APRIL 22, 2023 – The world awaits Ukraine’s much anticipated spring offensive against the Russian invaders. Perhaps I overstate matters when I say, “the world.” At the time of the invasion 14 months ago, when news coverage was 24/7, we watched slack-jawed as Putin unleashed his horrors on the sovereign nation of Ukraine. The assault was launched after weeks of Putin’s denials, claiming the rumor of invasion was mere war-mongering by NATO and the U.S.
For days, weeks, we watched in horror the indiscriminate bombings of cities and civilians; the streams of refugees, mostly women and children, fleeing the country. Eventually, as is the case with all human catastrophes—wars, famines, natural disasters—we Americans with our money and our short attention spans, wrote out checks to “Ukraine Children,” then . . . checked out.
On occasion “regular programming” was interrupted by a news flash or two from brave, front-line Western journalists reporting on the continuing slog of war, with heart-wrenching stories of Ukrainian sacrifice and surprising news of Ukrainian victories and Russian failures. For a time we even heard words as definitive as “win” in the Ukrainian column and “lose” in the Russian. We saw neither words nor images, however, of the fate of four million Ukrainian refugees living outside their country or millions more displaced within their borders. Nor did we see or hear much about the $411 billion (according to a March 2023 estimate by the World Bank; more than twice Ukraine’s pre-war GDP) it will take to restore the physical devastation of Ukraine.
Apart from money, property, and most dear—human lives and suffering—the war is about geopolitics, with potentially incalculably adverse ramifications for the West if Russia is allowed to prevail.
Will we beneficiaries of democracy allow Russian aggression to succeed—we with our notoriously short attention spans and shallow interest and understanding of what’s at stake?
We must expect a long struggle. So far, Putin has followed Stalin’s playbook in WW II, which made no provision for refinement, just raw quantity of force. A British military analyst described Stalin’s approach this way: “In Soviet thinking economy of force has little place. Whereas to an Englishman the taking of a sledgehammer to crack a nut is a wrong decision and a sign of mental immaturity . . . in Russian eyes the cracking of nuts is clearly what sledgehammers are for.” (Hastings, Inferno, p. 529.) Historian Max Hastings adds:
Russian attacks emphasized massed artillery bombardment and sacrificial tank and infantry advances, often led by “staff battalions”—penal units of political and military prisoners offered the possibility of reprieve to return for accepting the likelihood of extinction. . . .Even in the years of victory, 1943 to 1945, the Red Army’s assault units accepted losses of around 25 percent in each action, a casualty rate the Anglo-American forces would never have accepted as a constant. (Inferno, p. 529).
The foregoing tactics are embraced as much by Putin against Ukraine as they were applied by Stalin against the Germans. Accordingly, the likelihood is slim that staggering losses will cause Putin to quit until his sledgehammer breaks. The Ukrainians, meanwhile, have shown the will and strength to withstand the blows—provided our aid continues unabated. Tragically, the war is likely long from over. History’s hand presses hard against lands tilled by violence.
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© 2023 by Eric Nilsson
