Putin Says He Thinks the Ukraine Conflict Is Coming to an End

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that he thought the Ukraine conflict was coming to an end, according to Reuters.

Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine triggered the most serious crisis in relations between Russia and ​the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when many people feared the ​world was on the brink of nuclear war.

"I think that the matter ⁠is coming to an end," Putin told reporters of the Ukraine war.

Putin was speaking ​in the Kremlin after Russia held its most scaled-back Victory Day parade in years. The May ​9 national holiday celebrates the Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two and pays homage to the 27 million Soviet citizens who perished in the war.

Victory in Ukraine, though, has been elusive ​for Russia.

During four years of the deadliest European conflict since World War Two, Russian ​forces have so far been unable to take the whole of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine where ‌Kyiv's forces have ⁠been pushed back to a line of fortress cities.