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The Washington Post’s Mary Ilyushina reports that Vladimir Putin says he has remade Russia as a sovereign power and will prevail in Ukraine, but economic and strategic setbacks complicate the picture. Excerpt:

.As he wrapped up his marathon year-end news conference on Dec. 19, Putin boasted that he had thwarted efforts by the United States and its Western allies to subjugate Russia after the Soviet Union fell apart.

“I have not just taken care of it, but I believe we have stepped back from the edge of the abyss,” he declared, in response to a question about Yeltsin’s remark.

“I have done everything so that Russia can be an independent and sovereign state that is capable of making decisions in its interests,” Putin said, “rather than in the interests of the countries that were dragging it toward them, patting it on the back, only to use it for their own purposes.”

But as 2024 draws to a close, Russia is in a far more precarious place than Putin’s rhetoric and bravado suggest. His forces are making slow but steady advances in Ukraine, but estimates by some NATO countries suggest hundreds of thousands of Russian troops have been killed or wounded in the war, which has dragged on for nearly three years.

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Since 2022, Putin has used his invasion of Ukraine to remake his country, building a militarized Russian society geared to confront the West for decades — revamping the education system, monopolizing culture, reshaping women’s roles and indoctrinating youths.

In recent months, these changes have only solidified. And Putin’s conviction that he will emerge victorious in Ukraine has grown stronger in the wake of Donald Trump’s election.

During his year-end news conference, Putin said his only regret was that Russia had not invaded Ukraine sooner.

The war has become omnipresent in Russian classrooms. In September, a mandatory course titled “Fundamentals of Security and Protection of the Homeland” was introduced to instill in children “a readiness to defend the Fatherland,” including training to handle a Kalashnikov rifle.

Russian soldiers, including convicted murderers released from prison to fight in Ukraine, are invited to speak to children as national heroes.The dream job floated to Russian youths is no longer software development. Instead, they are encouraged to pursue positions in “new and promising areas,” such as working on drone assembly lines.

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Putin, faced with a declining population and the added demographic peril of deploying tens of thousands of young men to the front lines, away from their wives, has found a new fixation: employing every possible incentive to persuade women to give birth early and often.

Government data showed that 599,600 children were born in Russia in the first half of 2024, the lowest birth rate since 1999, a figure the Kremlin called “catastrophic.”

Glory to Ukraine