Ukraine War, 5 January 2023: Part 1
Good morning everybody!
Good morning everybody!
Have taken a few days off, only to find myself facing multiple requests to comment and summarise the ‘first year of Russian invasion of Ukraine’. Or ‘the first 10 months’…
Up front, must admit, ‘working up’ my brain after few days of ‘doing nothing’ isn’t that easy; plus, it’s hard to summarise a mass of impressions into a few words, or sentences, actually. But, and foremost, much too often I simply can’t hold back the sarcast in me.
For example, I can’t but start with the observation that our glorious politicians and the media are still, and insistently lazy, and thus behaving like they’ve invented hot water — like ever since at least the 1970–1980s. Just one example coming to my mind because I read a review of one of my related books yesterday evening: back in the 1980s, the Iran-Iraq War was called the ‘Gulf War’. Only a few years later, when Iraq invaded Kuwait, the war for Kuwait became the ‘Gulf War’. Can show you dozens of title-pages of different contemporary newspapers from around the world, should there be any doubts. However, if — as a military historian — I’m nowadays talking about the ‘First-‘ and ‘Second Persian Gulf War’, then ‘nobody can understand what am I talking about….’
….seems, somebody there has the memory of the fish, therefore the public ‘must’ have the same quality of memory — and thus ‘Putin invaded Ukraine 10 months ago’, eh….?
Well, let me remind you that Putin invaded Ukraine already in February 2014. Therefore, we’re actually talking about the eight year of his invasion. EIGHT FULL YEARS. And not ‘the first ten months’.
….from that point of view, I guess that nowadays, and at every opportunity, Vlad is banging his forehead against the next wall — whenever thinking about ‘that’ question: why didn’t he drive all the way to Kyiv, already back then….?’ At least he’s exercising Judo by breaking bricks with his head… because, hand on heart: the West would’ve shrugged at his invasion and continue doing business with him like if nothing happened, exactly the way it did for most of the last eight years. And you, dear 40 million of people from that strange country out there in the East: well, you’re Russians, or kind of like Russians, so who cares…
But I’m digressing…
OK… the ‘events’ of the last 10 months. So…demonstrating the sheer essence and the true nature of his ‘democratic’ regime, the System Putin — far better organised than any kind of ‘organised crime’ — miscalculated and rushed its super-incompetent armed forces, led by its deeply corrupt and incompetent favourite generals into Ukraine. A country foremost ‘renowned’ as ‘endemically corrupt’. At least in the West… large parts of which are so corrupt, both Putin and Ukrainians can only learn from them…
…and that with intention of not only conquering all of Ukraine, but exterminating it as a nation, because, you know, there is no Ukraine and no Ukrainians: just some misinformed and confused Russians subjected to the NATO-controlled Nazi-regime…. and if not, then those who call themselves Ukrainians do not have the right to exist.
BTW, keep that with extermination on your mind whenever thinking about this conflict, then as the captured Russian military documentation has clearly shown by now, what Putin was planning to do in Ukraine was closely reminiscent of what the Nazi Germany did there slightly over 70 years ago.
…and mind that…. sigh… yes: that sarcast in me is re-surfacing again… mind that the Western expectations for Russia to easily overrun Ukraine have significantly contributed to Putin’s decision to invade…
But I’m digressing again…Point is: not only to Putin’s surprise, or to surprise of many in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odessa, but especially to surprise of the collective West, Ukrainians run another ‘grassroots uprising’, took up arms and fought back. Ukrainians: ‘every-day people’. Not their politicians (well, with a handful of exceptions), and not their generals: a combination of Russian cyber-attacks and electronic warfare cut off the latter from their communications with troops on the frontlines for the first four days of the war. Left at their own, not only members of Ukrainian Armed Forces (ZSU), but dozens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians organised themselves and fought on their own.
Try to pay attention: nowadays, next to nobody is mentioning this fact.
….although it was crucial, because they — the Ukrainian people — stopped and then defeated the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (VSRF) in Kyiv, in Chernihiv, in Sumy, in Kharkiv, and in Mykolaiv: at a terrible price, they caused it murderous losses, and, eventually, forced it to retreat.
That wasn’t anybody else, and didn’t happen thanks to some Javelins, or NLAWs and NATO, CIA, or MI6: it was Ukrainians.
