Paul Goble
Staunton, Oct. 3 – Given the centrality of Soviet participation in World War II for Putin and the Russian people today, it is disturbing to take note of the fact that the Kremlin leader’s war in Ukraine will soon have lasted longer than that earlier conflict, commentator Andrey Kolesnikov notes.
Traditionally, Moscow has said that the Great Patriotic War began when German forces invaded the USSR on June 22, 1941, and ended when the Soviet government declared victory over the Nazis on May 9, 1945. Using that chronology, it lasted 1418 days, albeit a bit longer if one also counts Soviet involvement in the war with Japan after V-E Day.
Putin’s war against Ukraine has now lasted more than 1300 days, Kolesnikov points out; and that means in less than three months, it will have lasted longer than did the Great Patriotic War (mostmedia.org/ru/posts/vremeni-net-budushego-net-obshestva-net-predvaritelnye-itogi-ampquotsvoampquot).
While the Kremlin has not mobilized all of society the way Stalin did and even has played down both the conflict as a whole and the losses Russia has suffered from it lest it generate a greater backlash at home, the shear length of the current war means that it will almost certainly cast a far longer shadow over Russia, not to mention Ukraine, than many now think.
And that is one more aspect of any post-war Russia that both Russians who either want to continue their country’s current course or radically change it and people of good will elsewhere need to take into consideration in their thinking, planning and actions lest they fail to recognize just how much of an impact on Russia Putin’s war in fact will continue to have.
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