Putin’s war against Ukraine now longer than the Great Patriotic War
Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine, which Vladimir Putin calls a “special military operation,” has now exceeded the duration of the Great Patriotic War.
On 12 January 2026, the conflict reached 1,419 days, one day longer than the war fought by the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany, which lasted from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945.
Originally designed by the Kremlin as a rapid “blitzkrieg” meant to capture Kyiv in three days, the operation has turned into a prolonged and bloody campaign.
Russia has become the world leader in the number of sanctions imposed against it, and its military losses have far exceeded those of the Soviet war in Afghanistan and both Chechen conflicts combined.
According to NATO estimates, by December 2025, Russian forces had suffered at least 1.15 million killed and wounded, with around 400,000 becoming disabled—roughly the population of a mid-sized Russian city like Bryansk or Tver.
War expenditures over four years have reached 42.3 trillion rubles, equivalent to 24 years of Russia’s higher education budget or 80 budgets of large regions, such as Sverdlovsk or Krasnodar Krai.
It is worth noting that sanctions, loss of foreign markets, and global economic decline have revealed the structural weakness of Russia’s regional budgets.
Additionally, Russia has halted its program to relocate residents from emergency housing, citing the war against Ukraine as the reason.
