From “anti-fascist special operation” to a “sacred war”. The Kremlin is trying to change public opinion about Russia’s war in Ukraine

It is already obvious that after a series of defeats in the summer and early autumn of 2022, the Kremlin is trying to change Russia’s public opinion from an “anti-fascist special operation” to a “sacred war”.

Now the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which even the last drunkard in the most remote place knows to be a formidable and deadly force, is presented as a “NATO vanguard” that threatens Russian territories. Because admitting that they are being annihilated by those Ukrainians they have been mocking for the last hundred years, and whom they hoped to defeat in three days, is death to the Kremlin.

We must also understand the powerful propaganda component of mobilization. This is certainly a forced and unpopular move, but having lost almost the entire regular army on the Ukrainian fronts, the Kremlin simply had no alternative.

Now we are watching those miserable, untrained and almost unarmed people die in the meat grinder by hundreds and thousands. And through this, Putin’s regime achieves two goals.

First, it exhausts our forces with a “genius” Zhukov-style strategy, that is, by filling the frontline with corpses.

Secondly, it binds its electorate with blood. The latest polls show that about 56 percent of the population supports the war with Ukraine directly or indirectly – this is the whole range from maniacal racism to “it is my duty to the state.”

The Kremlin probably expects that when endless streams of coffins leave Ukraine and lie on the ground of propaganda about a “sacred defensive war with the West”, it will ensure a certain degree of hatred and “patriotic” motivation at the level of families and close circle of the deceased.

That’s nothing new. That’s how the USSR used multi-million unjustified losses to pump up a degree of fierce existential hatred during World War II, which made it possible to throw wretched people under tanks and machine guns.

But there is a nuance. In 1941-1945, Stalin was supported by almost the whole world. Without Lend-Lease, the war in the Pacific and the Second Front, he would not have had a chance to win, and no zombie with a rifle for three would have brought him a victory on their own.

That is, the “mass sacrifice” strategy is quite a poor idea for Putin’s Russia of the 21^st century. Moreover, astronomical losses and economic crisis can cause the opposite effect.

Just as it was in 1916-1917, when the Russian Empire was filled with armed deserters who hated the tsar.

And claims that the aggressive attack on Ukraine was a “preventive strike” are also a poor thesis. In any case, it did not help Hitler, although he had certain grounds for such an excuse.

In short, we are waiting for them to run out of the mobilized, drones and missiles, just as they have run out of shells and artillery barrels before.

And then – by the order of the Commander-in-Chief.

Oleksandr Surkov

Ukraine Front Lines

Tags: kremlin russia ukraine war