Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky took direct aim at Vladimir Putin's age and mortality during the 62nd Munich Security Conference on Friday, telling the audience that the 73-year-old Russian leader is running out of time, while Putin himself has not been seen in public for over a week.

Zelensky, 48, put it bluntly in an interview with Politico:

"I'm younger than Putin...He doesn't have much time, you know."

The remark landed the same weekend that five European nations — the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden, and the Netherlands — announced that analysis of samples from the body of opposition leader Alexei Navalny conclusively confirmed the presence of epibatidine, a potent neurotoxin. The countries issued a joint statement that cut through the usual diplomatic fog:

"Russia had the means, motive and opportunity to administer this poison."

According to the Daily Mail, the five nations said they are reporting Russia to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons for a breach of the Chemical Weapons Convention. Navalny died in an Arctic penal colony on February 16, 2024, while serving a 19-year sentence he believed to be politically motivated. Russian authorities claimed he became ill after a walk and died from natural causes.

Nobody seriously believed that then. Even fewer believe it now.

Putin's Disappearing Act

Putin was last seen publicly delivering a speech on February 5. That's over a week of silence from a man who has held power for more than a quarter of a century. The Kremlin has not explained. Russian state media has reportedly broadcast pre-recorded footage in the interim — a pattern familiar to Kremlin-watchers who have seen Putin vanish before without comment.

Footage from a November meeting between Putin and Yekaterina Leshchinskaya, the 22-year-old chair of the Russian Healthy Fatherland movement, circulated in Polish media and drew attention to the visible condition of Putin's right hand — bulging veins, prominent tendons, and thin and wrinkled skin. Ukrainian media personality Dmytro Gordon observed:

"Putin clenches his hands into something resembling fists. They look swollen and sore, with veins bulging prominently on one hand."

Whether Putin's absence reflects medical treatment, political calculation, or something else entirely remains unknown. What's clear is that the man waging a grinding war approaching its fourth anniversary cannot even manage consistent public appearances. Zelensky's jab about time wasn't subtle. It didn't need to be.

A Slave to War

Zelensky used the Munich stage for more than health taunts. He pressed the conference — held in the same city where the 1938 agreement handed the Sudetenland to Hitler — on what Western hesitation costs. He drew a direct parallel between that moment of appeasement and the current one, a comparison that only grows sharper as the fourth anniversary of Russia's invasion approaches in days.

On the devastation of Ukrainian infrastructure, Zelensky was unsparing:

"There is not a single power plant left in Ukraine that has not been damaged by Russian attacks. Not one."

Then, without pause:

"But we still generate electricity."

That two-line sequence tells you everything about the Ukrainian posture — battered, defiant, and determined to make the point that survival itself is resistance. Zelensky also delivered his sharpest characterization of Putin's predicament:

"He may see himself as a tsar, but in reality he is a slave to war."

He didn't spare Hungary's Viktor Orban, either, mocking the Hungarian leader's posture toward Moscow in terms that were personal enough to draw attention:

"There can be a sovereign Moldova and a Romania without dictatorship and even one Victor can think about how to grow his belly, not how to grow his army to stop Russian tanks from returning to the streets of Budapest."

Orban, who has used vetoes to block Ukraine's EU accession talks and has not diversified Hungary's imports from Russia since the invasion began, faces a parliamentary election in April. His alignment with Moscow is not abstract policy — it's a strategic bet that becomes more expensive the longer the war grinds on.

The Geneva Stakes

All of this unfolds against a concrete deadline. The Kremlin confirmed that presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky will lead the Russian delegation in Geneva peace negotiations between February 17 and 18, just days away. President Trump has set a June deadline for the two sides to reach an agreement, and on Friday made clear that the pressure is on Kyiv to act:

"Russia wants to make a deal, and Zelensky's going to have to get moving. Otherwise, he's going to miss a great opportunity. He has to move."

The Geneva talks represent the most tangible diplomatic window in nearly four years of war. Russia sending Medinsky — not a foreign ministry figurehead, but a presidential aide — signals Moscow is at least going through the motions of engagement. Whether Putin's absence from public view complicates or clarifies the dynamics inside the Kremlin is a question no one outside Moscow can answer yet.

Zelensky, for his part, insisted Kyiv is doing everything to end the war. But he also made plain what Ukraine has absorbed:

"But look at the price. Look at the price, look at the pain Ukraine has gone through, look at the suffering Ukraine has faced. It's Ukrainians who are holding the European front."

That line is directed less at Putin than at every European capital that has slow-walked air defense systems while Ukrainian power plants burned.

The Kremlin's Poison Habit

The Navalny confirmation doesn't exist in isolation. It sits in a long, documented pattern. In 2020, Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent and blamed the Kremlin, which denied involvement. He returned to Russia five months later, was immediately arrested, and spent the last three years of his life imprisoned. In 2018, former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal was targeted with Novichok in Salisbury, England. He and his daughter became seriously ill, and a British woman named Dawn Sturgess died after encountering a discarded bottle containing traces of the agent. A British inquiry concluded the attack must have been authorized at the highest level — by Putin. In 2006, former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko died in London after ingesting radioactive polonium-210. A British inquiry concluded two Russian agents killed him and that Putin had probably approved the operation.

The Kremlin denied involvement in every case. Every single one.

Navalny's widow, Yulia Navalnaya, appeared at the Munich conference on Saturday and did not mince words. She posted on X:

"Putin killed Alexei with a chemical weapon."

She called Putin a murderer who must be held accountable, and said she had been certain from the first day that her husband was poisoned — but now there is proof. British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper framed the stakes in terms of what the poisoning reveals about the regime:

"Russia saw Navalny as a threat. By using this form of poison, the Russian state demonstrated the despicable tools it has at its disposal and the overwhelming fear it has of political opposition."

French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot wrote on X that the poisoning shows Putin is prepared to use biological weapons against his own people to remain in power.

What Munich Clarified

The Munich Security Conference has always been about whether the West has the nerve to match its rhetoric with action. This year's edition sharpened the question. Zelensky came to remind Europe that Ukraine is absorbing the cost of a war that would otherwise land on NATO's doorstep. Five allied nations came with forensic proof that Russia poisons its domestic critics. And somewhere, out of public view for reasons no one will explain, Putin sat absent from the stage while the world discussed his future.

Zelensky invoked the 1938 Munich Agreement for a reason. That deal bought one year of peace and a generation of catastrophe. The Geneva talks begin in two days. The question is whether anyone in the room learned the lesson the building was named for.