It was an unusual statement to make at a time of acute pressure.

Russian President Vladimir Putin used the weekend’s hallowed May 9 Victory Day parades, commemorating the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany, to utter something remarkable: that he believed the matter of the Ukrainian conflict “was coming to an end.” This comment, Putin’s first real indication his war of choice might be nudging towards a conclusion, came after a lengthy lament about the failed negotiations at the start of the 2022 invasion, and was extraordinarily brief.

Yet this is not a man who speaks casually, or erratically. This is not his possible audience of one: US President Donald Trump. Putin’s rare departure from his normal, unsatisfiable position, may have been designed to sustain the illusion that peace in Ukraine can be brokered soon, which the Kremlin head has long sought to keep alive.

Yet all the same, on a day when Moscow was in full military flex, he chose not to sound the maximalist bugle – that the “special military operation” must continue until its goals are met. (Spoiler: Those goals – demilitarizing Ukraine and taking its eastern Donbas region – are nowhere near achieved.) Instead, Putin seemed to reflect the prevailing sentiment in Russia, supported by recent opinion polls, that the war needs to end soon.

There was another twist to Putin’s surprise gambit: he suggested Gerhard Schröder, who was German chancellor from 1998 to 2005 during Putin’s early honeymoon with the West, be the negotiating point man for any future, direct talks with Europe. Schröder was chairman of the board of Russia’s Nord Stream gas pipeline project until he resigned upon the 2022 invasion, but has remained close to Putin. He’s been discredited in the eyes of many by that association, and the immediate response to this idea in Europe was reportedly weak, but it may be heard in Washington, DC and further complicate genuine efforts to get peace moving.

It is easy to view Putin’s new talk of diplomacy through the prism of his past year of stunted, feigned, toying with peace. But the perceived wisdom that Putin’s rule cannot survive anything short of almost total victory in Ukraine has been undermined by the recent widespread criticism across Russia of the war’s conduct, duration and horrific human and economic cost. The whisper is emerging in the Moscow elite that Putin might simply not (politically) survive the war at all.

It’s hard to see the parade on Red Square as anything other than a startling humiliation to the literal fortress of the Kremlin. Prior to the event, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a “decree” authorizing it – stopping his forces striking the area – a moment of trolling that belies the idea Kyiv feels on the back foot.

The absence of Russian military hardware from the parade is a stark contrast to the bristling display of force previous years have provided, when Western arms experts would leer at the latest model of tank to note tiny updates. This year, Moscow just had soldiers, and they too are increasingly in short supply.

It’s long been a forlorn – even fanciful – European hope that Russia would one day just crumble on Ukraine. Short of real European or NATO military involvement in the war, it became the continent’s sole strategy – apply pressure and hope Moscow would break before Kyiv. With Trump’s return to the White House last year, Europe had little other choice.

The war’s progress has been one of successes and failures for both sides over its four years. Moscow’s initial failures still led to territory being taken and held, then lost. Then its grind-or-die stubbornness led to a slow taking of small parts of the frontline that tore through Ukraine’s limited manpower. Last year, Kyiv seemed on the ropes, lacking resources and the full support of its most important ally, the United States. But the smell around this latest twist in fortunes is different for two reasons.

Firstly, Russia’s collapse in morale is palpable. That only occurs in a police state when a critical mass of disenchantment begins to see itself as the majority, and confident enough to raise its head above the parapet. Putin has survived violent criticism of his war before – when the short-lived coup led by Yevgeny Prigozhin faltered as dramatically as it had begun in 2023.

But he is running out of impoverished Russians or convicts to sign up and then lose in poorly planned “meatgrinder” assaults, and struggling to lure students from the middle classes into the ranks.

The Russian economy is truly feeling the strain now. The elite is apparently irritated enough Putin feels obliged to placate them with the suggestion – relayed Saturday on state media – that the war may be coming to a close. A lot can still change, and Russia’s reported amassing of troops along the front line might yet yield progress. But the Kremlin is in trouble.

The second change is in the Ukrainians’ fortunes. They too lack soldiers – perhaps more drastically – but they have robots aplenty. The almost negligible progress of Russia on the front lines is largely down to Kyiv finding ways to attack, resupply, evacuate and intercept Russian attacks with unmanned vehicles, or drones.

It is a truly remarkable feat, the significance of which in modern warfare was highlighted when the wealthy Gulf nations came rushing to Zelensky in March for help to defend their skies from Iranian drones. He truly now has “the cards” to carry on fighting, after Trump last year said he had none.

Moscow has caught up the technology gap before, often in months, and so Ukraine should heed the Russian metaphor of having “champagne too early.”

But a summer looms where, despite the Iran war starving Ukraine of the global attention it urgently needs, Kyiv remains on its feet, rather than its knees: a story of remarkable survival, against heavily stacked odds, as there has been no other choice.

Meanwhile, Putin’s apparent belief that his state resources are endless is slowly emerging as the folly it always was. All wars end, and perhaps Putin has finally seen that.