Moscow's propaganda machine is particularly fond of invoking "historical memory"—especially on June 22. Every year, Russia lights 1,418 candles, one for each day of what it calls the Great Patriotic War. The only problem is that, since launching its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has already added 1,579 days to its own wartime ledger. Needless to say, no one intends to light candles for those.
Modern Russian history textbooks enforce an equally strict taboo on the very word “war”. Under Russia's Law on Veterans, the country has fought military campaigns in some 40 locations around the world—from China to Syria—yet these conflicts have been euphemistically labeled anything but war, usually some variation of a "special military operation."
This hybrid newspeak, however, does little to protect the Kremlin from reality. That becomes especially apparent when one examines the archives of Russia's leading state media on each June 22 over the past five years. To keep the comparison fair, let's set aside the broader propaganda ecosystem—military bloggers, self-styled analysts, Kommersant, and the rest—and focus instead on the Kremlin's principal official mouthpiece, RIA Novosti, with its audience of more than three million subscribers. Its archive traces a remarkable evolution: from the triumphalist confidence of 2022 to the unmistakable anxiety of 2026.
