The war in Ukraine is now a longer war for Russia than the Great Patriotic War.
Executive summary
Yes — by simple duration, Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine exceeded the length of the Soviet Union’s “Great Patriotic War” when it reached 1,418 days in January 2026, a milestone reported across Western and regional outlets [1] [2] [3].
1. The arithmetic: an exact milestone and broad reporting
Multiple independent outlets mark January 11–12, 2026, as the day the Russia–Ukraine war reached 1,418 days — the same length commonly used to measure the German–Soviet war from June 22, 1941, to May 9, 1945 — and therefore passed that historical benchmark in raw chronological terms [2] [1] [3].
2. Why the comparison is powerful — and why it’s also blunt
The numeric parity carries symbolic weight inside and outside Russia because the 1,418‑day figure functions as a shorthand for the “Great Patriotic War” in Russian public memory, and the coincidence exposes political narratives about military prowess; commentators argue the milestone undercuts Kremlin claims of a short, decisive campaign [4] [3] [2].
3. Critical differences in scale, context and human cost
Beyond days, the two conflicts are fundamentally dissimilar: the Great Patriotic War was a total, existential struggle across millions of square kilometers with Soviet military and civilian losses in the tens of millions, whereas analysts emphasize the Ukraine war’s far smaller territorial front and far lower—but still heavy—casualty counts by comparison [5] [6] [7].
4. Military outcomes and territorial dynamics diverge sharply
Whereas the Red Army moved from retreat to final advance all the way to Berlin over four years, reporting shows Russia’s advances in Ukraine since 2022 have been limited and grinding, with only modest territorial gains in many sectors and continued inability to secure full control of claimed areas like Donbas — a contrast underscored by military analysts and regional reporting [8] [2] [5].
5. Political and propaganda consequences inside Russia
Analysts and Russian‑language outlets contend the milestone strains the Kremlin’s myth of an invincible army and complicates state narratives that invoke World War II memory for legitimacy, forcing a recalibration among both critics and pro‑war commentators who once compared today’s campaign to heroic Soviet achievements [2] [4] [3].
6. Asymmetries in data quality and limitations of the comparison
Reporting repeatedly warns that precise casualty and loss figures are contested and incomplete for the contemporary conflict, and that direct moral or strategic equivalence cannot be drawn from equal duration alone; several outlets caution that duration is only one dimension and that deaths, displacement, geography, and political outcomes differ dramatically [5] [3] [7].
7. What the milestone means going forward
Practically, passing 1,418 days is a symbolic turning point that invites fresh scrutiny of Kremlin strategy and domestic resilience, while internationally it reinforces arguments that the war has evolved into a protracted war of attrition rather than a quick campaign — an assessment reflected across Western and regional analyses [3] [8] [9].