Russia is approaching a grim milestone: by mid-January, President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine will have dragged on longer than the war on the Eastern Front that began with the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 and ended with the fall of Berlin in May 1945.
Putin is famously obsessed with World War II and official veneration of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany is part of the ideological glue that holds together the Russian state. Putin’s Russia has even seen the rehabilitation of Josef Stalin, the Communist dictator who presided over a ruthless purge in the 1930s before leading his country in what is known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War.
But nearly four years after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a decisive victory over Kyiv eludes the Kremlin leader: Russia controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory, the war is estimated to have cost Moscow more than a million casualties, and in perhaps the biggest affront to Putin’s war aims, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky remains in power.
But as the year comes to an end, Putin is projecting confidence that time is on his side and that winning is inevitable. Ahead of a summit with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in December, Putin gave an interview with India Today where he said Russia would “liberate Donbas and Novorossiya in any case – by military or other means,” doubling down on his demand to acquire all the regions of Ukraine that Russia claims, including those that his troops have not managed to take by force.
And that bloody-mindedness seems to be a bargaining strategy. Putin is surely aware that US President Donald Trump is determined to reach a deal on Ukraine and the Russian leader has done everything in his power to extract the maximum gain from Washington’s eagerness to end the conflict.
Continue reading the complete article on the original source
