• Many among the Russian “elite” are disappointed that Moscow’s war against Ukraine didn’t end in 2024. As Meduza’s source in the Russian government put it, “The main emotion is disappoissntment. We expected the war to end, for the fighting to end. Fatigue has been the main feeling for a long time. We’re already tired of waiting, even. It feels like you’re going deeper and deeper every day. We also expected some kind of lifting of sanctions in exchange for peace. Now, they’re inflicting more and more pain.
• The state of the Russian economy indeed became a “point of tension” by the end of 2024, Meduza’s sources said. Big business spoke openly about its dissatisfaction with the Central Bank’s high key rate. In the words of a Russian consultant who works with both the Putin administration and big businesses: “For now, the majority [of companies] are surviving somehow, everyone is putting on a brave face. Some are even growing. But this is happening due to the cannibalization of the assets of departing foreign companies, the weak ones. But everyone understands this won’t last forever. It definitely won’t get better going forward.” 
• Meduza’s sources agree that “hopes for a quick peace” and the easing of sanctions faded after Ukraine launched its incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August 2024. However, the source in the Russian government, one of the people close to Putin’s administration, and a lawmaker from United Russia all admitted that the war very well could have dragged on into 2025, even if the Ukrainian army hadn’t embarked on this offensive. 
• … [T]wo sources close to Putin’s domestic policy team said that despite the “war fatigue,” ending the conflict in 2025 could be a “potential crisis” for officials in the presidential administration. “To put it bluntly, it’s [currently] clear what everything revolves around. [If] the SVO ends, what happens next? [You’d] need to tell people what will happen tomorrow, why it’s hard right now, when things will get easier, and how. And no one knows the answers [to those questions],” one of them explained.
• With or without a “new agenda,” public opinion polls show that the majority of Russians are in favor of starting negotiations, signing a peace deal, and ending the war with Ukraine. Even data from Veber—the polling arm of ANO Dialog, a pro-Kremlin “nonprofit” that runs PR and disinformation campaigns for the Russian Defense Ministry—shows that two-thirds of Russians were dissatisfied with the results of 2024. 
   

Opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author. Photo by AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky.