“One day, Russians will remember the great sacrifices made during the ‘Russian-speaking Nazi Mosquito Biolab War’ of 2022.”
It is, of course, absurd.
Or is it?
Perhaps no more absurd than the ever-changing justifications the Kremlin has offered for invading Ukraine.
Was it to “denazify” the country? Protect Russian speakers? Destroy Western biolabs? Stop NATO expansion? Defend Russia from weaponised mosquitoes?
Depending on which speech Vladimir Putin happened to give, which state television presenter was talking that evening, or which Kremlin propagandist appeared on air, the explanation seemed to evolve almost weekly.
Yet some narratives refuse to die.
Even this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov returned to one of Moscow’s original slogans, insisting Russia would achieve all of its military objectives, including the “denazification” of what the Kremlin still calls the “Kyiv regime.”
Four years later, despite well over a million Russian casualties claimed by Ukraine, a wartime economy under increasing strain and a conflict that has transformed Russia itself, the official explanation remains frozen in 2022.
Outside the Kremlin’s narrative bunker, however, another question is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid.
What exactly was all of this for?
That question became even more relevant just hours after I published my analysis explaining why Russia’s worsening fuel crisis was becoming strategically significant.
Occupied Crimea declared a state of emergency.
That wasn’t luck.
It was the predictable consequence of a campaign Ukraine has spent months quietly building.
While much of the world’s attention remains fixed on maps measuring advances in hundreds of metres, Ukraine has increasingly focused on something far more important: Russia’s ability to sustain the war itself.
Fuel depots.
Rail infrastructure.
Missile production.
Logistics hubs.
Refineries.
The industrial network that keeps Moscow’s military functioning.
It was a shift I first described earlier this year in The Power Shift. Ukraine is no longer simply fighting Russian soldiers at the front. It is systematically degrading the systems that allow Russia to wage war in the first place.
Wars are rarely won by destroying every tank.
They are won by ensuring those tanks never receive fuel.
Crimea’s state of emergency reflects precisely that.
Fuel shortages, logistical disruption and emergency measures are no longer isolated incidents. They are becoming increasingly routine across occupied Crimea, while similar pressures are now emerging deep inside Russia itself.
Each successful strike forces Moscow to spend more money, move more air defences and solve another crisis hundreds of kilometres behind the front line.
It also creates political pressure.
Another video has emerged of Russian servicemen appearing to back earlier statements by Russian soldier Alexander Lunin, who called for a meeting with Putin and threatened a military coup.
In the latest clip, the soldiers say they are “ready to turn their weapons against those… https://t.co/qvbwCHuTrJ pic.twitter.com/kLPPVULIGz
— Shaun Pinner (@ShaunPinnerUA) June 26, 2026
The Kremlin continues to avoid another nationwide mobilisation, instead relying on financial incentives, regional recruitment campaigns, prisoners and foreign volunteers.
Meanwhile, casualties continue to mount.
Reports are also circulating that Russia’s regional elections could face disruption or postponement. Those claims remain unconfirmed, but if they were ever to materialise the irony would be extraordinary.
For years, the Kremlin questioned the legitimacy of President Volodymyr Zelensky because Ukraine has operated under martial law following Russia’s invasion.
Russia is not under nationwide martial law.
If Moscow were to postpone elections because of political concerns created by its own war, it would expose one of the greatest contradictions of Putin’s presidency. A government that spent four years questioning another country’s democracy could find itself limiting its own electoral process because of the consequences of a war it chose to start.
None of this means Russia is on the verge of collapse.
Far from it.
Highly centralised authoritarian states can absorb extraordinary punishment, particularly during wartime. Vladimir Putin still controls the media, the security services and the political system.
But even authoritarian governments cannot escape consequences forever.
History consistently shows that wars rarely end because leaders suddenly decide they have had enough, but end when the military, economic and political costs become too great to ignore.
Russia can continue fighting.
The more important question is how much longer it can sustain those costs.
Which brings us back to where we started, why did Russia invade Ukraine?
“Nazis.”
“NATO.”
“Russian speakers.”
“Western biolabs.”
Each justification replaced the previous one as reality steadily undermined it.
The three-day “special military operation” became a grinding war of attrition.
The promise to “demilitarise” Ukraine coincided with one of Europe’s largest military expansions.
The war supposedly intended to weaken NATO instead strengthened it.
The campaign presented as protecting Russia has increasingly brought the consequences of war back onto Russian soil.
The Kremlin has spent four years moving the goalposts because reality has repeatedly refused to cooperate. Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy has become a catalogue of strategic miscalculations, forcing Moscow to continually rewrite the narrative, with every abandoned slogan chiping away at the story that once convinced millions they were fighting Nazis and that Kyiv would fall in three days.
History has a habit of stripping away propaganda.
Today, ordinary Russians are increasingly discovering something that no amount of state television can hide.
Propaganda doesn’t fill the fuel tank.
It doesn’t lower prices.
It doesn’t replace the dead.
And it doesn’t answer the question that millions may eventually begin asking themselves.
Why?
Perhaps one day Russians really will remember the great sacrifices made during the “Russian-speaking Nazi Mosquito Biolab War.”
Although, if the last four years are anything to go by, I suspect the Kremlin will have rebranded it by then.
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