June 30, 2026: Russian leader Vladimir Putin is trying to explain to the Russian people that Russia has lost its war against Ukraine. Putin’s initial strategy was to call whatever happens in Ukraine a Russian victory. The Russian media will be ordered to proclaim victory. Meanwhile the Russians who are still fighting in the war or returned as wounded veterans in addition to the families of the 1.4 million Russians killed, disabled or missing will initially be glad that the war is over.

Putin’s main aim is to avoid exposing the Russian people to the sudden shock of defeat after more than four years of fighting and all the media coverage that followed. Sudden shocks tend to spark popular revolutions. Putin wants the news of the Russian defeat to arrive slowly and smoothly to avoid any sudden realizations that Putin’s war failed and all the losses were for nothing.

Putin is trying to rewrite history as it is being made. This is nothing new for Russians, who saw their truthful history of the Cold War eventually rewritten by Putin’s orders at the end of the 1990s. While this sort of thing would not be acceptable in the democratic West, it has long been acceptable in Russia no matter who or what was in charge. The current defeat generated articles like Amazing Defeats: When Geopolitical Losses Can Be More Useful than Brilliant Victories. The article concentrated on the distant past rather than current events, but it rapidly attracted attention from Putin’s government officials who, after four days, had the article taken offline. The URL of the article remained visible.

Russian government media officials counseled that in Russia defeats are quickly forgotten and are often followed by a period of reforms and revitalization of the economy, government and military. As the old saying goes, what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.

Ukrainians are uneasy about all this because the primary use of a reformed, rebuilt and revitalized Russian military would be the conquest of Ukraine. This is the main reason Ukraine wants to join NATO. Russia has always been hostile to this, but in the brief period of peace after Russia admits defeat, Ukraine will have a strong case for admission to NATO. Everyone understands that what follows the Russian defeat is a period of rebuilding the military before another attempt to conquer Ukraine. As long as Putin is alive, he will be seeking a military victory, preferably against his arch-nemesis, Ukraine.