By Shashi P.B.B. Malla

Vladimir Putin is fighting on in Ukraine even as the domestic perils grow exponentially.

Amid mounting problems at home, he deludes himself that Russia will win the war eventually.

According to The New York Times columnist, Paul Sonne, in the now fifth year of his aggressive war in Ukraine, difficulties are increasing for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia (Aug. 31).

• His troops have slowed down  on the battlefield
• His spending on the war has ballooned beyond expectations
• His population is not only increasingly fearful of what comes next, but there is open critique of his overall policies from top to bottom of Russian society.

In some places there is open rebellion.

Many people are no longer afraid to voice their opinions, and some have even called upon Putin to step down.

‘And his ability to project control has been undercut by Ukrainian strikes across Russia, with e-commerce warehouses, oil refineries and other facilities on a near daily

       going up in flames on a near daily basis”          (NYT).

According to U.S. sources, the situation in the country has deteriorated to the point that the director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), John Ratcliffe, thought it necessary to make a rare visit last week to Moscow to

• Warn his counterparts not to undertake anything reckless against NATO allies, especially the Baltic countries, and
• To lay out the bleak military and economic reality and to urge the Russian government to cut a peace deal with Ukraine.

With such dire news, he was, of course, not received by Putin.

In fact, Putin has doubled down and shown little indication that he intends to stop fighting.

Perhaps, he believes his predicament is too gloomy to bear.

Instead, the Russian leader has countered that despite Moscow’s challenges, he believes Kyiv’s situation is worse.

Ukraine’s position would have been far better if the U.S. and NATO would supply Ukraine more defensive weapons.

Putin has warned that Ukraine “let the genie out of the bottle” by targeting Russia’s civilian economy and will get its due with a Russian escalation already underway.

“In his assessment, Russia needs to do just better than Ukraine,” believing that Kyiv “is going to crumble” eventually if he just holds on, said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Centre in Berlin.

Putin has consistently underestimated Ukrainian resilience,  Gabuev said. But Kyiv is also indeed facing new perils.

Beyond its dwindling reserves of soldiers and military funds, Ukraine is experiencing severe air-defence shortages that leave Ukrainian territory increasingly vulnerable to Russian ballistic missiles.

As the U.S. war in Iran has depleted intercepter stockpiles, Western allies have become far more constrained or willingness to help.

Moscow each month is churning out dozens of ballistic missiles, formidable weapons that Ukraine lacks.

According to Ukrainian military intelligence, Russia is also turning to North Korea for added ballistic missile power.

Gabuev said this imbalance may be convincing Putin that he is gaining a critical advantage, despite his increasing challenges at home.

The Russian leader, he said will seek to “break”

Ukraine this winter by decimating its civilian infrastructure and military production facilities.

But as he presses on in the war, Putin is moving to contain a situation at home that looks markedly worse than last year.

For much of 2025, the Russian military was taking dozens of square miles of Ukrainian territory each month.

The Kremlin’s engagement with the Trump administration buoyed hopes within Russian society that the war could soon end.

Russia’s technocrats were keeping the wartime economy humming.

The Russian internet was consistently operational.

Gasoline was uniformly available.

And Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory beyond border regions were relatively contained.

All of that has now changed.

“The biggest challenge for Putin right now is that expectations are shifting said Janis Kluge a Russia analyst at the German institute for International and Security Affairs.

“The situation is just very different from a year ago. If you look into the future, if you’re Moscow elites, and you think about where this is going, you will notice it is going in the wrong direction” (NYT).

On the battlefield, the Russian military’s net gain has amounted to just 68 square miles since June 1.

Despite Ratcliffe’s visit to Moscow, there is little indication that peace talks will be fully revived soon, dashing hopes among many Russians for a resolution to the conflict.

“Regarding the issue of peace talks, that topic is currently firmly on hold,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said on Friday, after the visit. “There are no new ideas.”

Ukraine’s long-range strikes have led Russians to question what might come next.

Kyiv is rushing to develop ballistic missiles of its own, with President Volodymyr Zelensky saying this month that he hoped to have concrete results by the end of the year.    

On top of the anxieties about further destruction on Russian territory, many in Russia are worried about a possible new draft to replenish the military, once a parliamentary election concludes next month.

Russia is still scrambling to solve shortages at gas stations across the country and is reeling from repeated attacks on the warehouses of its two e-commerce giants, Wildberries and Ozon.

All the while, the mood in the country has shifted. The percentage of Russians expressing support for the actions of the Russian military in Ukraine has dropped to its lowest level since the start of the ‘special military operation’—Putin’s naked aggression.

The writer can be reached at: shashimalla125@gmail.com