Russian President Vladimir Putin remains convinced that Russia will achieve victory in Ukraine through a war of attrition - despite significant losses and continued Western support for Kiev. This is according to the daily analysis of the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), published a day after Putin's remarks to foreign journalists during the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg, News.bg reports.
Putin expressed confidence that Russian forces will continue to gradually advance along the front line and stressed that Ukraine has no real chance of regaining the lost territories. He described the current situation as fundamentally different from that of March 2022, when peace talks were underway in Istanbul, and warned that the terms of an agreement are now “significantly stricter“.
The Russian leader stated that Russia has a “strategic advantage“ and is ready to achieve its goals by military means if a diplomatic breakthrough is not achieved. The Kremlin's main goals remain: a change of power in Kiev, the establishment of a pro-Russian regime, neutral status for Ukraine, and refusal to join NATO.
According to ISW, Putin is counting on Western countries to tire of the conflict over time and end military and economic support for Ukraine. At the same time, Moscow maintains the initiative on the battlefield and is conducting an active information campaign for “reflexive control“ - a strategy aimed at deterring future arms supplies to Kiev. In this context, Putin downplayed the significance of possible German deliveries of Taurus missiles, but warned that such a move would worsen relations with Berlin.
At the same forum, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov and Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina acknowledged that the Russian economy was showing signs of cooling. They pointed to a decrease in liquid reserves, a shortage of labor and the depletion of domestic “free resources“. However, the Kremlin's official position remains that Russia is capable of waging a protracted war.
ISW warns that serious economic and demographic challenges facing Russia make it impossible to maintain the current pace of the offensive in the long term. The institute emphasizes that decisive and sustained Western assistance could still turn the tide of the war in Ukraine's favor.
Meanwhile, on June 19, Russia and Ukraine carried out another exchange of prisoners of war within the framework of the Istanbul agreement. Ukrainian officials have accused Moscow of handing over the bodies of its soldiers instead of Ukrainian ones in previous exchanges, in order to make it difficult to identify the dead.
The ISW concludes that through his rhetoric to foreign media, Vladimir Putin is seeking to both strengthen domestic mobilization and undermine international support for Ukraine. At the same time, the Kremlin is creating a basis for rejecting a possible future peace agreement if it does not meet Russian interests.