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Lithuania was war weary.

At this point, the Vadas - whose sanity was rapidly deteriorating over the days, both from ruling pressure, wartime stress and developing bipolar disorder as a result - and his government were starting to regret ever embroiling themselves in a war in Russia. The Slavs were not giving up, and now their own empire was collapsing. Long gone were the days of the Ruthenians being a toothless, disarmed nation, easy to control - resistance movements were disrupting production, recruitment and transport from their underground cells, while the civilian Ruthenian population itself took on the choice of passive resistance, anything from avoiding military service to sabotaging their workplaces. Even the ethnic Lithuanians and Jews, both nations which were once nigh-fanatically loyal to the regime, were having second thoughts - after all, who would be happy with having an entire generation of their children sent to the eastern front, while they themselves work for long hours for a regime held together by brute force, propaganda and lies. Maybe the democratic Republic of the past wasn't as bad as the propaganda says - hell, maybe even the Ciesor was better than that. This was the idea behind the underground resistance movement known as the Sąjūdis ("The Movement"), led by neurastenic deserter turned democratic resistance leader, Antanas Garšva. Should it even be mentioned alongside all this that Lithuania was completely unprepared for a second front? 95% of their divisions were stuck in the East, and few could be soared to slow down the onslaught.

Russia was war weary.

Although their three year long resistance was applaudable, by now, Russia was an army with some patches of land around Nizhny Novgorod, and an army which was basically propped up by the Volgaks. The Volgaks weren't enthusiastic about the war, either. Although it appeared that the battles of the last year would shut up the anti-war opposition, it only grew more vocal by the time 1942 arrived. People were protesting against thousands of Volgak sons being thrown to the meat grinder and pressed the Council to request an armistice from the Lithuanians, even if it would require throwing Russia to the hounds. Russia itself had no such dissent - partially because most of it had already been silenced - but they had a bigger problem, manpower. As much of Russia was occupied by the Lithuanians, reserves were lacking, and the lands of Nizhny Novgorod were completely drained of men. Thus, the Russian Army kept dwindling every day, held together by a common cause and their national spirit, but a stronger strike against them could very well be the end of it.

Germania was war weary.

The declaration of war against Lithuania was met with surprise, shock and anger among the rainbow of an opposition in the Congress of Vienna. The war with Turkey was not yet completely solved, and it had already cost hundreds of thousands of German lives. In addition, France was not here to help the Germans this time by supplying them with whatever they couldn't produce themselves, like technical knowledge about glider and ship technology and whatnot. The people's living in occupied Europe were even more displeased - after all, this meant that the Germans delayed the question of granting all of the nations they occupied independence, military occupation continued, so on and so forth. Which Germania held the torch of liberty, its subjects were reluctant to do so.

Three exhausted combatants facing off on the ruins of eastern Europe. While it might appear like a level playing field, one should remember - two exhausted nations are stronger than one.

The German Army began their eastern invasion, code name Operation Eylau after the famous Battle of Eylau between the Poles, Lithuanians and Teutonic Knights in 1389, on a wide front from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. The initial objective of the campaign was to rapidly liberate the annexed territories of the Krajina, then, before the Lithuanians are able to mount a solid defense, strike ethnic Lithuania and force the Revivalist government to capitulate. The initial stages of the attack were met with moderate success - although the quality of the infrastructure they were about to face was overestimated by the Germans, they were able to accomplish a rapid pace of invasion and beat down the sparse defending forces in their way. Karaliaučius, Grodno and Lutsk fell one after the other in the first month of the war, and by June, the Germans had reached the Nemunas and were drawing closer and closer to the Dnieper, endangering now just Lithuanian Krajina, but also the core of the country with Vilnius as it's jewel. The Revivalists went into panic mode. An entire army and numerous other divisions were diverted from the Eastern Front to delay the invading Germans, while mass mobilization took place back home. In some places, even women and teenagers were conscripted for home defense, most with little training and no artillery support, or even working equipment. Meanwhile, the Ruthenians cheered for the arriving Germans - in a number of places, sporadic armed rebellions started to break out to topple the regime before the Coalition forces even arrived.

