“These constant statements — this isn’t the first — that the conflict is moving toward completion…; a few weeks ago he said Kyiv already ‘understands that everything now needs to be negotiated, they are just looking for wording,’ that’s how he put it,” said Fishman.
“None of this corresponds to reality, as we well understand. When he keeps saying ‘we are close, and actually only half a step remains to victory,’ I think he is, among other things, trying to calm his own elite, whose dissatisfaction he certainly senses.”
He added that the main political factor inside Russia is the growing realization that Putin cannot win or end the war.
“This understanding has been building over the past months, and it is decisive,” Fishman said.
“It underlies all the dissatisfaction we see manifesting for other reasons. Because you cannot speak about the war — it’s forbidden, it’s taboo. No one can say that Putin is fighting [it] badly. That is simply unimaginable. The dissatisfaction shows up in other ways.”
Fishman said Putin has no other plan besides hoping to achieve his aims through U.S. President Donald Trump, an outcome Fishman called unlikely.
“As a result, these statements about a quick end to the war and demands that Ukraine’s Defense Forces withdraw from the Donbas turn into incantations that are not backed by anything,” he suggested.
“With each passing day and month, it will be harder for Putin to get out of the war, because it will become increasingly obvious that he will come away with nothing.”