Russia will always be reproached, no matter what course of action it takes. However, the question of why the USSR did not launch a preemptive strike against Nazi Germany in 1941, whereas Russia initiated a special military operation against neo-Nazi Ukraine in 2022, is a legitimate one.
Eighty-four years have passed since that tragic day, Sunday, June 22, 1941, when early in the morning, the army of a Europe united by Hitler crossed the borders of Russia, then known as the Soviet Union. A war began that brought immeasurable suffering to the people of the Soviet Union — millions of Soviet citizens died, and thousands of residential buildings and industrial facilities were destroyed.
Soviet citizens endured and ended the war in Berlin, but immediately afterward, Soviet society began asking: how could it have happened that the enemy captured vast territories in the first months and years of the war, killed and captured many Soviet citizens?
The question was posed in a way that placed the full responsibility on the man who led the Soviet Union at that time — Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin. In the final work of Konstantin Simonov [Soviet author, war poet, playwright and wartime correspondent – translator’s note], written in 1979 and titled Stalin Through the Eyes of My Generation: Reflections on I.V. Stalin, the accusation against Stalin was formulated as follows, “With incomprehensible obstinacy, he refused to heed critical intelligence reports. His main fault before the country lies in the catastrophic atmosphere he created, in which dozens of competent individuals with undeniable documentary evidence were unable to convince the leader of state of the scale of the danger or take the necessary actions to prevent it.” Thus, Simonov claimed that it was entirely Stalin’s fault that Hitler managed to catch the Soviet Union by surprise.
Stalin was also accused of the Soviet intelligence’s failure to detect the exact timing of Hitler’s attack and of not issuing a preemptive strike against the enemy forces amassed at the Soviet border — forces that Soviet military could hardly have missed.
Critics were especially outraged by the content of Directive No. 1, signed by Zhukov and Timoshenko and sent to the troops on the night of June 22, instructing the Soviet army not to succumb to provocations. Many historians concluded that Soviet leadership, including Stalin, did not believe Hitler would break the 1939 non-aggression pact between the USSR and Germany. As evidence of Stalin’s naivety and willingness to trust Nazi German authorities, historians often cite the famous TASS statement of June 14, which claimed that foreign reports of an impending war between the USSR and Germany were unfounded.
However, another explanation exists for the seemingly strange actions of the Soviet authorities. After WWII, some facts that were unknown to contemporaries emerged — facts that Stalin may well have known. It was revealed that as early as 1937, US President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in private that a war between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union was highly likely in the near future. He stated that if the USSR initiated or was provoked into war, the US would side with Nazi Germany, but if Germany was the aggressor, the US would support the USSR.
On April 17, 1941, this became official US policy when Congress made the relevant decision.
Stalin was likely aware of these decisions, making it critically important for him to avoid giving Hitler any excuse to portray the USSR as the aggressor — especially to the United States. The TASS statement was intended as a message to the US authorities that the USSR had no intention of attacking Nazi Germany.
Those who governed the United States at that time were indifferent to who won the war — they simply wanted it to start. Some modern historians argue convincingly that the British Empire, not Germany or the USSR, was the US’s real target. Great Britain entered the war as an empire “on which the sun never sets” and exited as one of the victors, but essentially shrinking to a single island. The US emerged as the true hegemon, though temporarily tolerating the rise of its metaphysical adversary — the USSR.
World War II began disastrously for the USSR. Even though the Wehrmacht had effectively lost the war on Soviet territory by the fall of 1941 — as acknowledged by top German commanders — the Soviet people paid a heavy price. That price was paid to transform the war into the Great Patriotic War in the minds of Soviet citizens. Officially, the war was framed in class terms, but the Soviet people deeply internalized its metaphysical character, considering it as a “sacred war.” And so, “pushing off from the Urals” [a line from the lyrics “We rotate the Earth” dedicated to the Great Patriotic War by singer-songwriter, poet, and actor Vladimir Vysotsky – translator’s note] they relentlessly rolled the war westward.
