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‘We expected the war to end’ How Russian political elites feel about the full-scale invasion of Ukraine dragging into 2025 

Source: Meduza

Many among the Russian “elite” are disappointed that Moscow’s war against Ukraine didn’t end in 2024. Meduza heard this from:

As Meduza’s source in the Russian government put it, 

The state of the Russian economy indeed became a “point of tension” by the end of 2024, Meduza’s sources said. Big business spoke openly about its dissatisfaction with the Central Bank’s high key rate. In the words of a Russian consultant who works with both the Putin administration and big businesses: “For now, the majority [of companies] are surviving somehow, everyone is putting on a brave face. Some are even growing. But this is happening due to the cannibalization of the assets of departing foreign companies, the weak ones. But everyone understands this won’t last forever. It definitely won’t get better going forward.” 

Meduza’s sources agree that “hopes for a quick peace” and the easing of sanctions faded after Ukraine launched its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August 2024. However, the source in the Russian government, one of the people close to Putin’s administration, and a lawmaker from United Russia all admitted that the war very well could have dragged on into 2025, even if the Ukrainian army hadn’t embarked on this offensive. 

“The president likes to fight, it’s exciting for him. Why stop halfway if you can put the final squeeze on them?” one source close to the Putin administration asked rhetorically. At the same time, this person said that some “patriots” among the Russian elite (primarily, high-ranking security officials) are unhappy with the president’s approach. “What they have is not enough,” he explained. “[They need] a mobilization, a complete transition to a war footing, and that’s not happening.” 

According to several of Meduza’s sources, Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election renewed “certain hopes” for peace among high-ranking Russian officials. Now, however, these hopes are “already not that high.” “The [Russian] president has his demands — the entire territory of four [of Ukraine’s] regions. Trump’s conditions are different. It’s unclear where the compromise lies,” said one source close to the Kremlin. 

At the same time, two sources close to Putin’s domestic policy team said that despite the “war fatigue,” ending the conflict in 2025 could be a “potential crisis” for officials in the presidential administration. “To put it bluntly, it’s [currently] clear what everything revolves around. [If] the SVO ends, what happens next? [You’d] need to tell people what will happen tomorrow, why it’s hard right now, when things will get easier, and how. And no one knows the answers [to those questions],” one of them explained. 

In early December, Russian media reported that the Putin administration had held a seminar for deputy regional governors, where they discussed “target indicators” for the 2026 State Duma elections and plans for developing a “picture of victory.” Two regional officials who attended the event told Meduza that the war’s end was indeed a topic of discussion, however, administration officials didn’t offer any specifics. “It was more of an acknowledgment [that] the SVO will end anyway and something will need to be done. But how can you prepare for peace if the terms of that peace are unclear? Although, I did realize one thing — any outcome of the SVO will be called a victory,” one recalled. 

Be that as it may, these two sources also said that several scenarios for “entering the post-war reality” were presented at the seminar. “For example, there was talk that in 2025, we could hold early elections, secure a victory, and elect a ‘victory parliament’ that includes some proportion of military personnel,” one regional official recalled. “But these were just cursory proposals.”

A political strategist working for the Putin administration familiar with this particular “proposal” said he “didn’t see any point in early elections.” “Why move up the elections if they’re already so close? Besides, the economic situation is bad [and] it certainly won’t be any better by fall. But in 2026, who knows?” he told Meduza. 

The Kremlin is also considering “deeper integration” with Belarus among the potential options for its hypothetical “new agenda” for Russia in peacetime. According to one source close to the Putin administration, this could include anything from the establishment of “joint agencies” to “a reunion of lands that fell apart in the 1990s.” (“This is an event where they can find something positive, and they know how to sell it,” he added, referring to the latter scenario.) However, this person also said that whether or not deepening ties is realistic “depends entirely on Aleksandr Lukashenko, and he clearly wants to remain the full-fledged ruler [of Belarus].” 

With or without a “new agenda,” public opinion polls show that the majority of Russians are in favor of starting negotiations, signing a peace deal, and ending the war with Ukraine. Even data from Veber — the polling arm of ANO Dialog, a pro-Kremlin “nonprofit” that runs PR and disinformation campaigns for the Russian Defense Ministry — shows that two-thirds of Russians were dissatisfied with the results of 2024.