Mounting economic strain and public discontent have yet to persuade the Russian president to change course in Ukraine.
Ukrainian drones are striking deep into Russia. Men worried about potential mobilisation are working out how to leave the country, while a spike in support for the only party that opposes the war led the Kremlin to ban it. So why does Vladimir Putin still seem confident?
This summer, Western media outlets were in a bullish mood, proclaiming that Ukraine was turning the tide. This was largely based on video footage of oil refineries exploding across Russia.
Attacks on energy facilities, ports and logistics hubs are disrupting both the Russian economy and daily life. Meanwhile, the budget deficit is on track to be twice as large as in 2025 – and last year’s was twice as large as the year before. Just 47 per cent of people say that they are satisfied with their lives, down 10 percentage points from last year. Most Russians want the war to end.
None of this has yet forced Putin to change his policy. On the battlefield, his forces continue their slow, painful grind towards the last two fortress cities in Donetsk. Their capture would allow Putin to claim that he has “fully liberated” the contested Donbas region. This was not the president’s primary objective when he launched the invasion in 2022. But it now appears to have become a possible end point, giving him a chance to declare victory and his propagandists to hail the war as a triumph.
Russia continues to retaliate against Ukraine’s long-range strikes. Logistical depots are being hammered, as are petrol stations. On some highways, drivers have to carry their own fuel in cans stowed in the trunk.
As Europe swelters through August heat waves, Moscow is beginning to plan its winter campaign against Ukraine’s electrical infrastructure. The aim, as in previous years, is to break morale by degrading the country’s power grid. Ukraine will head into winter with its generating capacity reduced from almost 55 gigawatts before the war to just 12 gigawatts. A particular concern is that Russia might now start targeting the ultra-high-voltage 750kV substations that hold the grid together, carrying power from generating sites to the cities.
At the worst moments of last winter, temperatures inside Kyiv apartment blocks fell to -10C. Radiators had to be drained and shut off to prevent them from splitting as the water inside froze. If Russia targets the waterworks, many fear that Ukraine’s major cities could become all but uninhabitable.
Ukrainians have shown extraordinary resilience. But while Western coverage tends to portray their glass as half full, Russian media – and, it seems, the carefully curated reports reaching Putin’s desk – present it as half empty, at best.
This seems to explain Putin’s apparent optimism. Partly, it reflects a genuine, if probably misplaced, belief that Ukraine might finally be forced into concessions. Unlike in 2022, he no longer seems to expect to turn Ukraine into a vassal state. Instead, he wants guarantees of neutrality, recognition of territorial gains, sanctions relief and a public declaration of victory. He may feel that anything less would make it impossible to convince Russians that 1.5 million deaths were in any way worth it.
But the deliberate and desperate optimism also lets him avoid tough decisions. There is a growing consensus among Russia’s elite that the war cannot continue much longer. For the pragmatists and technocrats, the solution is to accept that the “special military operation” has reached a point of diminishing returns, freeze the front line and open negotiations with Ukraine. For the hawks, the answer is escalation: mobilise hundreds of thousands of more troops, step up sabotage attacks on European factories and supply lines supporting Kyiv’s war effort and seek a military victory.
For now, Putin seems to favour the hawks. But both options are risky. He might therefore be clinging to optimism to avoid choosing between them. Instead, he continues to sit on the fence and, like so many Russian leaders before him, hopes that General Winter will win the war for him. And soon.
Mark Galeotti is the principal director of Mayak Intelligence and author of ‘The Weaponisation of Everything: A Field Guide to the New Way of War’. For more opinion, analysis and insight, subscribe to Monocle today.