As the first shells began to fall on the outskirts of Kiev, the Russians went on to seize the opportunity of their own. With troops being diverted from the Eastern Front to slow down the German advance, a number of gaps in the front line began to appear, not to mention the opposition dwindling in numbers. The Supreme Commander of the Lithuanian Army, Petras Cvirka, ordered the commanders on the Eastern Front to halt all offensives and dig in for a defensive line - something the military was not adequately prepared for, and something the Russians used to their advantage. Parallel to Operation Eylau, Campaign "Vorskloy's Revenge" began as a wide Russian and Volgak push across the entire Eastern Front. Although the momentum of the offensive grinded to a halt in the first few days, when the Slavs were faced with heavy Lithuanian resistance, it soon began to pick up steam once the opponent began to retreat after suffering heavy losses. The two primary paths of advance came from the north, from Nizhny Novgorod along the Volga River, and from the south, through the Don steppe and along the Azov Sea into the Kursk-Azov Line. The crowning achievement of the two-month long campaign was the Liberation of Tver, the capital of the Russian Democracy, which had been occupied by the Lithuanians for well over a year by now. The Lithuanian defenders provided little resistance in the attack on the town, abandoning it soon after the mass assault began and retreating behind the river. Three years of hard labor in the Eastern Front was fading away by the minute.

If they hadn't realized this before, the Lithuanians did now - this was a two front war, and the enemies on both sides were as powerful, if not even more powerful, than their Sarmatian motherland. Is it time to lay down arms?..

As said before, the beginning of June was when the German army reached the outskirts of Kiev, one of the most important cities in Lithuania, and one where the Lithuanians decided to make their counterattack. The Vadas gave orders to defend Kiev to the last man - not just because of the historical and patriotic importance of the city, but also because it was a major industrial and infrastructure hub. Losing it would mean that the connection to the south of the country, such as Odessa and the vital iron and coal deposits in the Kursk-Azov Line, would be severed, and if that happens, then the war may as well be lost. The Battle of Kiev began. Hastily assembled units from youth organizations, Green Berets and reserve divisions were the frontline defense and were supposed to hold out until experienced regulars arrive from the East - however, who could have imagined that reservists and youngsters wouldn't do all that well against landships? Lacking aerial and artillery support, the Lithuanians were quickly pushed back into the center of the city, where they ended up faced by an another problem - local Ruthenian resistance. The people of Kiev, flying the flag of Russia, took arms and began openly fighting against the occupants, either from basements and their homes or in outright street skirmishes. This uprising in the city was used well by the Germans, who began an offensive into the heart of the city not long after the first skirmishes began. Many of the surviving Lithuanians surrendered in the following days, others fled or deserted, total losses being counted up to 80 000 people, and a gaping hole in the front was opened. Although that hole was swiftly blocked by the arriving regulars, setting up a wide perimeter around the left bank of the Dnieper, the worst case scenario had happened - communications with the southern front were severed and the Kursk-Azov Line was soon lost.

The worsening situation at the front, the deteriorating situation back home and the overwhelming odds Lithuania had to face around it solidified the opinion that the war was completely unwinnable, it was only a matter of time before the defense effort would collapse, and the lunacy of the Revival Front will only end up destroying the nation. Lithuania needed a negotiated peace with both the Germans and the Russians. Or, at least the Germans. This was a view shared not just by the sparse underground opposition, but also many high-ranking generals in the Lithuanian Army - including, most importantly, the famous Antanas Sidabras. Not a man excited for the ideology of Revivalism in the first place, he had kept up a secret correspondence with the leader of the Sąjūdis, Antanas Garšva, for a few months, and despite the former being a bleeding-heart democrat and the latter a commanding General, the two men agreed that the only path for Lithuania to remain and prosper is a negotiated peace.

Of course, both of them had their own personal thoughts on the matter. Garšva, a patriot as much as a republican, feared that a prolonged two-year war will result in a harsh peace treaty on whatever remained of the Lithuanian nation - White Russia, Ingria, Estonia, maybe even Latgale, would be lost. Sidabras knew that unless Lithuania is able to negotiate, any Lithuanian successor state will be propped up by the Germans - and such a state would obviously be thoroughly demilitarized, putting him out of a job. It was thus perhaps obvious that both Antanases would come to the same solution - overthrowing the Revivalist government and making peace was necessary, even if cooperation with the other side was required. Fortunately to the conspiracy, many both across the anti-Revivalist underground and across the Lithuanian Army were receptive to the idea - defeatism had already been firmly ingrained in the military, many officers were extremely disappointed with the meddling, arrogance and lunacy of the Front, and others hoped to retain their comfortable seats in a postwar Lithuania.

