Paul Goble
Staunton, June 22 – Given the centrality of World War II in Russian propaganda after Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine, it is no surprise that some senior Moscow official would argue that perhaps the best reason for supporting Putin’s war is that it is saving Russia from an attack by NATO and the West.
Valentina Matviyenko, the chairman of the upper chamber of the Russian legislature, has now done that on the 85th anniversary of the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 (council.gov.ru/services/discussions/blogs/175570/ reposted among other places at ehorussia.com/new/node/34779).
According to her, after the Euromaidan in Ukraine led to a change in the political orientation in Kyiv, the West “assigned” that country to be “the springboard for a new campaign by the West against Russia,” something that meant Moscow had “no other way to ensure Russia’s security than by the special military operation.”
Even now, more than four years later and with the war continuing, Matviyenko says, “only the achievement of the goals of the SVO will completely remove the threat of a global war.” Given how elastic Moscow has defined those “goals,” it is not entirely clear just which ones have to be achieved at least as far as Matviyenko and Putin think.
But the parliamentarian’s words are likely to lead somw to draw another parallel with the period immediately preceding the German invasion, the time when Stalin launched his winter war against Finland, a conflict that even though it did not lead to a complete Russian defeat nonetheless highlighted the weakness of the Red Army and likely encouraged Hitler.
That opponents of the Russian Federation today might read anything less than a total victory in the same way and exploit the situation in some way likely explains why Putin will keep fighting. After all, as long as he does, he can be sure that many Russians and some in the West can be counted on to assume that a Russian victory is just around the corner.
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