Putin remains uncompromising on Ukraine, but is public discourse on war changing in Russia?

1 day agoShareSaveAdd as preferred on Google Steve RosenbergBBC Russia Editor Reuters Putin insists Russia's war aims in Ukraine are being reached, even though initial plans were for a short military operation If Vladimir Putin's Russia had an official slogan, what would it be? "Russia is what it is, and we're not ashamed of showing it," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov once told me in an interview. But I recently heard an updated version from veteran pop and folk singer Nadezhda Babkina. After receiving an award from President Putin, Babkina told an audience in the Kremlin: "Russia will never surrender thanks to our remarkable, multi-ethnic genetic code... that holds us all together. "Anyone who doesn't like that," she added, "can go and poison themselves." In many ways, the line "they can go and poison themselves" encapsulates Russia in 2026 - unapologetic, unrepentant and uncompromising. Since ordering the mass invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin leader has displayed no regret, no remorse over his decision to attack Russia's neighbour - and no intention of ceasing hostilities. This week Russia launched another massive missile and drone strike across Ukraine. The attack came on the eve of the annual St Petersburg International Economic Forum, an event designed to showcase Russia to the world. High-profile Western investors and politicians have long stopped coming. But the organisers say that delegations from more than 130 countries and territories will attend. For a country seeking foreign investment, more than four years of war with its neighbour doesn't seem the best . But, as we have established, "Russia is what it is". Forum or no forum, the attacks on Ukraine continue. President Putin's public position on the war is unwavering. He continues to demand that Ukraine cede control to Russia of the entire Donbas region. Vladimir Putin has not changed. But one thing in the Kremlin has. And that is to do with Donald Trump. Last year Russian officials appeared confident that the US president would help deliver a Ukraine peace deal on Moscow's terms. In other words, that President Trump would pressure Kyiv into accepting Moscow's maximalist demands. Following last summer's US-Russia summit in Anchorage, Alaska, for months afterwards senior Russian officials waxed lyrical about the "spirit of Anchorage" - as if Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin had reached a mutual understanding on Ukraine to Moscow's benefit. But no peace deal materialised. "I don't know about the spirit of Anchorage," President Putin's foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told Russian state TV recently. "I have never used that phrase." It was a sign that the "spirit of Anchorage" has, if not disappeared, then at least started evaporating.