Sputnik/Gavriil Grigorov/Pool via Reuters
With dozens of newly drafted troops already dead and Russian troops laying the groundwork for a retreat from a key Ukrainian city, the Kremlin has now revealed it is hoping to give its war a second wind by making ordinary Russians feel it as much as possible.
Sergei Kirienko, the first deputy chief of staff of the presidential administration, said as much Saturday in a speech to a national conference of teachers, declaring that the war the Kremlin has until now doggedly insisted is only a “special military operation” must become a “people’s war.”
“Russia has always won any war, if that war became a people’s [war]. We will definitely win this war: both the ‘hot’ one, and the economic one, and the very psychological, information war that is being waged against us. But for that it is necessary that it is precisely a people’s war, so that every person feels his own involvement. So that every person has the opportunity to contribute to our common victory,” Kirienko said.