As Russia's war in Ukraine drags into its fifth year with no decisive breakthrough, growing numbers of influential voices inside Russia are openly questioning whether Moscow can achieve the victory President Vladimir Putin once envisioned.

The emerging skepticism is significant because it is no longer limited to business leaders or liberal critics of the Kremlin, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Even some prominent Russian nationalists and longtime supporters of the war are publicly acknowledging what many analysts have argued for months: Russia appears unable to deliver a knockout blow against Ukraine.

The changing mood among Russian elites raises questions about whether Putin will eventually reconsider his original war aims, which included bringing Ukraine back under Moscow's influence and preventing its integration with the West.

For now, however, there is little evidence the Russian leader is prepared to retreat from those objectives.

Among the most notable critics is Oleg Tsaryov, a former Ukrainian lawmaker who fled to Russia in 2014 and was once viewed by the Kremlin as a potential leader of a pro-Russian government in Kyiv if Moscow succeeded in toppling Ukraine's leadership.

In a recent Telegram post, Tsaryov warned that years of Russian propaganda had created unrealistic expectations about the war.

"The illusion of inevitable victory has collided with reality," Tsaryov argued, warning that many Russians had been led to believe success was certain despite battlefield setbacks and the resilience of Ukraine's government and military.

Another influential voice, foreign-policy analyst Vasily Kashin of Moscow's Higher School of Economics, recently argued that one of Putin's central goals — installing a friendly government in Kyiv — is no longer realistic.

Kashin noted that after years of fighting and hundreds of thousands of casualties, Ukraine is likely to remain firmly aligned with the West and deeply opposed to Russian influence for the foreseeable future.

He also suggested that even dramatic escalation by Moscow would be unlikely to achieve the political outcome the Kremlin originally sought.

Removing Ukraine's current leadership, he argued, could simply bring forward an even younger and more hardline generation of Ukrainian officials.