Vladimir Putin is a master politician.
The 21st century does not know a Russia without him as either president or prime minister. Western journalists, diplomats and even former U.S. presidents have testified to Putin’s political guile; few world leaders choose their words more carefully, or can express themselves so eloquently.
But not even a man of Putin’s intellect and experience can continue telling the same exact story when the reality around him keeps changing.
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Viewed in isolation, each of the Russian president’s speeches and statements sounds well polished, even after four-and-a-half years of war in Ukraine. Zoom out a little, though, and cracks begin to appear in the carefully curated narrative.
From before the full-scale invasion to today, his own words reveal what has changed, what has stubbornly remained the same—and what that tells us about the war Russia is really fighting.
Without Russia, There Is No Ukraine
July 2021
Less than one year before he unleashed the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian president published an op-ed on the Kremlin’s website. You can tell from the title—On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians—it offered a preview of what was to come.
Besides an opportunity to show off his knowledge of history—his version, at least—Putin’s July 2021 essay centers on one foundational argument: that Ukraine exists as a state entirely because of, thanks to, and at the expense of Russia and the Soviet Union.
“Modern Ukraine is entirely a product of the Soviet era,” Putin wrote, before lamenting that historical Russia “was, in fact, robbed” of its land when Lenin’s Bolsheviks “drew borders arbitrarily and handed out generous territorial gifts.”
What emerges is a paradox in which Putin claims he “respects Ukrainian language, traditions,” and desires to live in a state that is “free, secure and prosperous”—just so long as that state never emerges from Russia’s sphere of influence.
“I am convinced that Ukraine’s true sovereignty is possible only through partnership with Russia…After all, we are one people.”
February 2022
Fast forward seven months, and more than 150,000 soldiers are massing on the edges of Ukraine, waiting for the order to launch their assault. Putin is done with brotherly sentiments of unity; Ukraine is now an insolent child that must be disciplined by Mother Russia.
First, the warning.
In his address to formally recognize Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions as independent republics on February 21, 2022, the Russian president said Ukraine “never had a stable tradition of its own genuine statehood” and criticized the government for “losing national character.” He mocked protesters pulling down statues of Lenin and issued a bald-faced threat: “You want decommunization? We are ready to show you what real decommunization means for Ukraine.”
Three days later, Russian helicopters and fighter jets soared into Ukrainian airspace as tanks began barreling toward Kyiv. But this was not a war; it was merely a “special military operation.”
Putin styled his invasion as a necessary corrective measure to bring an unruly junior misguided by nefarious, Russian-hating forces back under Russia’s wing, and to defend the Russian people from NATO enlargement and Western-backed “neo-Nazis.”
He also justified the special military operation by claiming the “People’s Republics of Donbas”—which he had officially recognized only three days earlier—had appealed to the Kremlin for help.
“We are simply left with no other option to defend Russia and our people other than the one we are forced to use today…the goal is to protect people who have been subjected to eight years of abuse and genocide at the hands of the Kyiv regime. To this end, we will strive for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine,” Putin declared.
But still the Russian president tried to convince Ukrainians, and the world, that he had their best interests at heart.
“I call for cooperation to turn this tragic page as quickly as possible and move forward together, not allowing anyone to interfere in our affairs…Today’s events are not connected with a desire to infringe upon the interests of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.”
Russia Is Fighting the West, Ukraine Is Just the Battleground
September-December 2022
What was supposed to be a days- or weekslong intervention to demilitarize and subjugate Ukraine did not go as planned, and after seven months of bitter warfare, Putin needs more troops.
In his mobilization speech on September 21, the Russian president’s language is completely different. He does not grant Ukraine any agency over its battlefield successes; rather, Russia is now locked in an existential battle for survival against a united Western adversary. Ukraine is merely acting at the behest of its Western “masters.”
Bear in mind that, at this point, Kyiv had yet to receive Western tanks, cruise missiles, fighter jets, Patriot air defense systems, or the U.S. military’s ATACMS long-range rocket system.
This solidifies a core rhetorical device that runs throughout the war—that Russia is not the aggressor; rather, it has been forced to fight a Western bloc hell-bent on bringing about Moscow’s downfall.
“Today, our Armed Forces…are confronting not only neo-Nazi formations, but actually the entire military machine of the collective West,” he declared, adding that Ukraine’s armies were operating “under the actual command of Western advisers.”
“In Washington, London, Brussels…they say Russia must be defeated on the battlefield by all means, followed by the deprivation of political, economic, cultural, and generally all sovereignty, with the complete plundering of our country.”
Then, Putin broke his own rule.
Since March, Russia had criminalized what authorities deemed “false information” about the armed forces and punished those describing the invasion as a war, not a special military operation. The word “war” itself was not technically outlawed, but using it to characterize Russia’s actions had become dangerous.
On December 22, Putin himself uttered the word “war” in relation to Ukraine for the first time. The Kremlin’s carefully policed euphemism for its invasion was abandoned, however briefly, by the man who invented it.
