Four Revelations From Putin at the Victory Day Parade

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky had suggested Ukraine could attack Russia’s Victory Day parade before later declaring he’d “permit” it to proceed. So no bombs went off last week during the annual event. But in the press conference that followed, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin dropped a number of bomb shells, revealing four important details that had never been disclosed before. 

The only revelation that the media seized on is an apparent statement by Putin that the war in Ukraine is almost over. “I believe,” Putin said, “that the matter is coming to an end, but this is a really serious matter.”

But Putin’s statement is ambiguous. It was not read from notes but was part of a response to a reporter’s question about whether the West had gone too far in backing Ukraine. To what, exactly, does “the matter” refer?

Nicolai Petro, Professor of Political Science at University of Rhode Island, told The American Conservative that Ukrainian commentators seem to think it refers to Russian combat operations in Ukraine. But before the bombshell phrase, Putin said that Europe was offering “assistance” to Ukraine and “fostering confrontation with Russia.” The “serious matter” may refer to European support for Ukraine’s war effort.

Geoffrey Roberts, professor emeritus of history at University College Cork, told me that Putin’s full line is best translated as, “Well, that’s great, they promised assistance and promoted confrontation with Russia, which continues to this day. I think that business is coming to an end, but it’s still serious.” Roberts interprets that translation to mean that Putin was “talking about the confrontation with Europe, not the war as such.”

Richard Sakwa, professor emeritus of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, agrees. He says Putin was not saying that the war is ending, “but the framework in which the West supported Ukraine is ending.”

If this is the case, Petro says, then Putin could have been referring to the recent discussions in Europe on the need to establish some sort of dialogue with Russia.

Though there has been no sea change in the willingness of European leaders to talk to Moscow, there has been a sea change in their willingness to talk about talking to Moscow. It began with Belgian Prime Minister Bart de Wever, who said in March that “we must end the conflict in Europe’s interest…. we must normalize relations with Russia and regain access to cheap energy. It is common sense. In private European leaders tell me I am right, but no one dares say it out loud.”

He was followed by Finland’s President Alexander Stubb, who argued, “It’s time to start talking to Russia.” Italy and Austria have both suggested it is time for Europe to take a direct part in the negotiations. European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas says that EU foreign ministers will discuss the possibility of engaging in direct talks with Russia when they meet at the end of May, and the president of the European Council, António Costa, says that there is “potential” for the EU to negotiate with Putin and that the council is now trying to “identify what we need effectively to discuss with Russia when it comes to the right moment to do this”.

The second revelation was Putin’s declaration of his choice of negotiating partner: “Personally, I would prefer former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.”

Schroeder is an intriguing choice. He reportedly enjoys a close relationship with Putin. During the Istanbul negotiations that came so close to ending the war in March and April of 2022, the Ukrainian government requested that Schroeder use that relationship to help negotiate an end to the war. He would play a significant role in those talks and helped build the deal that reports suggest was nearly finalized.

Following the death of the draft agreement, Schroeder said “the Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They first had to ask the Americans about everything they discussed…. Everything else was decided in Washington. That was fatal.”

Reportedly, Berlin might be open to Putin’s suggestion as long as Schroeder is partnered with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier. Another interesting choice. Steinmeier was foreign minister when the Minsk Accords, the best chance to have avoided the war, stalled. Steinmeier had suggested a simplified version of the deal that would have returned the eastern Donbas region to Ukraine but with a special autonomous status, a proposal that Zelensky initially signed on to.

Putin’s third revelation pertained to what he sees as a betrayal by the West that helped kill diplomacy in the early months following Russia’s February 2022 invasion.

Putin has always insisted that, during the Istanbul negotiations, he pulled his troops back from Kiev to facilitate the negotiations. “Essentially, a draft of this agreement was agreed upon,” he has said. “But after the withdrawal of our troops from near Kiev, which we were asked to do to create conditions for the conclusion of the final agreement, the Kiev authorities rejected all previous agreements.”

But in his press conference, Putin, for the first time, named the person who did the asking: “We concluded an agreement with the Ukrainians and initialed it in Istanbul in 2022. And then one of my colleagues – frankly, it was Macron who did it – called me and said, ‘Ukraine cannot sign such documents with a gun to its head.’… I asked him, ‘What should we do?’ He said, ‘Can you withdraw troops from Kiev?’ We have done it.”

The West has been skeptical about this claim. But Putin claims to “have the tape of that conversation.”

The account aligns with an earlier telling in which he claimed, “My counterparts in France and Germany said, ‘How can you imagine them signing a treaty with a gun to their heads? The troops should be pulled back from Kiev.’ I said, ‘All right.’ We withdrew the troops from Kiev. As soon as we pulled back our troops from Kiev, our Ukrainian negotiators immediately threw all our agreements reached in Istanbul into the bin.” Putin’s press conference after the Victory Day parade was the first time he has named Macron himself as one of the “counterparts” who made the request.

The final revelation was not about Ukraine, but Iran. Putin called this revelation “sensitive.” Discussing the Trump administration’s insistence that all highly enriched uranium be removed from Iran, Putin said Russia offered to have the material transferred to its territory. That is not news. What Putin revealed is that everyone—the United States, Iran and Israel—had agreed to that solution. But then, he added, “the United States toughened its stance, insisting that the materials be transferred exclusively to its territory.” It was then, according to Putin, that Iran responded by toughening its own stance: They were no longer willing to ship their highly enriched uranium out of the country. Instead, they would eliminate it by “establishing a joint venture on the Iranian territory and jointly diluting the uranium there” in “cooperation with Russia.” Though Russia’s proposal “remains on the table,” Putin said this crucial issue “has now reached an impasse.”

All four of these revelations are important and new. Of course, these are all Putin’s perspective of his communications with Western leaders. Still, these four revelations should be taken into consideration by Americans and Europeans who seek to understand a Russian perspective on world affairs.