Vladimir Putin said he believed the war against Ukraine was “coming to an end.” The phrase carried more political calculation than peace. It did not follow a breakthrough in negotiations, but a May 9 parade that itself revealed the strain on Russia’s war machine.
Only hours earlier, Putin had vowed victory from Red Square. Yet Moscow’s central ceremony passed without the usual display of intercontinental missiles, tanks and heavy weapons systems. Instead of a show of force, Russia projected footage of military hardware on large screens near the Kremlin walls.
That contrast mattered more than the phrase itself. The Kremlin tried to preserve the ritual of greatness, but did so amid anxiety, restrictions and fear of possible Ukrainian strikes. Victory Day, long used as a ceremony of state confidence, increasingly looked like a guarded stage inside an unfinished war.
According to Daycom’s analysis, Putin’s words about a possible end to the war should not be read as a sign that Moscow is ready for compromise. They look more like an attempt to seize the diplomatic tempo, project control and shift responsibility for the future of negotiations onto Ukraine and the West.
Putin also said he was ready to discuss a new security architecture for Europe. But the figure he named as a preferred interlocutor was not a current European leader; it was former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder. That choice belongs to another era, when Moscow could still count on special channels of influence in Berlin.
For today’s Europe, such a figure is less a bridge to dialogue than a reminder of old dependencies. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, European security can no longer rest on private channels, energy bargains or the assumption that the Kremlin will stop of its own accord.
Putin again framed the war as a consequence of Western policy. He spoke of NATO expansion, alleged broken promises after the fall of the Berlin Wall and efforts to draw Ukraine into Europe’s orbit. What is missing from that version is the central fact: Moscow’s decision to change the borders of a neighboring state by force.
That is why his talk of an “end” is so ambiguous. The Kremlin may not mean an end to aggression, but the end of the war on Russian terms. For Ukraine, that formula would mean a dangerous peace: acceptance of losses, a postponed threat and no reliable security guarantees.
Russian forces have now been fighting in Ukraine longer than Soviet forces fought in the Second World War under the chronology Moscow itself calls the Great Patriotic War. That fact undermines the official image of a fast, controlled and historically inevitable campaign.
The war has become prolonged, costly and politically exhausting. Russia controls a significant share of Ukrainian territory, but it has not achieved its core objectives. It has not taken the whole of Donbas, Ukrainian forces still hold a line of fortress cities, and Russian advances have slowed.
Moscow has territorial leverage, but not a convincing victory. The cost of the war continues to rise for everyone. Ukraine pays with destroyed cities, military and civilian lives, lost homes and the constant threat of strikes. Russia pays with casualties, sanctions pressure, economic distortion and deepening isolation from Europe.
Against this backdrop, the three-day ceasefire negotiated with U.S. involvement was meant to be more than a humanitarian pause. It was a test of intentions. Donald Trump spoke of extending the halt in fighting and securing a prisoner exchange of 1,000 people from each side. But a short silence is not the same as a political settlement.
Moscow and Kyiv have already traded accusations over violations of previous pauses. That exposed the central weakness of the current process: without a monitoring mechanism, any ceasefire remains vulnerable to an artillery strike, a drone attack or a clash along the front.
For Ukraine, the prisoner exchange remains the most important and most realistic result. The return of people from captivity will not resolve the questions of territory, NATO or Europe’s future security order, but it carries direct human weight. Such agreements can sometimes survive even when high diplomacy stalls.
Putin, however, tied any possible meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy not to the beginning of dialogue, but to the existence of a lasting peace agreement. That means the Kremlin does not want negotiations as an open process. It wants a stage on which to formalize an outcome it already considers acceptable.
This is the danger of the current diplomatic phase. When one side speaks of peace but does not abandon territorial demands, its language becomes a continuation of war by other means. The formula that the war is “coming to an end” may be less a promise of peace than an invitation to accept Russian terms.
European capitals will treat these signals with caution. For them, the issue is no longer only Ukraine. If Russia is rewarded for aggression, the entire European security system becomes weaker. If Moscow emerges humiliated but without rethinking the reasons for the war, the threat will not disappear either.
That is why the future of negotiations depends not on one phrase from Putin, but on a change in Russia’s conduct at the front and at the negotiating table. A real end to the war begins not with a ceremonial statement, but with a willingness to stop coercion, remove violence from politics and accept guarantees that do not leave Ukraine alone before another attack.
Until that happens, talk of a near ending remains part of the Kremlin’s staging. Moscow wants to appear capable of ending the war, but it has not shown readiness to abandon its central aims. This is not a turn toward peace. It is a struggle over who gets to define the meaning of the word “end.”
For Ukraine, that distinction is decisive. The end of the war cannot mean only the silencing of guns on the stronger aggressor’s terms. It must mean security, the return of people, protection of borders and the impossibility of another invasion. Anything less would not be the end of the war, but a pause before its next form.
