A lone police officer, armed with a megaphone, shouted at a confused crowd in central Moscow to disperse, as the traditional Victory Day fireworks had been canceled without warning. It was a fitting close to the most sober celebration Russia had seen in decades. No military vehicles paraded through Red Square. Few foreign guests attended. Internet access was cut across the Russian capital, a move motivated by fears that Ukraine could disrupt World War II commemorations with its long-range drone attacks.
The atmosphere of discouragement in Moscow revealed how increasingly difficult it has become for President Vladimir Putin to sustain the war against Ukraine, which is under pressure not only from stagnation, paralysis and heavy battlefield losses, but also from a battered economy, growing public frustration and setbacks suffered by its partners around the world, including Iran, Hungary and Venezuela. After more than four years of war, Russians do not feel stronger, safer or more prosperous, much less victorious.
Instead, they are angry about internet restrictions, inflation and rising taxes, and exhausted by the psychological weight of the war, which in January surpassed the 1,418-day mark — surpassing the Soviet Union’s entire participation in World War II — with no end in sight. “Why was this war necessary if the capital, always festive in the past, seemed empty and restless, tense and insecure, with two sources of risk for people: drones in the sky and police on the ground, and with all communications prohibited?” asked Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political analyst.
The battlefront remains largely stagnant, with Russia occupying approximately 20% of Ukrainian territorybut without yet achieving Putin’s goal of taking over the entire eastern Donbas region. Russia’s ultraconservative, pro-war right is demanding an escalation and expressing deep outrage at the level of disruption Ukraine has managed to inflict inside Russia, including the assassination of high-ranking officials and powerful drone strikes, many of them targeting oil facilities and other infrastructure key to Russia’s extractive economy.
The much larger apolitical majority, which had long accepted the Kremlin’s implicit pact to remain silent in exchange for the war being largely maintained confined to border regions, is suffering the consequences of internet outages and growing economic pressure. In an apparent gesture of recognition of public fatigue, Putin made an unusual comment at a news conference after the May 9 Victory Day parade that appeared to offer a ray of hope. “I think the matter is coming to an end,” he said, referring to the war.
But the Russian leader was quick to launch his usual accusations against the “global Western elite”, which he accused of using Ukraine to destroy Russia. The Kremlin’s top foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, declared on Sunday that the negotiations would be fruitless until kyiv agreed to a complete withdrawal from Ukraine of the Donbas, making it clear that the Kremlin has not changed its central and maximalist demand. Putin’s comment was almost certainly directed at his domestic audience rather than at President Donald Trump or Ukraine, a sign, analysts say, that the Kremlin is feeling growing social pressure. “He actually didn’t set any deadline. It could be several months, maybe even several years,” a Russian academic with close ties to senior Russian diplomats said of Putin’s comment.
“And it could be a reaction to public demand: people hope that the conflict will end, and perhaps he wanted to encourage them and confirm that there is hope for it to be resolved.” Vladimir Pastukhov, a Russian political scientist and honorary senior fellow at University College London, said Putin faces a dilemma: The Russian public is tired of war, but it also wants to win. “This phrase indicates that internally they are seriously considering the possibility of ending the war, with enough seriousness and detail to feel the need to discreetly communicate to society that such a scenario is theoretically possible,” Pastukhov said. “It does not mean that he intends to end the war under any conditions, nor that he has made a definitive decision.”
However, in making a decision, Putin must confront the conflict between public expectations, as he declared: “People want the war to end, but they still hope for victory.” According to a report by the Dossier Center, a research group founded by Putin’s exiled opponent Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian administration has begun to develop what it calls a “victory image”: narratives designed to convince to the Russians of the importance of a peace agreement despite high casualties and minimal territorial gains. The initiative boils down to forcing prominent military bloggers to soften their pro-invasion stance, presenting battlefield casualties as a “denazification” mission completed and insisting that Russia never intended to take kyiv, while offering ordinary Russians something resembling a thaw.
The Dossier Center report does not suggest that Putin has decided to end the war, but rather reflects contingency planning within the Kremlin’s political bloc. The parade, although scaled down, proceeded last weekend without incident, following a series of diplomatic maneuvers by Moscow that included warning Ukraine of devastating retaliatory attacks on kyiv, calling the leaders of the United States, India and China to stress the consequences of any disruption and advocating for a three-day ceasefire brokered by Trump.
The manner in which the ceasefire was achieved highlighted the absurdity of the peace talks, which have been virtually paralyzed since Trump declared war on Iran. In a phone call made about a week before Victory Day, Putin brought up the idea of a temporary truce to Trump, while trying to revive Moscow’s offer to mediate between the United States and Iran and to store Iranian enriched uranium on Russian territory. Trump rejected the proposal and told Putin to focus on ending the war in Ukraine.
In the following days, Russia and Ukraine proposed ceasefires on different dates without communicating with each other. Yeah. Putin announced one for May 8 and 9, and kyiv called for an indefinite truce starting May 6; Both deals quickly fell apart, with each side blaming the other. On May 8, Trump announced a ceasefire spanning May 9-11, thanking both leaders for accepting what he claimed was his idea. On the second day of the ceasefire, which failed to stop ground fighting but did appear to curb large-scale airstrikes, Zelensky provoked Putin, saying Ukraine had pressured him to “finally say he was ready for real meetings” to secure a lasting truce.
“This episode laid bare the structural dilemma Putin finds himself in,” said Tatyana Stanovaya, a policy expert at the Carnegie Eurasia Center. “Passivity in the face of increasing Ukrainian attacks erodes his position domestically; the escalation weakens the conciliatory stance he tries to maintain with Trump.” The ceasefire ended on Tuesday, and Russians emerged from their long, confusing May holidays with no clearer idea of how the war might end, but with growing certainty that wartime restrictions, internet controls and economic pressure would remain.
People are waiting for the conflict to end, and perhaps he wanted to encourage them and confirm that there is hope for it to be resolved.
Early Thursday, a wave of drone and missile attacks rocked kyiv, killing at least five people, authorities said. State pollster VCIOM, often criticized for favoring the Kremlin, has recorded a steady decline in Putin’s approval ratings and reported that Russians’ happiness level has fallen to its lowest point in 15 years. Pastukhov said Putin, a former KGB agent, faces a dilemma between emerging factions: the political technologists of the presidential administration, who want to manage and manipulate society through a more subtle approach, and the agents of the security services, who believe that society must be strictly controlled at any cost.
“It is easier for Putin to ally himself with the latter; they feel closer to him, more understandable,” Pastukhov added. “In any case, they do not have a good path ahead. They are creating a revolutionary situation that does not yet exist. But if they continue to behave like this, they will end up creating one.” The most immediate risk, he added, is losing the passive majority who have tolerated the war—as long as they kept their distance—but who now feel its consequences in daily life.
“They may think, ‘Well, at least we’ve suppressed activism,’” Pastukhov said. “And then they will discover that activism, like a supervirus, has mutated to such a point that no defense works anymore.”