The war already lasts longer than the Soviet fight against Hitler

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany launched Operation Barbarossa with almost four million soldiers and thousands of tanks, opening the largest front in history. In just a few months the Red Army lost millions of men, but that war would end up becoming in a total pulse: factories dismantled and moved to the east, entire cities converted into fortresses and a mobilization so enormous that even today it remains the central axis of Russian memory.

The invasion of Ukraine has just surpassed the Soviet fight against Hitler in days.

A historic threshold. Yes, the war in Ukraine reached a milestone as symbolic as it was grim on January 11, 2026: 1,418 days of combat since the Russian invasion, then exactly the same duration as the Red Army’s fight against Nazi Germany in the so-called Great Patriotic Warfrom June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945.

The comparison is devastating by contrast and propaganda, because the operation that the Kremlin sold as quick and surgical has ended up fitting into the schedule of the greatest existential war of Soviet history. And it also does so with an ironic twist that weighs tons: then the USSR was fighting against invaders who reached the gates of Moscow, and now Moscow is the invader, and after almost four years it still has not closed the conflict or translated it into a clear victory.

A war of attrition. Far from a rapid campaign, the conflict has become a slow crushermore similar to a war of positions than to the decisive offensives of the 20th century. Russia occupies about a quarter of Ukraine, but its advance is described as progress at a snail’s pacepaying each kilometer with time, lives and ammunition.

In that sense, there is an image especially revealing: After years of fighting, Russian forces are further from kyiv than in the first weeks of the invasion, when the initial blow seemed destined to topple the Ukrainian government. The war, even with external attempts of negotiation, does not give clear signs of closure, and each month that passes reinforces the idea that Moscow underestimated Ukraine, overestimated its own performance and entered a field where attrition rules more than maneuver.

Russia and its tradition of wars. Russian history is plagued by conflict prolonged and campaigns that lasted much longer than expected, almost as if duration were a structural constant of their way of waging war. There are examples that draw a pattern: an endless war in the Caucasus that lasted for more than a century, or a chain of wars with the Ottoman Empire that spanned centuries and reordered borders and loyalties in the Black Sea and eastern Europe.

Even when Russia sought “quick solutions,” the result was often the opposite: unexpected defeats, victories very expensive or bogged down that forced them to sustain the effort for years. In that sense, Ukraine would not be an anomaly, but rather another confirmation that the “short hit” in Russia is often more a political wish than a military reality.

When losing is very expensive. Furthermore, Russian defeats are not measured only in territories or casualties, but in political earthquakes. The war against japan in 1904-1905 not only meant a military coup and the humiliation of a European power defeated by an Asian rival, but also fueled an internal crisis that led to the revolution of 1905exposing incompetence, eroding morale and opening the door to a decade of instability that would end exploding in 1917.

The idea is clear: when the war drags on, the defeat becomes visible and the State loses its aura of control, the damage filters inward. The country does not need to collapse immediately, it is enough for legitimacy to crack and fear to become in everyday wear.

Afghanistan as a warning. The most modern parallelism It’s Afghanistan: a Soviet intervention designed to sustain an allied regime that ended devouring resources for more than nine years. It was not only a military defeat against insurgents, it was an economic and moral drain thatthat accelerated the decline of an already rigid, inefficient and stagnant system.

The 1989 withdrawal It left a demoralized army and a tired society, and the impact was so profound that it became one of the wounds that preceded to the Soviet collapse. That memory works as a warning because it shows that, in Russia, a long war can survive on the front while rotting inside, leaving a bill that is paid years later.

Ukraine and the weakening. The war in Ukraine may not cause an immediate collapse of the Russian state, but it will aims to subdue him to continuous pressure on the economy, industry, army and social fabric. Even if there is no revolution, attrition operates like acid: it erodes capabilities, pushes to improvise solutions, exhausts reserves and reduces room for maneuver for other challenges.

The Russian death toll (more than 156,000) illustrates the magnitude of the cost, higher than the total for Afghanistan despite having been sold as something quick and controllable. And although those losses do not come close to the demographic horror of the Great Patriotic Warare enough for the war to stop being an episode and become a structural wound.

Blow to prestige. Beyond the battlefield, the invasion has also damaged Moscow’s image as a global supplier of weapons and as a military power. They remembered in Forbes the sharp drop in its exports and a symbolic change: France overtaking Russia as the second largest arms exporter in the world, something unthinkable recently.

Also the decline of emblematic programs due to cost and performance, such as the T-14 Armataand the Su-57 casea fifth-generation fighter that fails to attract buyers and whose actual operational presence seems limited. Contrasted with this is the industrial and export success of the F-35, which has become Allies and partners standardwhich accentuates the feeling that Russia not only wears itself out fighting, but also emerges from the war with less technological brilliance and less ability to sell its narrative of modern power.

Inglorious ending. Thus things, the war in ukraine It appears as a conflict that may not end with a catastrophic defeat for Moscow, but nor with a clean victory that justifies the price. Even in the best Russian scenario, what was obtained it would be devastated territorycostly reconstruction and an even more toxic relationship with much of Europe, plus reduced arsenals and reduced prestige.

From that perspective, the word that floats in the air could be close to that of a “Pyrrhic victory”: winning something, yes, but possibly leaving worse than how you were. And that is perhaps the crudest conclusion of these already more than 1,418 days: The Kremlin wanted a quick war to show strength, and has ended up trapped in a long war that consumes strength, patience of its own system and a key open question, not about who will win, but about how much longer it can last before that wear and tear changes everything.

Image | Mstyslav ChernovFinnish Wartime, Ministry of Defense of Ukraine

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