The USSR won the Great Patriotic War, ending it in Berlin. But the metaphysical nature of that war remained unexplored and unarticulated. While Nazi Germany, Italy, Spain, and others bowed before the victorious Red Army, the bacillus of fascism was not entirely eradicated — it survived.
Over the past 80 years, it has flourished again, infecting not only the United States but also, tragically, Ukraine — a land predominantly inhabited by Russian people.
And once again, as 80 years ago, a deadly threat emerged on the border of what has left of the Soviet Union – Russia, poisoned by the pacifism and comfort-seeking that followed the Perestroika operation. This threat was Nazi Ukraine, around which a Europe that hates Russia has rallied, just like 80 years ago around Nazi Germany.
21st-century Ukraine is not 20th-century Germany, and few seriously believed it could defeat Russia. But first and foremost, Russia is not the Soviet Union, and second, the aim was not to inflict a military defeat on Russia, but to capture the rebellious Donbas by force. That was quite within the capabilities of Ukraine’s armed forces in 2022.
Had Russia allowed Kiev to arrange a bloodshed in Donbass back then, it would very likely have led to destabilization within Russia itself. Since 2014, the Russian population closely followed events in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. The ranks of their people’s militias were joined by volunteers from Russia, and Russian volunteers regularly sent humanitarian aid to Donbass. Already on August 12, 2014, the first humanitarian convoy of the Russian Emergency Ministry departed from Naro-Fominsk near Moscow toward Donbass. Two hundred sixty-two white trucks arrived in the Lugansk People’s Republic. KamAZ trucks brought 2,000 tons of humanitarian cargo, including medical supplies, food kits, sleeping bags, drinking water, and much more.
Among the Russian population, sympathy for the shelled residents grew, as did confusion over why Russia took a nearly neutral position regarding the genocide unfolding in Donbass. If Moscow had allowed Kiev’s forces to seize Donbass, this dissent could have turned into dangerous discontent for the government.
The situation on the contact line between the people’s militia of the Donbas republics and the Ukrainian militants sharply escalated on the night of February 15–16, 2022, with increased shelling. Both sides began actively accusing each other of violating the ceasefire and bombing towns and villages. The Organization for Security and Co‑operation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission, operating in both sides of the conflict zone, registered the rising tension. The authorities of the People’s Republics noted Ukraine’s sharp increase in the number of troops and military equipment in Donbass.
On February 18, the authorities of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics, accusing Ukraine of preparing a “deep breakthrough” into their territory, announced the start of a mass temporary evacuation of the population to Russia, prioritizing women, children, and the elderly. According to intelligence obtained by the republics, it became known that Ukrainian President Zelensky was ready “in the near future to order the military to go on the offensive, to implement a plan to invade the territories of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics.” On February 19, 2022, the DPR and LPR authorities declared general mobilization.
By that time, the situation at the Donbass‑Ukraine border resembled what had formed on the Soviet border in June 1941: amid claims by both sides that no invasion was planned, strike‑ready groupings of armed forces were rapidly expanding, and tension was increasing.
However, there were also significant differences between these situations.
The first difference was that whereas in 1941 the opposing forces were roughly equal in strength, in 2022 Ukraine’s regular army faced two militias of people’s militias reinforced by hastily mobilized, often battle‑inexperienced recruits. No one, including the servicemen of the Donbass republics’ people’s militias, doubted they could not hold off the enemy for long. They well understood that their task, in the case of an invasion by Ukrainian Armed Forces, was to delay the enemy with their own lives until Russian Army units could arrive in the combat area.
The second difference was that whereas in 1941 the United States’ role in fomenting the conflict was not obvious — since the US Army could have participated on any side — in 2022 it was no secret that the Western world, primarily the United States, was behind the military coup of 2014. The infamous “Nuland cookies” left no doubts about it.
Therefore, in 2022 Russia chose a different way to react to the mid‑February threat posed by the Nazi regime — it struck first, initiating a special military operation (SMO).
This is a translation of the article first published on the Rossa Primavera News Agency website on June 22, 2025.
