Why Putin is channelling his inner Stalin

Vladimir Putin has journeyed to the southern city of Volgograd – better known by its former name of Stalingrad – to take part in the 80th anniversary celebrations of the great Soviet victory in the city this weekend. The battle was the turning point of the second world war.

While there, the Russian president specifically linked his invasion of Ukraine with the Nazi attack on Russia – turning history inside out as he did so. ‘It’s unbelievable but true,’ Putin said. ‘We are again being threatened by German tanks. Again and again we are forced to repel the collective aggression of the West.’

Putin is intentionally preparing the Russian people psychologically for a long and merciless war in Ukraine

By painting the West as the aggressor in the Ukraine conflict, although that is the exact opposite of the truth, Putin is deliberately invoking the spirit of the most sacred event in his country’s national consciousness: what Russians call the Great Patriotic War.