Last Friday, I listened to Vladimir Putin's speech, and I realized that he is not fighting Ukraine or even NATO and the West, which he attacked throughout his speech; I thought, he is now fighting reality itself.
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Except for emotions and demagoguery, the speech contained one essential matter: his willingness to negotiate with Ukraine, although without the annexed territories on the table. He said these things while the Ukrainians were advancing and the Russians were fleeing. Saying "we will not discuss the future of these territories" is possible only when you really control them, or when you are advancing – and the enemy is fleeing from you. Only then can you set conditions. Therefore, in my opinion, he is in conflict with reality or is at least trying to ignore it.
Does Putin not understand the magnitude of the problem? He has declared his willingness to negotiate three times over the past two weeks. Twice, in a talk with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkish President Recept Tayyip Erdoğan, he did not even set any conditions. In other words, he expressed his will to stop the campaign, which means he understands that his army is retreating and that victory is nowhere on the horizon. After all, in the past, when he thought he was winning, he declined Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy requests to negotiate and set unfulfillable conditions. And here, even before the speech, he again expressed his willingness to negotiate, but this time, after referendums were held, he set a condition.
But here, too, there is a nuance: The referendums were held against Putin's wishes. His main goal is to stop the war, and the referendums are getting in his way because if beforehand he was able to return territories he captured, the second they became part of the Russian federation – his wiggle room shrunk.
How did the referendums come about? To Putin's surprise, the heads of the Donetsk and Luhansk "republics" began playing a game of their own.
Several days earlier, the Kremlin announced that the referendums were being postponed and that the advisers sent to prepare the campaigns had left the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia districts. Time and again, it has been said that the military problem needs to be solved, the Ukrainians' progress must be stopped, and only afterward, deal with the referendums and the annexation of the captured territories. That made sense.
Not two or three days had passed before the Donetsk and Luhansk legislatures appealed to the heads of the "republics" Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, publicly requesting referendums on joining Russia.
What happened is quite clear: The leaders read the leaks from the Kremlin and realized that if the referendums are postponed; the Kremlin intends to get rid of them. After all, they saw what happened near Kharkiv – the fleeing Russians left the collaborators behind – and decided to act.
It is possible that Pushilin and Pasechnik had allies in the Kremlin, but the underlying motive was their desire to save their skin. Suddenly, the hawks in Moscow realized that the move was aligned with their expectations of increasing the stakes that would lead to escalation and hem Putin in, and, together, they launched a public-media operation in favor of the referendums.
The Kremlin was trapped. After all, what can they say? We entered Ukraine in order to protect the residents of these regions. If we forbid them from conducting a referendum, then what are we doing there? A refusal to hold referendums would have negated the legitimacy of the war. The Kremlin was forced to agree, even though it was not in favor.
This is how the release of the prisoners from the Azov Regiment can be understood – it was an attempt at signaling to Kyiv that he, Putin, is not so evil, that business can be conducted with him. Because Putin's goal is to reach negotiations quickly; otherwise, he will lose the war. And if he loses, he will also lose his power. His entire legitimacy is based on the assumption that he is strong and always wins. And if it turns out that he has grown old and is therefore losing, no one will need him.
And why was it necessary to lash out against the West and its values and speak against its "dictations"? In order to change the narrative and obscure the fact that this is a conflict between Russia and the whole world.
Putin knows that the Russian citizens do not want to be isolated because even the extremists realize it is impossible to win a fight against the whole world. So, he is trying to change Russia's image and present it as the one leading most of the world, which is in conflict with the West. This is an attempt to prevent depression, sobbing, and lament – because with a fragmented base, how is it possible for him not to lose his power?
There was no change in the content either, but the element of anti-colonialism was emphasized: Putin spoke as the leader of a third-world country as if he stood at the head of Senegal or Uganda.
This matter shows us that he is getting weaker. The events he started spiraled out of his control. Putin is no longer so much leading as being led. There are still decisions he makes on his own and creates an agenda with. Still, regarding certain questions, the events develop unconnected to him and sometimes also against his wishes, and he cannot do anything about it.
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