A mainstay style of Moscow’s battle propaganda is the declare of a direct, unbroken ethical continuum working from the Nice Patriotic Struggle—what Russians name the jap entrance in World Struggle II—to the so-called particular navy operation, which everybody else calls the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On this telling, historical past is just not analogy however future. Recruitment posters and billboards produced by the Russian Protection Ministry make the purpose visually: a Purple Military infantryman in a Nineteen Forties olive tunic clasps arms with a soldier in fashionable Russian camouflage, as if the 2 conflicts had been interchangeable chapters of the identical battle. The comparability is just not solely a top-down directive but additionally a deeply internalized perception amongst Russians. “We will do it once more” has been a preferred rallying cry for many years, functioning much less as nostalgia than as ethical permission for at this time’s aggression: If our grandfathers as soon as fought absolute evil and prevailed towards unattainable odds, then at this time’s enemies—nevertheless outlined—should be the identical, and their destruction equally justified.
By no means thoughts that it was the Soviet Union, not at this time’s smaller and weaker Russia, that gained World Struggle II, or that the Purple Military was a multinational pressure. Tens of millions of Ukrainians, Belarusians, Kazakhs, and others fought and died, and Ukraine and Belarus, specifically, suffered catastrophically below German occupation. Russians don’t even hassle to disclaim these details—they’ve merely erased them from historical past. By a grasp stroke of mythmaking, Russia has recast the Soviet victory as an completely Russian achievement, hoarding all of the glory, all of the victimhood, and all of the symbolic capital of anti-fascism. The result’s the parable of the Russian steamroller—traditionally righteous, militarily unstoppable—that grinds enemies to mud and makes resistance not solely futile however immoral.
A mainstay style of Moscow’s battle propaganda is the declare of a direct, unbroken ethical continuum working from the Nice Patriotic Struggle—what Russians name the jap entrance in World Struggle II—to the so-called particular navy operation, which everybody else calls the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On this telling, historical past is just not analogy however future. Recruitment posters and billboards produced by the Russian Protection Ministry make the purpose visually: a Purple Military infantryman in a Nineteen Forties olive tunic clasps arms with a soldier in fashionable Russian camouflage, as if the 2 conflicts had been interchangeable chapters of the identical battle. The comparability is just not solely a top-down directive but additionally a deeply internalized perception amongst Russians. “We will do it once more” has been a preferred rallying cry for many years, functioning much less as nostalgia than as ethical permission for at this time’s aggression: If our grandfathers as soon as fought absolute evil and prevailed towards unattainable odds, then at this time’s enemies—nevertheless outlined—should be the identical, and their destruction equally justified.
By no means thoughts that it was the Soviet Union, not at this time’s smaller and weaker Russia, that gained World Struggle II, or that the Purple Military was a multinational pressure. Tens of millions of Ukrainians, Belarusians, Kazakhs, and others fought and died, and Ukraine and Belarus, specifically, suffered catastrophically below German occupation. Russians don’t even hassle to disclaim these details—they’ve merely erased them from historical past. By a grasp stroke of mythmaking, Russia has recast the Soviet victory as an completely Russian achievement, hoarding all of the glory, all of the victimhood, and all of the symbolic capital of anti-fascism. The result’s the parable of the Russian steamroller—traditionally righteous, militarily unstoppable—that grinds enemies to mud and makes resistance not solely futile however immoral.
On Jan. 12, “we are able to do it once more” curdled right into a bitter joke for Russians. That day, Moscow’s battle in Ukraine formally surpassed 1,418 days, a quantity drilled into each Soviet and Russian schoolchild. It marks the time it took to realize victory in World Struggle II—from the second the Nazis invaded their ally in 1941 to Germany’s capitulation within the smoldering ruins of Berlin. Russians are actually confronted with incontrovertible proof of their failure to dwell as much as their chosen historic customary. The comparability is much more painful when set towards the hundreds of miles that the Purple Military drove Nazi forces throughout Europe, versus the few yards of frozen farmland that Russian troops have struggled to grab this winter.
The demoralizing impact of crossing this symbolic threshold is tough to quantify, but it’s visibly unsettling even to probably the most fervent Russian patriot. The enormity of the invasion’s failure is now unattainable to disclaim—or to dismiss as unlawful defeatism or international propaganda. Ukraine didn’t perish—not within the deliberate three days, not in almost 4 years of battle. As a substitute, it now poses a severe menace to Russia itself, in a darkly ironic self-fulfilling prophecy of Moscow’s personal justifications for the invasion.
Essential Russian infrastructure faces day by day Ukrainian drone strikes, with air defenses all however helpless to cease them. Claims that Russian forces are nonetheless advancing ring hole towards the laborious actuality of the colossal losses incurred for marginal, largely symbolic features. Even amongst pro-war Russians, it takes a sadist to seek out solace on this final result: Sure, they sneer, Kyiv might stay out of attain—however take a look at how a lot ache and destruction we’re inflicting alongside the way in which.
