Russia is ready to fight a forever war. Just ask Vladimir Putin’s favorite pseudo-historian.

Axar.az informs, citing Politico, Vladimir Medinsky served as the Kremlin chief’s arch-patriotic culture minister from 2012 to 2020, and he oversaw the redrafting of a skewed history curriculum to be taught to Russia’s schoolchildren. An advocate of putting up statues of Josef Stalin, he’s been a leading persecutor of gulag historians and chroniclers.

He also led Moscow’s delegation to Ukraine talks in Istanbul last week.

Medinsky invoked the Great Northern War of 1700-21 as a warning that Russia is ready to fight Ukraine for as long as it takes to win — or force a surrender.

“The Great Northern War with Sweden lasted 21 years. But just a few years after it began, Peter the Great offered peace to the Swedes … What did the Swedes say? ‘No, we will fight to the last Swede,’” Medinsky scoffed in a TV interview.

That conflict between czarist Russia and Sweden was for mastery of the Baltic region, and ended in Swedish defeat. Putin fancies himself as a Peter the Great redux; he even has a bronze statue of the 18th century czar in the Cabinet room.

And Putin likely believes that it isn’t just prolonged fighting that will win him most of his revanchist war aims in Ukraine, but he’ll be helped by interminable talks that wear down U.S. President Donald Trump’s desire to hash out a peace deal.

Their two-hour phone conversation Monday didn’t shift the dial toward peace.

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