 Putin prepares Russian society for an eternal war with the West. More than a year into an invasion in Ukraine, according to Russian planning, was supposed to take weeks. Vladimir Putin's government is putting society on a war footing with the West and digging in for a multi-year conflict. The Guardian newspaper wrote about it. Speaking at length to workers at an aviation factory in the Buryatia region recently, Putin once again cast the war as an existential battle for Russia's survival. For us, this is not a geopolitical task, but a task of the survival of Russian statehood, creating conditions for the future development of the country and our children, the president said. It followed a pattern of recent speeches, said the political analyst Maxim Trudelyobov, in which the Russian leader has increasingly shifted towards discussing what observers have called a forever war with the West. Putin has practically stopped talking about any concrete aims of the war. He proposes no vision of what a future victory might look like either. The war has no clear-cut beginning nor a foreseeable end, Trudelyobov said. During Putin's closely watched State of the Nation speech last month, the Russian leader repeated some of the many grievances he holds against the West, stressing that Moscow was fighting for national survival and would ultimately win. The thinly veiled message to the people, Trudelyobov said, was that the war in Ukraine would not be ending anytime soon and that Russians must learn to live with it. Western officials have described listening to Putin's combative speech in February with dismay, seeing it as the Russian leader doubling down on his war and leaving little room for retreat. One Western diplomat in Moscow described Putin's message in the speech as preparing the Russian public for war that never ends. The diplomat also said it was not clear that Putin could accept a defeat in the conflict because it did not seem that Putin understands how to lose.