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Shkruar nga PamfletiRussian President Vladimir Putin says he thinks the war in Ukraine is coming to an end, even though broader negotiations remain deadlocked.
Vladimir Putin has signaled that Russia's war with Ukraine may be "nearing its end," as the Russian president again blamed the West for prolonging the conflict through military support for Kiev.
Speaking after Victory Day ceremonies in Moscow, Putin said on Sunday that he was ready to hold direct talks with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, in Moscow or in a neutral location.
His comments come as Russia and Ukraine are observing a brief three-day ceasefire backed by the United States and continuing discussions on a prisoner exchange. However, broader peace negotiations remain deadlocked and both sides continue to attack each other.
Ukrainian officials said on Sunday that Russian attacks had killed at least three people and that nearly 150 clashes had been recorded on the front line in the past 24 hours.
The statements also reflect the growing pressure on both sides after more than four years of war, which has devastated large parts of Ukraine and put the Russian economy under strain.
What did Putin say?
“I think this matter is coming to an end,” Putin told reporters about the Russia-Ukraine war, the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II.
However, the Russian leader added that he would be willing to meet with Zelensky only after the terms of a peace deal had been agreed. The Kremlin had previously rejected US President Donald Trump's offer in August 2025 for a trilateral meeting between Zelensky, Putin and Trump.
"This should be the final moment, not the negotiations themselves," Putin said after Victory Day ceremonies, which mark the Soviet Union's triumph over Nazi Germany in 1945.
The Russian president also stated that he was ready to negotiate new security agreements with Europe and that his preferred negotiating partner would be former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder.
Schröder has faced strong criticism in Germany for his close relationship with the Russian president. The former German chancellor became head of a controversial Russian-German gas pipeline consortium shortly after leaving office in 2005.
Russia has accused the West of expanding the NATO alliance with the aim of encircling it, and Putin has used this argument as one of the justifications for the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He has described NATO expansion as a “matter of life or death” for Russia.
Asked after the parade whether Western military support for Ukraine had gone too far, Putin said: "They started escalating the confrontation with Russia and this continues today."
Putin also added that Western countries "spent months waiting for Russia to suffer a devastating defeat and for its statehood to collapse. This did not happen."
"Then they got stuck in that logic and now they can't get out of it," he added.
Why is Putin now talking about ending the war?
According to analyst Keir Giles, the Russian president's suggestion that the end of the war may be near has more to do with "global hope and optimism" than with a realistic reading of his statements.
Giles, a fellow at the Chatham House think tank, said that over the past 18 months there have been "many promises that the end of the war was imminent", but none of them "came true".
He warned that Putin's comments should not be interpreted as a reliable indication that the conflict is truly approaching resolution.
"The most we can hope for is that Putin has now realized that Russia is not winning the war," he said, adding that for this reason the Russian president may be "more willing to suspend the conflict than before, when he rejected all of Trump's peace efforts because he believed that Russia could benefit more by continuing the fighting than from an imposed ceasefire."
The war has caused tens of thousands of casualties on both sides, left large parts of eastern Ukraine in ruins and has crippled the Russian economy by an estimated $3 trillion. Western-led sanctions have also hit the Russian economy.
Relations between Moscow and Europe are at their lowest point since the height of the Cold War. Although Russia controls nearly a fifth of Ukraine's territory, it has struggled to fully take control of the eastern Donbas region, while Ukrainian counteroffensives have failed to retake significant territory it had seized.
Putin's statements also coincide with renewed US-led efforts to push both sides towards temporary ceasefires and humanitarian agreements. Trump publicly supported the latest three-day ceasefire on Friday, saying he hoped it could be "the beginning of the end" of the war.
The US president had made ending the war in Ukraine a centerpiece of his 2024 re-election campaign, even claiming he could stop the conflict within 24 hours of returning to office.
However, an agreement remains far off. Russia continues to insist on full takeover of the Donbas region and opposes Ukraine's membership in NATO, while Kiev refuses to cede territory and demands security guarantees as part of any deal./ Al Jazeera
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