R Russia’s all-out war against Ukraine lasts, as of January 12, just as long as Nazi Germany’s war against the communist Soviet Union. In the USSR, the number “1418” was often used to highlight the heroism of the Soviet people in the so-called Great Patriotic War. These narratives were later adopted by Putin’s Russia, with the focus on the Russians’ extraordinary contribution to the victory over Nazism.
In Ukraine, at the beginning of 2026, the 1,418 days of the German-Soviet war of 1941-1945, sacred to Vladimir Putin, will be linked to the fiasco of his plans to quickly conquer Ukraine. Like the Nazi leadership, Putin also relied on a lightning victory. But this plan failed.
The price of this failure is clearly visible in the Sumy municipal cemetery. Blue and yellow flags and banners of the combat brigades of the fallen are flying everywhere. A funeral procession moves towards the cemetery on a road protected from drones by nets. Russian troops are only 20 kilometers away.
For the people of Ukraine, war has become part of everyday life. Despite the mortal fear of air raids and fighting, life goes on: people go to work, school and university. They love, laugh, get married, have children, go on vacation. They mourn, worry – and hope for peace. ➝ to the column
The mother of Oleksandr Steblin, a fallen soldier in the Ljubart Brigade, thanks her son’s comrades who came to the funeral. “Thank you for taking Sascha from the battlefield so I can touch my son one last time,” the woman says through tears. The father of the deceased sings the Ukrainian national anthem as his son’s coffin is lowered into the grave. At the memorial dinner that follows, he asks the deceased’s friends to promise him that they will survive the war and take care of themselves.
The 1,418 days of the two largest wars in Europe within 100 years had different dimensions. In the first phase of the war in the USSR, the Wehrmacht advanced over 1,500 kilometers and was near Moscow and Stalingrad. However, Russia’s “successes” in the war against Ukraine have so far been limited to just a few hundred kilometers.
Hitler had no effective long-range weapons to attack Moscow. Russia, like the Third Reich before it, proved incapable of waging war alone – recruiting allies from Iran, North Korea and mercenaries from around the world.
Putin waited until the severe frost in early January to use missiles to destroy Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. On the way back from Sumy the entire left bank of Kyiv was plunged into darkness and cold there. Only car headlights lit the night. People had lit fires in the courtyards and were grilling meat. They heated water on gas cartridges and filled it into hot water bottles for their children. The heavy snowfall in Ukraine, for the first time in five years, brings little joy. The mayor called on people to temporarily leave Kyiv. There had already been similar long power outages in the megacities of Odessa and Dnipro.
This article was made possible through the financial support of the Forschungsfonds Ausland eV. You can support the research fund through a donation or membership.
As our car makes its way through the snowdrifts of the dark capital, I read the results of the latest survey on my cell phone Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS). By the end of December 2025, 68 percent of Ukrainians were willing to resist the Russians for as long as necessary.
At the end of December 2025, 68 percent of Ukrainians were still willing to resist the Russians for as long as necessary. “But the narrative of a ‘dark and hopeless future for Ukraine’ demoralizes people. And although the opinion that the resistance against the Russian enemy is still prevalent even among the pessimists is currently prevailing, we still see a great inclination to accept ‘peace at any price’,” comments KIIS director Anton Hrushetskyi Survey results.
Translated from Russian Barbara Oertel