The day was July 19th, 1942, in Vilnius, under the former Imperial palace, whose large basements were turned into a makeshift bunker and military command centre for the Lithuanian government. The top cadre of Army generals, a number of junior officers and important members of the Revivalist civilian government all shared a room with the Vadas, with a very uneasy atmosphere. The discussion revolved around the collapsing war effort in both the Eastern and the Western Fronts, the fall of Kiev, Germans crossing the Nemunas River and threatening Vilnius directly, and the Russians approaching the city of Smolensk. Telesforas Gelažius, a junior officer and a witness of the meeting, later a politician, wrote in his memoirs that "during this time, Stankevičius had turned more and more erratic. During the meeting, he first stayed calm, then lashed out at a Jew and nearly stabbed him with his pencil, apologized for his actions, suddenly turned friendly and optimistic, before starting to cry, and so on and so forth... He had no mental stability. Nobody would say it out loud, but we knew that he was aware of the results of the war, and feared what would happen to him. We all feared what could happen to us - optimists studied German and pessimists Russian.". Among the people in the room was Lieutenant Algimantas Čekuolis, who brought a suitcase, supposedly filled with paperwork and other junk. Not long after his arrival, he received a planned phone call and left the room, leaving the suitcase under the Vadas's mahogany table. After bluffing his way out of a few guard posts in the palace and meeting up with fellow conspirators outside, an explosion underground shrieked. The assassination plot was a success. Out of the 25 people present in the room, 18, including Augustinas Stankevičius, perished.

The government of Lithuania was immediately thrown into chaos, because not only was the supreme leader now dead, but the line of succession became murky. This was where Antanas Sidabras and the rest of the conspiracy came in. Presenting himself as having been unaware of the plot and shocked by the news, he and military units loyal to him moved to Vilnius and, through the local Sengupta station, declared the general to be the successor to Stankevičius and thus the new leader of Lithuania. This part of the plot happened much like the conspirators hoped - the existing power structures, still shocked by the event, recognized Sidabras's fame and gravitas as one of the most decorated commanders of the war, and the transition of power ended up as mostly bloodless, at first. As the new supreme commander, Sidabras set out to make two things - first, remove the Revival Front from power, the easier of the two tasks, as without the Vadas and his closest associates, it was practically defanged; and make peace with Germania. The Sąjūdis was legalized. However, this was where events unsuspected by the conspirators came in. Although the Sąjūdis had made a "non-aggression pact" with Sidabras to not interfere with his actions at the beginning, not all members of the underground movement were made aware of the fact, and they took the death of Stankevičius as a sign to begin a revolution. Sporadic protests and violence began across the country. In Ruthenia, matters were worse, as the already existing anti-Lithuanian action turned into an outright rebellion.

The biggest surprise, however, came when Lithuania proposed peace talks to Germania. Augustina Sternberg was well aware that this was not being given to her government out of goodwill - the militarists now in charge of the government hoped to save the territories they had conquered as well as their seats in the top of Lithuanian society. Neither one was preferable to Germania, thus she simply declined the offer - unfortunately to her, public opinion struck in the back. After being informed about the negotiations by recently captured Lithuanian officers, Helmuth Adenauer, a German war correspondent, leaked the news of potential peace negotiations to the media. Although Adenauer was quickly detained for leaking disclosed military information, it was too late - the war-weary and peace-hungry public went wild, letter campaigns stormed the German government demanding an immediate peace with Lithuania, and the matter soon reached the Congress of Vienna, which, threatening Sternberg with a vote of no confidence, forced a beginning to peace negotiations.

Of course, the savvy Prime Minister was not done yet. Despite the peace negotiations, Germania still held a firm upper hand in the war, and she knew that Lithuania and its leader Sidabras could not afford a breakdown of peace negotiations. In the first meeting on August 1st, the German diplomats presented their initial demands - a restoration of democracy in Lithuania, limited demilitarization, restoration of independence for Krajina and a status quo peace with Russia. Both the militarist government and the few remaining Revivalists were outraged with this proposal. Alexei Krutov, whom information about peace negotiations was forwarded to, was also dissatisfied - after all, a Greater Russia was one of his desires. However, much like Sternberg presumed, the negotiations did not break down, and from August 1st onward, discussions and amendments to the proposal continued, on and off, while military operations on the Western Front stopped. Despite holding the upper hand in peace talks, Sternberg was pressured by anti-war public opinion back home and thus had to sweeten the deal to hasten the negotiations - demilitarization was no longer demanded, although the other three cornerstones of the treaty were retained. In early September, after demands to be present, Russian and Volgak diplomats were brought in to the negotiations, and, albeit begrudgingly, approved the deal. Many members of the Lithuanian government still resisted the "democratization" part of the treaty, but this is where Sidabras gave his word - after the peace is approved, he shall step down from the position of leader and organize free elections.