Not So Brotherly After All
August-November 2024
By the summer of 2024, the military realities of the war had rendered Putin’s characterization of the conflict untenable. Ukraine was no longer simply resisting Russian forces on Ukrainian soil; its forces were inside Russia.
On August 6, Ukrainian soldiers surged across the border into Russia’s Kursk region, quickly locking down more than 500 square miles of territory in a stunning offensive. The audacious land grab was ultimately doomed to fail, but it marked a dramatic shift in Putin’s rhetoric.
From August 2024, the historical justifications that characterized his earlier speeches—based on familial claims that Russia was acting in the “best interests of the Ukrainian people” to protect Ukraine’s “true sovereignty” within the Russian sphere—were almost entirely abandoned.
From here on out, Ukraine is treated strictly as an active combatant, albeit still a Western proxy, that represents a threat to Russian territory, sovereignty, and very way of life. The president’s language shifts away from peace processes to a clinical, almost transactional register focused on securing concessions from an enemy.
“The main task facing the Ministry of Defense is, of course, to squeeze out and drive the enemy from our territories,” he said in a meeting with regional officials on August 12, 2024.
“The West is fighting us through the hands of Ukrainians…what kind of negotiations can we even talk about with people who indiscriminately strike at peaceful people, civilian infrastructure? What can we even talk about with them?”
In November, when Russia’s military unleashed its “Oreshnik” intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) on Ukraine for the first time, Putin characterized the strike as a direct retaliation for long-range strikes by Ukraine on Russian territory, using British cruise missiles and U.S. ATACMS.
March-June 2025
By March 2025, Ukrainian troops were clinging desperately to a shrinking wedge of territory in Kursk, and there was a new man in the Oval Office—U.S. President Donald Trump.
Suddenly, Putin was not so keen to lambast America for propping up the “Kyiv regime.” Instead, he suggested Ukrainians were begging for U.S. help to implement a 30-day ceasefire, and played both parties off against each other.
During a March 13 press conference with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Putin said of Ukrainian troops in Kursk: “There will be only two options: surrender or die. And under these circumstances, it seems to me, it would be very good for the Ukrainian side to achieve a ceasefire for at least 30 days.
“Are we supposed to let them out after they’ve committed a multitude of crimes against civilians? How will these 30 days be used? To continue forced mobilization in Ukraine?”
“I think we need to discuss this with our American colleagues and partners, perhaps even call President Trump and discuss it together.”
Through all of this, Putin refused to let go of his deeply rooted worldview that Russians and Ukrainians are part of the same whole. But no longer did he try to conceal the imperialistic ambition behind his invasion more than three years prior.
“I consider the Russian and Ukrainian people one people,” he said in June at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “In that sense, all of Ukraine is ours.”
An Eye for an Eye
May-August 2026
We are now more than four-and-a-half years into Russia’s special military operation—a euphemism that endures in the Russian media and official capacities only. There are no illusions of peace, brotherhood or mutually beneficial resolutions left; even Putin speaks almost exclusively in terms of war, revenge, victory and defeat.
Russia’s May 9 Victory Day celebrations, which typically see a gigantic parade of tanks, nuclear weapons and other military technology to mark the end of the “Great Patriotic War,” fell flat.
“We decided that we would definitely hold festive events, but without a demonstration of military hardware; not only for security reasons, but primarily because the Armed Forces must focus their attention on the final defeat of the enemy.”
Then, in comments to Russian media last week, Putin expressed a singular sentiment: an eye for an eye. In doing so, he unwittingly made a series of major admissions—that Ukraine, once a rebellious child to be disciplined, is now capable of causing Mother Russia serious physical and economic harm.
There’s also the small matter of Russia’s State Duma elections next month, which apparently Ukraine is strong enough to “intimidate and disrupt.”
“The Kyiv regime set a goal to damage our economy. What did it do? It opened this Pandora’s box itself. Well then, you will receive a response to the most sensitive sectors of your economy, which, to be frank, is already taking its last breath,” Putin vowed last week.
“The enemy is trying to intimidate us and disrupt the elections. We will not allow him to do this.”
And yet, the Russian president still cannot bring himself to acknowledge that Ukraine is acting of its own volition.
Even now, as Russian warehouses more than a thousand miles from the front line burn in the wake of strikes by Ukrainian-manufactured drones, Kyiv remains nothing more than the collective West’s tool of choice to destroy Russia.
At the same time, no ceasefire proposal is good enough—Russia must be granted control of more than a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, even though its armies are unable to seize it.
“If we talk about what is happening now, this is, of course, the result of another adventure by the Kyiv regime and its Western curators, who planned to inflict another ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia…at the same time, the proposals brought to us sometimes are, let’s say, exotic in nature, and are unacceptable.”
Putin’s fundamental story has not changed. Ukraine still has no real agency; its government is a puppet, its military a proxy, its successes the work of Western “masters” and “curators.”
And yet, by Putin’s own account, this supposedly subordinate state can strike Moscow, disrupt Russian logistics, damage the economy, and even interfere with national elections. Ukraine will never be Russia’s equal, but it forces the Kremlin to behave like it has something to fear.
Something doesn’t quite add up.