Putin now admits what he has denied for months: Russia's war-driven...
Mikhail Khodorkovsky@khodorkovsky_en
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Jan 06, 2026
~2 min read
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Putin now admits what he has denied for months: Russia's war-driven growth is over.
Labor reserves are exhausted, unemployment — at record lows, with no solutions in sight.
1/13 🧵Takeaways from his annual Q&A
Labor reserves are exhausted, unemployment — at record lows, with no solutions in sight.
1/13 🧵Takeaways from his annual Q&A
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Televised "Direct Line" is not a conversation, but a content hub. Its messages are designed to be clipped, repeated, and amplified across state media, turning a staged Q&A into weeks of narrative reinforcement
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This year, over four and a half hours, he reinforced the regime’s core priorities: war, mobilization, and confrontation with the West. He pointedly avoided any meaningful discussion of long-term development
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On the war in Ukraine, Putin signaled “readiness” to negotiate, but dismissed any incentive to compromise. As long as the Kremlin believes the battlefield balance favors Russia and Ukraine is nearing exhaustion, its demands will remain unchanged
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Those demands now go beyond territory and limits on Ukraine's military. The Kremlin is once again questioning Ukraine’s political legitimacy, openly gesturing toward regime change and promoting its own model of what a “legitimate” election would look like in the country
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That model includes the rehabilitation of pro-Russian figures and projects like “The Other Ukraine”, built around exiled politicians such as Viktor Medvedchuk and presented as proof that an alternative, Kremlin-compliant Ukraine still exists
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The economic message Putin sent was notably bleaker than in previous years. Gone was the confident talk of war-driven growth. In its place were admissions of limited resources, slower growth, and tighter fiscal constraints
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Officially, the slowdown is framed as a choice - Russia, the regime says, is sacrificing growth in favour of stability and low inflation. But in reality, the war has shifted from being marketed as an economic stimulus to an acknowledged long-term burden
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With labor reserves exhausted and unemployment at record lows, the Kremlin has no credible answer to structural stagnation. Its main response - efforts to increase the birth rate - offers no relief in the short or medium term
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Social policy is increasingly fused with the war effort. Benefits are concentrated on soldiers and their families, while the “war hero” is elevated as the ideal citizen: loyal, obedient, traditional, and willing to subordinate private life to the state
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Without any positive vision of Russia’s future, confrontation with the West fills the void. Europe is cast as the permanent enemy, while the United States under Donald Trump is framed as a potential deal-maker
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Militarisation, in this context, is not temporary. Even if active fighting ebbs, conflict - real or hypothetical - is becoming the organizing principle that replaces development, reform, and ambition. In other words, Putin is no longer selling progress. He is selling endurance.
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