has visibly ramped up engagements with the military while doubling down on ‘we will achieve our goals’) have made it clear that the revised plan is entirely unacceptable. Yet Washington continues engaging Kyiv, touting ‘progress’ that Moscow views as illusory,” Russian political observer Tatiana Stanovaya wrote on X after the newest talks in Mar-a-Lago.
“This is precisely what the Russian story about a drone attack on Putin’s residence is about: a forceful ‘pound on the table’ to make the West finally hear that the current peace negotiations are heading in a completely unacceptable direction for Moscow and to derail the emerging US-Ukrainian framework,” she stated.
Putin has Trump’s ear however he has not succeeded but in drowning out these competing voices. How a lot of the Kremlin’s confidence is smoke and mirrors is the massive query.
In November, Putin donned camouflage to pay a go to to a navy command publish in an undisclosed location, the place the commander-in-chief of Russia’s navy, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, claimed Russian troops had been in command of the japanese city of Kupiansk.
Just a few weeks later, Putin was upstaged by Zelensky, who posted a video of a go to to Kupiansk, sporting physique armor and standing in entrance of a pockmarked – and really geolocatable – signal. Asked later in regards to the video throughout his year-end press convention, Putin was dismissive, mocking the Ukrainian president as “a talented artist” engaged in theatrics.
The temper in Russia is tough to gauge – criticizing the navy can land a particular person in jail – and the economic system retains lumbering alongside, despite slowing growth and a Ukrainian marketing campaign of strikes on Russian vitality infrastructure, the cornerstone of Moscow’s economic power.
Yet Putin’s unchallenged grip on energy provides him leverage in any peace course of. The graveyards in provincial Russia might proceed to develop with warfare useless, however no parliament can strain him, no political opposition appears to threaten him and an apparently passive inhabitants means he can proceed his warfare on Ukraine.