The symbolic significance of Jan. 12 appears to have been nice sufficient for the Kremlin’s media managers to easily erase it—not by disputing the comparability, however by blacklisting it. This isn’t an exception however a well-known routine. Earlier analysis on the Russian media, together with this writer’s personal, has proven {that a} particular division within the Kremlin micromanages the information agenda via common briefings and casual directions to senior editors. The result’s a system through which some themes are aggressively amplified whereas others are subjected to coordinated silence. The 1,418-day mark matches this sample nearly completely: The identical media shops that spent years masking the Ukraine battle with World Struggle II imagery and “we are able to do it once more” rhetoric all of a sudden discovered no airtime or column house for the one date that turned their very own symbolism towards them.
And but the silence didn’t final. As soon as an emblem exists, it migrates to the one locations within the Russian-language data ecosystem the place it may be publicly processed outdoors of the Kremlin’s attain: Russian exile media, Russian-speaking Ukrainian bloggers, and, inside Russia, the semi-autonomous, principally Telegram-based pro-war “Z” sphere. Anti-war Russians, comparable to exiled journalist Kirill Nabutov, handled the milestone as definitive proof that the “small victorious operation” fantasy had collapsed into a protracted, degrading battle—similar to Afghanistan, Chechnya, and different conflicts through which the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and fashionable Russia embroiled themselves. Distinguished Ukrainian journalist and blogger Denis Kazansky used the symbolic quantity as a propaganda boomerang on his Russian-language YouTube channel, mentioning that the continuity with World Struggle II solely works till you do the mathematics. At that time, the narrative not mobilizes; it turns into humiliating.
One other group of Russians—vehemently pro-war however usually anti-Kremlin ultranationalist dissidents—has additionally acknowledged the symbolism. It provides them cowl to criticize the federal government for its mishandling of the battle. In extensively quoted Telegram posts, Maxim Kalashnikov, a longtime affiliate of imprisoned pro-war Kremlin critic Igor Girkin, wrote that Russia is left with “blood, ruins, and losses” whereas different international locations—comparable to China and the USA—reap the advantages.
The convergence of those voices—anti-war Russian exiles, Ukrainian observers, and Russian ultranationalist dissidents—in addition to the official silence surrounding the 1,418-day milestone mark one thing uncommon: a second when empirical actuality overpowers the Kremlin’s narrative management. Russia’s “particular navy operation” has now objectively failed by each customary set by its architects. The unique acknowledged objectives—“denazification,” “demilitarization,” and regime change in Kyiv—should not solely unmet but additionally additional out of attain than when Russia invaded. Ukraine’s navy has not collapsed, the Ukrainian state has not disintegrated, and Western help has not evaporated, regardless of continual delays and self-imposed restrictions.
The comparability that Russia’s propagandists spent years constructing has now grow to be a exact, calendar-based indictment. In the identical period of time that it took the Soviet Union to advance from the outskirts of Moscow to the Reichstag in Berlin, President Vladimir Putin’s Russia has fought over Ukrainian villages at division-scale casualty charges—whereas nonetheless failing to totally occupy the ruins of Pokrovsk and Kupiansk, small cities that Putin falsely claimed as “liberated.”
Much more revealing is the collapse of confidence among the many battle’s most dedicated supporters. As journalist Julia Davis has systematically documented for English audio system, Russian state tv—the propaganda engine that peddled the unstoppable steamroller narrative for years—now options admissions of “whole mayhem” and warnings that the Russian economic system might face the destiny of Venezuela’s or Iran’s. This month, Vladimir Solovyov, a talk-show host and one in all Putin’s most dependable propagandists, informed viewers that the battle will proceed “for a very long time” and that Russia should put together for an economic system that’s not reliant on oil income. He concurrently acknowledged “colossal issues” and “actual stagnation.” Professional-war navy bloggers like Yuri Kotenok have complained about extreme troop shortages and Ukrainian counteroffensives which have pushed Russian forces out of their defended positions—a far cry from previous rhetoric of an inevitable victory.
The 1,418-day mark isn’t just a symbolic embarrassment; it’s an empirical threshold past which the myths sustaining this battle can not operate. When Kremlin propagandists admit “whole mayhem,” ultranationalist bloggers communicate of “blood, ruins, and losses,” and the timeline meant to validate the battle as a substitute condemns it, narrative management has collapsed. What stays is just not a debate about outcomes however a gradual, grinding recognition of catastrophe, seen in state tv’s fastidiously hedged admissions and the bitter recriminations flooding nationalist Telegram channels. The parable of Russia as an invincible steamroller pushed by historic future has run its course—destroyed by Ukraine and defeated by the calendar.
