Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, warned Russians that they must prepare for a “forever war”. “Things will get much harder,” Peskov told a gathering of the country’s political elite. “This will take a very, very long time.”
It’s a far cry from Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation”. This was supposed to sweep into Kyiv in a matter of days, weeks at the most. Once there, Russia would be able to free Ukrainians from the “gang of drug addicts and neo-Nazis” who were preventing Ukraine from assuming its natural role as a part of the motherland.
A war which was going to take days or weeks could now take many years. And far from rescuing Ukraine from fascists, the conflict is now a bitter struggle for Russia’s continued existence. As Putin told workers at an aviation factory recently: “For us, this is not a geopolitical task, but a task of the survival of Russian statehood, creating conditions for the future development of the country and our children.”
