Putin sees the same pressure everyone else sees: a weaker economy, a stalled army, frustrated elites, and a war Russia still cannot win honestly on the battlefield. It seems clear Russia is losing. However, Putin’s calculation is different: He believes Russia can still win. Putin understands that winning on the battlefield is problematic, but that doesn’t reject other strategies, ones without the drones, the fake negotiations, the propaganda, and the pressure on Europe’s air defenses. Putin does not need to defeat NATO directly if he can make democratic governments argue with themselves while Ukraine is forced to fight with less.JOIN US ON TELEGRAMFollow our coverage of the war on the @Kyivpost_official. Kyiv Post Special Correspondent Jason Smart looks at why Putin still thinks time is working for Moscow, why Russia’s internal weakness has not forced him to stop, and why the Kremlin’s real target is the political will behind Ukraine. The battlefield still decides lives and territory, but Putin’s larger bet is that fear, fatigue, and division can deliver what the Russian army has failed to achieve.