It was a sudden jump from totalitarian dictatorship to democracy that many were not at all comfortable with, and which would divide Lithuanian politics for years to come. The final treaty was signed in Vilnius on October 4th, marking an end to the Russo-Lithuanian War and war in Europe in general. While the conflict was over, few were satisfied with it. Lithuania would struggle to remove the shackles of the memory of Revivalism and militarism, many of the upper echelons of society learning little from the war. Russia would turn bitter at the results of the war and the lack of justice served for the brutality inflicted on its people, and this hatred would direct itself not just to Lithuania, but to Germania as well. And Germania would realize that the difficulties of building peace in Europe do not end with the final victory over the dictatorships...

The War of the Danube, the Russo-Lithuanian War, both of these conflicts were over in Europe (of course, conflict continued in East Africa and the Middle East), but unlike in the Great European War, few held the view that it was the peace for our time.

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As the Russo-Lithuanian War rolled across Tver and reached its climax in the outskirts of Nizhny Novgorod, a man arose from out the azure main to claim his spot as one of the most famous men in the entire conflict, and that man's name was Boris Zhdanov.

Zhdanov's biography had been a mystery for many years, but through a combination of archive searches, information gathered from the man and some of his surviving relatives, as well as popular stories, writer Sergei Sereikov managed to cobble it up in 1997. Boris Viktorovich Zhdanov was born as the oldest child to a family of seven in the outskirts of Nizhny Novgorod, in the year 1907. His parents and family, much like the majority of Russians at the time, were Volanite Orthodox, and his father was a logger and hunter. According to Zhdanov himself, this was where he gained his first practice in shooting - while he didn't exactly live in poverty, hunting was necessary both for food, for acquiring money in trading furs, and as a way to pass time. Later, in his teenage and young adult years, Boris would bring additional money to the family by participating in various shooting competitions - his room was reportedly full of various trophies, brought from as far as Vostovsk.

Being the oldest son, Boris was set to continue his father's logging business, and even entered the University of Tver to study forestry, paying for his studies from his own small account - and because he was a student, he was exempt from military service during the general mobilization order upon the beginning of the Russo-Lithuanian War in 1939. Reportedly, Zhdanov was among the refugees fleeing Tver during the famous siege of the city, but this is questioned - his account of the battle does not match up with the known facts about the event. Regardless, after leaving Tver, Zhdanov returned to his home village, but now with a deep, though tranquil hatred against the Lithuanian invaders, stemming from the first-hand sight of the attacking forces, in his heart. Soon, he signed up to join the Russian Army and was assigned to the hastily organized Russian defending forces during Operation Jogaila in the summer of 1940.

During the next two years, armed with a modified long-range Tobolsk limo, equipped with an iron sight, he would kill upwards of 1500 Lithuanian soldiers, in an average of 2 per day (although the average is distorted due to him being out of commission for much of the time). However, the accurate number of kills is impossible to determine, as, while the Russians kept count of the killed made by their sniper teams, the numbers were often inaccurate or distorted for propaganda value. Still, despite that, Zhdanov's extremely impressive skill as a sniper cannot be underestimated. As he preferred winter warfare and was more adept in it, he gained the nickname 'White Death' (Lith. Baltoji mirtis, Rus. Белая смерть). Lithuanian soldiers were extremely terrified of the White Death, and the high command did not hesitate at using anything to get rid of him - counter-sniper teams, artillery and aerial bombardment, even an attempt to assassinate him with a spy. Zhdanov ended up incapacitated three times - first, at the end of Operation Pacas, with a sniper bullet puncturing his jaw; second time, during the battles of 1941, with a shot to the foot, and the third and final time, with a shot to the shoulder during the recapture of Tver. Each one of these times, after some time recovering, the sniper would return to the fray, and Russia built this up as a sign of Zhdanov's invulnerability, much like Russian spirit is invulnerable even in the face of superior opposition. The White Death was practically turned into a symbol of heroic Russian resistance against the Lithuanian invasion, even if Boris himself didn't like the heroization of his deeds. In his eyes, he was just doing his job as a soldier.

The third incapacitation appeared as if it will take down the sniper for good, he ended up locked to a hospital bed for months - however, Zhdanov underwent a practically miraculous recovery and went back into service on October 4th, which, as an interesting coincidence, was also the day when Lithuania and Russia signed the final Treaty of Vilnius, ending the war. However, the two years of warfare and fighting while injured took a toll on the man's stamina, and not long after the end of the way, in 1944, he gave his last breath. Despite his early death, Zhdanov was immortalized by the Russian government as the prime hero of the Russo-Lithuanian War, and a near constant reminder that no matter the size of the adversity, the Russian will always prevail.