Russia: why the war is finally being called a war
Up until now Russia has officially referred to its war of aggression in Ukraine as a "special military operation". Anyone in Russia who spoke about a "war" in public faced punishment. Now, however, the Kremlin itself is increasingly using the term. "There is a war going on, this is a real war," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, explaining this by pointing out that Kyiv was now being backed by "Berlin, Paris, The Hague, Oslo, and, unfortunately, Washington".
Paving the way for nuclear escalation
The change of terms should be taken seriously, warns the Kronen Zeitung:
“'This should not be dismissed as a trifling matter,' says historian Colonel Markus Reisner of the Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt. The motives are undoubtedly serious and it is probably intended as a warning because Russian defence doctrine identifies four categories of warfare: local, regional, large-scale and global. Once a war transitions from regional to large-scale, although according to some assessments it might even be when it transitions from local to regional, nuclear weapons can be deployed – at least tactical nuclear weapons with a shorter range and less explosive power, which are detonated on the battlefield.”
Normalisation of a hard fact
Political scientist Sergei Medvedev analyses the new terminology on Facebook:
“There has been a gradual but steady shift in the cognitive framework in Russia this summer. ... By my reckoning, the timetable will be as follows: Duma elections on 20 September, followed by a new mobilisation in October and, at the same time, restrictions on leaving the country; the autumn will probably bring serious infrastructure failures as well as more systematic bombings of cities. ... There may be rationing of key goods according to population categories. And, at the same time, all this will be normalised under the guise of war, with allusions to the Great Patriotic War and an intensification of patriotic propaganda.”
Kremlin justifying its own failure
Obosrewatel comments:
“The fact that in the summer of 2026, the Kremlin – through Peskov's words – has officially admitted that the 'special military operation has turned into a real war' is not a revelation of the truth (the rest of the world has long since been referring to it as a war in case), but rather a shift in its domestic policy strategy. Russian leaders have merely acknowledged what is obvious to everyone else in order to justify to its own population the protracted nature of the fighting in Ukraine, the economic difficulties and the need for further waves of mobilisation.”