Vladimir Putin emerged from the Kremlin on Saturday, hours after a stripped-down Victory Day parade, and offered the most explicit signal yet that he sees the war in Ukraine winding down. "I think the matter is coming to an end," the Russian president told reporters, language that — even hedged — went further than anything he has said publicly since the conflict began.
Putin said a face-to-face meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy was "also possible" but conditioned it on the prior conclusion of a peace treaty rather than offering it as a step toward one. He suggested a neutral third country as the venue and named former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, an old business partner, as a preferred intermediary.
The remarks came on the second day of a three-day truce brokered by the Trump administration, which is also overseeing a 1,000-for-1,000 prisoner swap announced earlier in the week. "Hopefully, it is the beginning of the end of a very long, deadly, and hard fought War," the US president wrote on Truth Social on Friday.
Western capitals received Putin's wording with a mix of cautious interest and scepticism. The Kremlin has previously appeared to soften its tone before backing away, and Putin's framing — blaming "globalist elites" in Western capitals for the conflict — left the substantive Russian demands on territory, NATO membership and Ukrainian armed forces unchanged.
Officials in Kyiv have not formally responded to the third-country offer. Zelenskyy has said throughout the spring that he is willing to meet but has insisted on a meeting that produces a settlement, not one that becomes a photograph.
The Victory Day parade itself was the smallest of Putin's tenure. Defence ministry footage showed a thinned column of armour and reduced flyovers; the only foreign leader on the reviewing platform was Belarus's Alexander Lukashenko. Chinese President Xi Jinping, present at last year's 80th anniversary parade, did not attend.
Russian forces remain in possession of roughly a fifth of Ukrainian territory, including Crimea, and have made incremental gains in Donetsk in recent weeks. Both sides have continued long-range drone and missile exchanges up to the start of the truce window, which is scheduled to end Monday.
Western analysts caution that a temporary ceasefire is not a peace plan. The terms of any settlement — recognition of occupied territory, the future of sanctions, security guarantees for Kyiv — remain contested in private exchanges between Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian negotiators.
For now, the immediate test is whether the three-day truce holds through Monday and whether the prisoner exchange proceeds as agreed. If both stick, the question shifts from whether talks happen to where, and on whose terms.