Putin’s Victory Day does not seem to have been a turning point in Russia’s Ukraine war after all

Much of the world celebrated Victory in Europe Day yesterday, but Russia celebrates its Victory Day on May 9. And expectations were high regarding what President Vladimir Putin might do on this commemoration of Russia’s victory over the Nazis in 1945.

Would Putin formally declare war on Ukraine, thus unlocking vast reserves of former conscripts to prop up his faltering campaign? Would he declare victory, perhaps based on Russia holding much of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region? Would the dictator take his nuclear threats to the next level?

As it turned out, no. Putin’s speech played like a greatest hits of his now-standard rhetoric: Kyiv is run by neo-Nazis and was trying to go nuclear; NATO was weaponizing territories on Russia’s border, and the invasion was “a preemptive strike at the aggression”; the West has abandoned traditional values, but Russia will never do so. At least at the time of publication, today has not proved to be the turning point in Russia’s war that many feared or hoped it might be.

Putin does not announce ‘a war’; nor claim any victory — instead says that Russia is forced to defend itself in the Donbas against Nazis, and that Ukraine had plans to acquire nukes.(!)

A commitment to persist in attack. The West must show similar resolve in Ukraine’s defence.

— Sir John Chipman IISS (@chipmanj) May 9, 2022

That fits with what we’ve been seeing in the past couple weeks. After a pretty escalatory few days in late April, where both Russia and the West heated up their rhetoric, the conflict seems to be in a kind of holding pattern, in which Russia occasionally raises the specter of nuclear conflict, but the West nonetheless refuses to back down—and in which Russia keeps bombarding Ukraine’s east with decreasing precision.

That decreased precision is down to the depletion of Russia’s high-end weaponry, according to the British defense ministry. And there’s the rub: Russia’s army is getting worn down, and it can’t keep going forever, even if Putin is (as theorized by CIA Director William Burns in a Financial Times interview) convinced that his gamble might still pay off.

What rhetoric Putin used in his speech is immaterial. If he didn’t declare war, or a general mobilisation, that’s what important. Without concrete steps to build a new force, Russia can’t fight a long war, and the clock starts ticking on the failure of their army in Ukraine— Phillips P. OBrien (@PhillipsPOBrien) May 9, 2022

Sometimes something not happening is an event in itself. And by the way, it’s comforting to see Burns say in that FT piece that the intelligence community sees no “practical evidence at this point of Russian planning, deployment, or even potential use of tactical nuclear weapons.” More news below.

David Meyer
@superglaze
david.meyer@fortune.com

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This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer.