Russia’s War in Ukraine

Understanding the conflict four years on.

When asked “how’s it going,” average Russians usually respond with one word—normalno. Life is normal when you’re doing neither exceptionally well nor exceptionally poorly. The English-language equivalent might be somewhere between “hanging in there” and “I’m OK.”

Normalnost—or the condition of normalcy—is obviously a relative notion. What is normalno for a Russian pensioner eking out an existence is not normalno for President Vladimir Putin and his minions. Even so, most Russians would probably agree that life is normalno when you’re getting by financially, your kids don’t hate you excessively, your spouse drinks too much only occasionally, and the authorities mostly ignore you.

When asked “how’s it going,” average Russians usually respond with one word—normalno. Life is normal when you’re doing neither exceptionally well nor exceptionally poorly. The English-language equivalent might be somewhere between “hanging in there” and “I’m OK.”

Normalnost—or the condition of normalcy—is obviously a relative notion. What is normalno for a Russian pensioner eking out an existence is not normalno for President Vladimir Putin and his minions. Even so, most Russians would probably agree that life is normalno when you’re getting by financially, your kids don’t hate you excessively, your spouse drinks too much only occasionally, and the authorities mostly ignore you.

Putin’s fascist regime has put normalnost to the test. Life was fine for your average Russian—and for Russian elites—before Putin launched his full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Now, four and a half years into a bloody war that is killing or wounding around 1,100 Russian soldiers per day while pushing the country’s militarized economy to the brink of collapse, life is anything but normalno for Russians living outside the protected bubbles of Moscow and St. Petersburg. Now, even the residents of these two cities have begun experiencing first-hand what seemed for so long to be a faraway, fantasy conflict.

At a minimum, a return to normalnost presupposes the end of the war. That, in turn, more or less presupposes the end of Putin. Although Putin’s removal in a coup is possible even as the war continues, it cannot end as long as Putin remains committed to it for the sake of his own personal and political survival.

But the relationship between normalnost and war goes deeper than Putin and his determination to destroy Ukraine. Unfortunately for Russia and its neighbors, normalnost will always be susceptible to breakdown—and Russian aggression will always be possible—as long as two structural factors remain in place.

The first is Russia’s political culture and sense of national identity. Central to Russians’ self-perception is the culturally sanctioned, deeply ingrained belief that their country is uniquely predisposed to greatness with a quasi-right to dominate others. Russia’s world-historical mission is thus the very opposite of normalno: Its mission is not to rest on its laurels and enjoy life within its borders, but to fulfill its historical destiny and spread Russian civilization—a messianic concept that........

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