{"id":26943,"date":"2026-05-10T20:45:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T20:45:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/26943\/"},"modified":"2026-05-10T20:45:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T20:45:12","slug":"putin-hints-at-ending-russias-war-in-ukraine-but-why-now-explainer-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/26943\/","title":{"rendered":"Putin hints at ending Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine, but why now? | Explainer News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vladimir Putin has signalled that his country\u2019s war with Ukraine may be \u2018coming to an end\u2019<\/a>, as the Russian president again blamed the West for prolonging the fighting through military support to Kyiv.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

What did Putin say?<\/p>\n

\u201cI \u2060\u2060think that the matter is coming to an end,\u201d Putin told reporters of the Russia-Ukraine war, Europe\u2019s deadliest conflict since World War II.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s August 2025 offer to hold a trilateral meeting with Zelenskyy, Putin and Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis should be the final point, not the negotiations themselves,\u201d Putin said after the Victory Day, which marks Russia\u2019s victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 in World War II.<\/p>\n

The Russian president said he would be willing to negotiate new security arrangements with Europe, and that his preferred negotiating partner would be Germany\u2019s former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Russia has accused the West of expanding the NATO security alliance to encircle it, and Putin has given this as one justification for Russia\u2019s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine. He framed the NATO expansion as a \u201cmatter of life and death\u201d for Russia.<\/p>\n

Asked after the parade if Western military support for Ukraine had gone too far, Putin said, \u201cThey started ratcheting up the confrontation with Russia, which continues to this day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putin also said Western countries had \u201cspent months waiting for Russia to suffer a crushing defeat, for its statehood to collapse. It didn\u2019t work out\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then they got stuck in that groove, and now they can\u2019t get out of it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

Why is Putin talking about ending the war now?<\/p>\n

The Russian president\u2019s suggestion that the end of the war may be approaching is being driven more by global \u201chope and optimism\u201d than by a sober reading of his words, according to analyst Keir Giles.<\/p>\n

Giles, a fellow at Chatham House, noted that there have been \u201cplenty of promises over the last 18 months that the end of the war was imminent\u201d, none of which \u201cturned into reality\u201d, he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

He cautioned against interpreting Putin\u2019s comments as a reliable indicator that the conflict is genuinely nearing resolution.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best we can hope for is that now Putin realises that Russia is not in fact winning the war,\u201d he opined, adding that Putin may therefore be \u201cmore 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\u201d.<\/p>\n

The war has killed tens of thousands of people on both sides, left swathes of eastern Ukraine \u2060\u2060in ruins, and drained Russia\u2019s $3 trillion economy. Western-led sanctions have also impacted Russia\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n

Moscow\u2019s 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\u2019s counteroffensives have failed to reclaim major occupied areas.<\/p>\n

Putin\u2019s 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 \u201cthe beginning of the end\u201d of the war.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

A deal has proved elusive as Russia has insisted on taking over the entire Donbas region and has opposed Ukraine\u2019s entry into NATO, while Kyiv has refused to concede any territory and has demanded that security guarantees be part of any deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Vladimir Putin has signalled that his country\u2019s war with Ukraine may be \u2018coming to an end\u2019, as the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[591,1029,8,9,790,349,7,536],"class_list":{"0":"post-26943","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-top-stories","8":"tag-europe","9":"tag-explainer","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-russia","13":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","14":"tag-top-stories","15":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@news\/116552238474017008","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}