the generals say all goals of the war will be achieved.The economists say despite the pressure, the economy will outlast Ukraine’s. Even US President Donald Trump says russia is much stronger and kyiv has no cards left to play in the war.

Hearing only reassurance, it is little wonder that Russian President Vladimir Putin sees no reason for real concessions on Ukraine. From the vantage point of the Kremlin,the war is going according to plan.

It is unclear whether Putin will accept the latest US peace plan, which most analysts have called slanted towards Russia, since it does not achieve all of his goals in the war. Since he believes he is winning and thinks the economy is strong, there is little reason for any sort of concessions.

As Russian President Vladimir Putin shed his interest in autonomous media and civil liberties and turned his focus to res

From Liberal Promises to Hardline Hawks: How Putin’s Inner Circle transformed

Two decades ago, Vladimir Medinsky was a relatively unknown figure. Today,he’s Russia’s chief negotiator in talks with Ukraine and a prominent advocate for Putin’s ambition to reassert Moscow’s control over former Soviet nations. A new bust of Stalin even appeared in the Moscow subway this spring.

A video resurfaced recently shows Putin, in his first year in office in 2000, arguing that independent media and civil liberties were crucial to prevent Russia from “sliding into totalitarianism,” and that a free press was vital for the country’s future.

In the ensuing years, Putin abandoned these ideals, shifting his focus to restoring the Soviet sphere of influence – and those around him followed suit.

Perhaps the most dramatic transformation is that of Dmitry Medvedev. As prime minister during his 2008-2012 swap with Putin, Medvedev’s term saw a brief period of liberalisation, a more amicable relationship with the West, and a fondness for Western technology and social media.

Now, Medvedev has become a staunch hawk, repeatedly calling for “nuclear destruction” on the West in his blog posts. Analysts suggest this shift is a calculated attempt to avoid political irrelevance and distance himself from his earlier, more liberal stances.

Russia analysts debate the key turning points. Some point to Putin’s return to power in 2012 after Medvedev’s brief thaw, while others cite the 2014 annexation of Crimea as the moment of no return. Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, investigative journalists specializing in Russian special services, argue in thier book Our Dear Friends in Moscow that the transformation began much earlier, during Putin’s first terms, with many individuals privately adopting the Kremlin’s viewpoint.

The Kremlin’s Echo Chamber and the Ukraine War

For years, a former Russian diplomat, Boris Bondarev, witnessed a disturbing trend within the Kremlin: the deliberate cultivation of an isolated information ecosystem. This wasn’t merely about controlling the narrative externally, but about creating a reality were dissenting voices were silenced and confirmation bias reigned supreme.Bondarev, who resigned from his post in protest of the war in Ukraine, describes a system where officials were rewarded not for accurate assessments, but for telling President Vladimir putin what he wanted to hear.

“The problem is that for 20 years, Putin has been building a system where there is no feedback,” Bondarev explained in an interview. “He is surrounded by people who are afraid to tell him the truth. They tell him what they think he wants to hear, and he believes them.” This created a distorted perception of reality, where the potential costs and complexities of actions like the invasion of Ukraine were drastically underestimated.

The roots of this echo chamber, according to Bondarev, lie in the gradual dismantling of independent media and the suppression of critical thinking within the foreign policy establishment. Over time, the Kremlin fostered a culture where questioning the official line was seen as disloyalty, and those who dared to challenge the prevailing wisdom were marginalized or removed.This process was aided by a elegant propaganda apparatus that relentlessly promoted a narrative of Western hostility and Russian exceptionalism.

The consequences of this self-imposed isolation were on full display in the lead-up to the war in Ukraine. Bondarev recounts how warnings from intelligence agencies and even some within the foreign ministry about the potential for fierce resistance and international condemnation were dismissed or downplayed. Instead, the Kremlin operated under the assumption that Ukraine woudl quickly collapse and that the West would be too divided to mount a meaningful response.

“They genuinely believed that the Ukrainians would welcome them with flowers,” Bondarev said. “They thought that the West was weak and decadent and that they could easily get away with it.” This miscalculation, he argues, was a direct result of the Kremlin’s inability to accurately assess the situation on the ground and the pervasive belief in its own propaganda.

The internal dynamic also fostered a sense of complacency and overconfidence. Bondarev observed that the Kremlin’s leadership increasingly believed that its narrative had succeeded and that Western opposition had been disarmed.

“Eventually, the target audience for this propaganda was not just foreign countries; it was our own leadership,” Bondarev said.”My colleagues in the Kremlin repeatedly told me that Putin likes his foreign minister,Sergei Lavrov,because he is ‘comfortable’ to work with,always saying yes to the president and telling him what he wants to hear. Small wonder, then, that Putin thought he would have no trouble defeating Kyiv.”

Such ideological U-turns are not unusual in politics, and it is often challenging to distinguish public positioning from personal conviction, but their consequences escalate dramatically as power concentrates, now culminating in how the war in Ukraine might end as both Moscow and Washington exert pressure on Kyiv to give up.