The Russian President is trying to mobilize the economy and society for the war with new bodies and legal systems. He is turning the country upside down.
A Russian holds his child at a conscription center in Moscow.
There is a saying that goes around in Moscow: President Vladimir Putin wanted to repeat the year 1945 – the victory over National Socialist Germany – with the “special operation” in Ukraine. Instead, 1941 came – the beginning of a long, costly war that forced the Kremlin to defend (in this case) conquered lands and to mobilize politics, business and society. The analogy is misleading, if only because Russia, in contrast to 1941, launched the war of aggression itself and is now in a struggle for military success that is entirely self-inflicted.