It is unclear at this point what Putin’s strategic aim is in this war, which has killed as many as 15,000 Russian troops and disabled much of its armored vehicles while leveling many Ukrainian cities and turning 5 million Ukrainian citizens into refugees. But he said nothing in his Victory Day speech to dispel the widespread view that this is going to drag on, and dredge more deeply into violence, for a long time to come.

In recent weeks, Russia has stepped up the deployment of artillery and other heavy weapons to the front lines of Donbas. But the West—especially the United States but also several other NATO countries, including Germany, which until now has refrained from getting involved in military missions—has more than matched the effort. Putin has long deemed this a war with the West, and he is right—though it was he, not U.S. President Joe Biden or anyone else, who made it so and who resolidified the Cold War division of Europe in a way that no one could have expected just a few months ago.

It is hard to assess the degree to which Russian citizens support Putin’s war. Given the massive arrests of peaceful protesters, many skeptics or outright opponents of the war are probably hesitant to confide their true views to pollsters. Some hoped that the military would turn against the war, and in fact many soldiers—sent into battle without any preparation or special training—have deserted, abandoning their tanks and weapons, which Ukrainians have captured and gone on to use.