Russian President Vladimir Putin began a marathon annual appearance by speaking confidently of Russia’s position on the battlefield in its war on Ukraine and gave no signal that Moscow is ready to make substantial concessions in the name of peace.
The December 19 Results Of The Year 2025 event, combining a press conference with thoroughly vetted questions from Russian citizens, came amid a diplomatic push by US President Donald Trump to broker peace almost four years after Putin launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
“Our troops are advancing along the entire line of contact. In some places at a faster pace, in others more slowly. But in all directions the enemy is retreating,” Putin said only a few minutes into the televised appearance event in Moscow, which is watched in Russia and abroad for messages on Kremlin intensions.
The heavily scripted event often runs several hours.
Putin has repeatedly said in recent months that Russia has the upper hand in the war and will achieve its goals. There was no sign of a change in his initial remarks at the closely choreographed event, clearly aimed to project confidence to viewers in Russia, Ukraine, Europe, the US, and the world.
“I am certain that by the end of the year, we will see new successes” on the battlefield,” Putin said before turning to other matters.
Russian forces have been creeping forward, grinding down Ukraine’s outmanned and frequently outgunned defenses in multiple places along the 1,100-kilomter front line.
Putin painted a particularly rosy picture of Russia’s advances, however, asserting that Moscow’s troops had nearly captured the Kharkiv region city of Kupyansk, encircling Ukrainian soldiers there.
That claim is highly debatable; Ukrainian forces staged a counterattack on Russian advances last month, and this week, Ukraine’s commander in chief claimed Kyiv controlled most of the city. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a defiant trip to the city last week, taking selfies to try and prove the city had not fallen.
Putin also highlighted Russian advances in Pokrovsk, a Donetsk region city that Moscow has prioritized for nearly a year and is in danger of falling to Russia. Ukraine claims they still control the city center and northern districts.
Russia has resisted calls by Kyiv and the West for a cease-fire for months and has made the push for peace difficult by signaling it wis not prepared for compromise. But Putin suggested that it is Ukraine that is hampering peace efforts — in part by refusing to withdraw from the part of the Donetsk region its troops still hold.
“We do not see Kyiv’s readiness to stop this conflict,” Putin said. In a nod to ongoing diplomatic efforts, he said shortly afterward that Moscow sees “some signals,” including from Ukraine’s government, “that they are ready for some sort of dialogue.
Putin began speaking just hours after the European Union failed to agree on a proposal to use frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine’s economic and military needs in the coming years. Instead, EU leaders agreed the bloc will provide a 90 billion-euro ($106 billion) interest-free loan to Kyiv.
US envoys have held several rounds of separate talks with Ukrainian and Russian officials, with European leaders also weighing in to help Kyiv try to avert a deal that would favor Moscow.
Trump said on December 15 that he believes “we’re closer now than we have been ever” to an agreement, but the positions of Russia and Ukraine remain far apart on key issues including territorial control, particularly in the Donbas — the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine, where fighting is fierce.
The event in Moscow, held in various forms most years since Putin came to power a quarter-century ago, comes ahead of expected US talks in Miami — again separately — with Ukrainian and Russian representatives.
Putin has given few signs, if any, that Russia is ready for compromises, and some analysts say he sees peace talks as merely part of a process that could help Russia achieve goals ranging from territorial control to the subjugation of Ukraine.
In combative comments on December 17, Putin said Russia will take territory that it considers its own by force if any peace proposal that emerges falls short of Moscow’s demands.
After the US came out with a 28-point peace proposal that echoed some of Moscow’s positions and was widely seen as favorable to Russia, Ukraine and its European backers scrambled to make amendments to protect Ukraine’s interests on territory, security guarantees for Kyiv, and other issues.
In 2014, Russia seized Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and fomented a war against Kyiv’s forces in the Donbas, which was still simmering when Putin ordered the full-scale invasion.
It has led to the biggest war in Europe since 1945 and the death or wounding of some 1.5 million soldiers on both sides, as well as thousands of Ukrainian civilians killed or injured in daily Russian drone and missile attacks.
