The invasion of Ukraine now unfolding is not the first time Russian forces have swept across large tracts of Ukrainian territory in a quest to grab some, if not all, of that country. The blood of Soviet soldiers was shed on the same ground during some of the most ferocious battles of World War 2.
Just 160km from Ukraine’s eastern border is the Russian town of Kursk — the site of the largest tank battle in history, which took place in July 1943. The Red Army ground down the Nazi invaders and then threw them back towards Ukraine in a decisive counterattack, marking the end of Hitler’s major offensives on the Eastern Front.
In 1942 the Red Army heroically defended the besieged naval base of Sevastopol, a Black Sea port on the Crimean peninsula now occupied by Russia. It withstood the joint assaults of Romanian and German forces for eight months and four days, eventually succumbing to artillery barrages and assaults by air and ground. The toll of more than 300,000 Red Army soldiers killed, wounded and captured makes Sevastopol and the Crimea almost hallowed ground, even to modern-day Russians.
It is also worth recalling that willing European participants joined the Nazi "crusade" against the Soviet Union unleashed on June 22 1941. Romanians, Hungarians, Croats and Slovaks joined legions from France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland and Sweden in Operation Barbarossa. About 250,000 Ukrainians served in the German forces, and the date is still commemorated in some Ukrainian communities today.
Truth is the first casualty of war, and the Ukrainian crisis is no exception.
The extent to which President Vladimir Putin has the support of ordinary Russians for his blatant expansionism is uncertain. There are solid indicators of resistance to his regime among the younger generation.
One cannot dispute that most Russians harbour a deep sense of history and that the victory over Nazi Germany is central in their national psyche. Moscow is not the only city in the Russian Federation that teems with well-attended memorials and museums glorifying the enormous sacrifices that the Soviet Union made to free Europe of the Nazi curse. Russians yearn for the prestige they once had as members of the Soviet Union, and their loss of superpower status sits uncomfortably.
Given their World War 2 history, one cannot doubt the sincerity of their wariness of the West’s intentions. The expansion of Nato only increased their paranoia.
Whatever the true intentions of Putin towards Ukraine, he can rely on the ordinary Russian’s sense of history, national pride and distrust of the West to give impetus to his expansionist policies.
Ever the wily strategist, Putin chose to invade Ukraine before it became a Nato member. This ensured that Ukraine would have to face the might of the Russian forces alone.
The fact that Russia has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal deterred any who may have considered direct military intervention; the US and members of the EU quickly cited the fact that Ukraine is not in Nato as a reason to stay on the sidelines. Moscow’s ability to obliterate the world a few times over concentrated the minds of the more belligerent Ukrainian allies.
Putin ominously warned that any attempt to interfere in Ukraine would lead to "consequences you have never seen". Few are brave or foolish enough to test him on his word.
Ukraine’s armed forces are conducting an almost impossible defence; they are no match for Russia in a conventional conflict. The invasion bears all the hallmarks of Soviet deep operations doctrine. The Russians hope to overwhelm their opponents and paralyse their command-and-control structures by using simultaneous concentric thrusts on all fronts.
Special forces attacked airports and vital installations far behind Ukrainian lines. Russia obliterated the Ukrainian air defences within hours of the invasion. Russian forces advancing on Kyiv will target Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for removal.
It seems that Putin is aiming at nothing less than a complete occupation of Ukraine and the installation of a Russia-friendly puppet regime.
Ukraine’s best hope to retain independence may soon perforce be guerrilla warfare and trying to make a long-term Russian occupation untenable. This, too, would be repeating history: Ukrainian resistance movements took on the Soviet Union after World War 2 until their defeat in 1949. The Soviets lost more personnel in this conflict than in Afghanistan.
Perhaps Putin’s keen sense of history will take cognisance of that.
*Maj (Dr) Katz is a reserve force member of the SANDF and a research fellow at Stellenbosch University in the faculty of military science
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