Putin hints at ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, but why now? 

Vladimir Putin has signalled that his country’s war with Ukraine may be ‘coming to an end’, as the Russian president again blamed the West for prolonging the fighting through military support to Kyiv.

Speaking after Victory Day events in Moscow, Putin said on Sunday that he was ready to hold direct talks with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Moscow or a neutral country.

His comments come as Russia and Ukraine observe a short three-day United States-backed ceasefire and continue prisoner-swap discussions. However, broader peace talks remain stalled, and the two sides continue to carry out attacks against each other.

Ukrainian officials said on Sunday that Russian attacks left at least three people dead, and that close to 150 combat engagements had occurred on the front lines in the previous 24 hours.

The remarks also reflect mounting pressure on both sides after more than four years of war that has devastated parts of Ukraine and strained Russia’s economy.

“I ⁠⁠think that the matter is coming to an end,” Putin told reporters of the Russia-Ukraine war, Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.

The Russian leader, however, added he would be willing to meet Zelenskyy only after the terms of a peace agreement had already been settled. The Kremlin had rejected US President Donald Trump’s August 2025 offer to hold a trilateral meeting with Zelenskyy, Putin and Trump.

“This should be the final point, not the negotiations themselves,” Putin said after the Victory Day, which marks Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 in World War II.

The Russian president said he would be willing to negotiate new security arrangements with Europe, and that his preferred negotiating partner would be Germany’s former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Schroeder has faced heavy criticism in Germany for his close relationship with the Russian president. The former German chancellor became chairman of a controversial German-Russian gas pipeline consortium after leaving office in 2005.

Russia has accused the West of expanding the NATO security alliance to encircle it, and Putin has given this as one justification for Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. He framed the NATO expansion as a “matter of life and death” for Russia.

Asked after the parade if Western military support for Ukraine had gone too far, Putin said, “They started ratcheting up the confrontation with Russia, which continues to this day.”

Putin also said Western countries had “spent months waiting for Russia to suffer a crushing defeat, for its statehood to collapse. It didn’t work out”.

“And then they got stuck in that groove, and now they can’t get out of it,” he added.

The Russian president’s suggestion that the end of the war may be approaching is being driven more by global “hope and optimism” than by a sober reading of his words, according to analyst Keir Giles.

Giles, a fellow at Chatham House, noted that there have been “plenty of promises over the last 18 months that the end of the war was imminent”, none of which “turned into reality”, he told Al Jazeera.

He cautioned against interpreting Putin’s comments as a reliable indicator that the conflict is genuinely nearing resolution.

“The best we can hope for is that now Putin realises that Russia is not in fact winning the war,” he opined, adding that Putin may therefore be “more willing to suspend it than previously when he rejected all of the peace efforts of Trump because he believed that Russia could gain more from fighting on than from Trump enforcing a ceasefire”.

The war has killed tens of thousands of people on both sides, left swathes of eastern Ukraine ⁠⁠in ruins, and drained Russia’s $3 trillion economy. Western-led sanctions have also impacted Russia’s economy.

Moscow’s relations with Europe are worse than at any time since the depths of the Cold War. While Russia controls nearly one-fifth of Ukrainian territory, it has struggled to fully capture the eastern Donbas region, while Ukraine’s counteroffensives have failed to reclaim major occupied areas.

Putin’s remarks also coincide with renewed US-led efforts to push both sides towards at least temporary ceasefires and humanitarian agreements. Trump on Friday publicly backed the latest three-day truce, saying he hoped it could become “the beginning of the end” of the war.

The US president placed ending the war in Ukraine at the heart of his 2024 re-election bid, even claiming he could halt the fighting within 24 hours of taking office again.

A deal has proved elusive as Russia has insisted on taking over the entire Donbas region and has opposed Ukraine’s entry into NATO, while Kyiv has refused to concede any territory and has demanded that security guarantees be part of any deal.