Another thing where my sarcasm can’t hold back: the only area where the VSRF advanced as planned was southern Ukraine. There the Russians took Kherson, and encountered serious resistance only when reaching Mykolaiv and then advancing on Voznesensk in order to reach Odesa. Worst of all: they took Melitopol, and then — and quickly — surrounded Mariupol, and drove all the way to the approaches to Zaporizhzhya and Vuhledar.
It is perfectly possible that I’ve missed related publications, but that itch in my small toe tells me I didn’t. Thus, I find it amusing how silent, until this very day, Kyiv remains regarding the reasons for all of this. Hey: two Russian armies took something like 10% of the Ukrainian territory in a matter of 5–6 days, but no, this ‘didn’t happen, kind of, or is ‘postponed to after the war’ — and that because it’s so damn obvious that this was a major catastrophe?
….that somebody high up the command of the ZSU at least screwed up, if not intentionally left the Russians advance at will.
Now mind: the same somebody is not only co-responsible for bestial torture and death of dozens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians, for hijacking and deportation of thousands of Ukrainian children, and the wholesale looting in this part of the country alone, but also for the destruction of the City of Mariupol, and the entire Kherson Oblast. The character in question is responsible for failing to defend that part of the country (something I cannot understand until this very day), and for massive losses of multiple ZSU units either captured intact or forced to flee back to Dnipro or towards Zaporizhzhya in the first few days of war…
Hand on heart: I would like to at least hear the name of that character….or that group of characters (because I cannot imagine it was one man/woman alone), not to talk about hearing where are they nowadays and what are they doing.
As next, and at the peak of the period the collective West expected Ukraine to collapse again, any time, and sooner rather than later, Ukrainians fought back against all odds — at Izyum, at Severodonetsk, on south-eastern approaches to Lysychansk (like Popasna). They suffered murderous losses while doing that — often in disregard of orders from above, and certainly against advice from the West — and no doubt: they lost all three towns. But mind: through all of this time, the ZSU didn’t just fold and run away. Moreover, it didn’t withdraw from its frontlines in the Donbass, but held out there. It’s still holding Niu York, it’s still holding Avdiivka, it lost Pisky but is firmly holding Pervomaiske, it’s still holding out in Krasnohorivka, and at least in the western side of Marinka…
Best of all, by holding out in south-eastern Kharkiv and western Luhansk, by stopping the Russian effort to encircle their defences in the Donbass, Ukrainians mauled the VSRF to the point where this ceased to exist as a modern armed service with serious offensive potential: where Putin and his lackeys have no other option but to convert the VSRF into a hodgepodge of private militias, and buy ammunition from Iran and North Korea just in order to continue fighting their war for the sake of keeping themselves in power.
Finally, I should not fail to mention Ukrainian counteroffensives of August and September. No doubt, much of this operation became possible thanks to the flow of Western arms and supplies. And, no doubt, the one in Kherson didn’t work the way it was planned, and some of losses the ZSU suffered there….I do not care whether you ‘believe’ me or not: the mass of these was not yet mentioned in the public with a single word. Nope: not even by the Russians. But, overall, it did work: it forced Putin and his incompetent generals to move the mass of what was left of their ‘elite’ troops to that Oblast, in turn opening the way for the counteroffensive in south-eastern Kharkiv. And when Ukrainians liberated that part of their country, then the superior strategist Vlad had to rush his troops back — only to, ultimately, be forced into the conclusion he can’t hold Kherson. A place declared as ‘Russia forever’, officially, by nobody less than Putin, and with all the imaginable pomp and splendour…and then to announce ‘mobilisation’, something he repeatedly stressed wouldn’t be necessary because this is all just some ‘special military operation’, but no war…
Particularly amusing about this and events ever since is Putin’s reaction: it’s the VSRF’s generals and troops to blame for all of this, not the 22+ years of his rule that converted Russia into a 3rd-class banana republic, not his micromanagement of this war, and not even his decision to launch this aggression.
….which is making me inpatient: I can’t wait for Mevedev to continue with his conspiracy theories of a drunkard, nor for Vlad to declare all of Russia and Russians not worth existing any more, because they all failed on him…
So… That’s what’s coming to my mind — or what I cannot forget — in regards of the ‘first 10 months’ of this war.
(…to be continued….)