How to read Putin’s poker face as he bets large on victory in 2024

As the two year anniversary of the Ukraine war looms, Vladimir Putin appears confident that the cards are stacked in his favour. However, there is a flaw in his game plan, says Russian expert and author Mark Galeotti – and it could prove fatal

Putin delivers a speech as he attends a ceremony for newly-built nuclear submarines at the Sevmash shipyard earlier this month (AP)

Last week Vladimir Putin held his annual marathon press conference and town hall, and he gave no hint of any give in his approach to the war. After all, he may well feel that, after a disastrous 2022, this past year has been more successful than expected, allowing him to gamble on 2024 as the year he may be able to wrest some kind of victory from the initial catastrophic blunders of the invasion.

Certainly, he expressed satisfaction with the situation on the battlefield, asserting that Russian forces were doing well all along the front line. As for this year’s Ukrainian counteroffensive, “none of it worked anywhere,” he claimed. “I don’t even know why they do this. They are just sending their men out to be destroyed. It’s a one-way ticket.” Of course, this was not above outright fabrication – such as his claim that Ukrainian losses substantially exceeded Russian – but in essence he is quite satisfied with a stalemate. For the moment.

Putin’s strategy for 2024 will not depend on some major breakthrough on the battlefield, although we can expect the Russians to continue to try. Rather, it is that he can at once maintain the pressure on Kyiv and let “Ukraine fatigue” in the United States and Europe steadily mount. As he put it, “Ukraine produces almost nothing today, everything is coming from the West, but the free stuff is going to run out some day, and it seems it already is.”