In the opening phase of Russia’s humanitarian intervention in the Ukraine, the Russian military deployed columns of troops towards the cities of Kiev and Kharkov. When these columns neared the point at which the cities could be besieged or assaulted they stopped.
They then withdrew.
This manouvre was generally derided, as showing the Russian forces to be utterly incompetent. The public was treated to endless images of Russian tanks being blown up or just breaking down on the road.
The public perception was that the Russian forces were about to fall under their own weight, the heroic Ukranians would march to gates of Moscow and the evil empire would collapse into rubble.
But this didn’t happen. And rather than the Russian deployment being a bumbling mistake, it was actually an extremely successful strategic gambit.
One of the strategic difficulties faced by the Russian forces was that although east of the Dneiper the population was largely Russian sympathetic, it was by no means overwhelmingly so. It is a stark reminder of the brutal age we live in, that under the Czarist and Soviet empires, Ukrainians, Russians and other ethnic groups, lived relatively peacefully, side by side.
What this interpenetration of ethnic communities meant was that while most in the eastern regions would see the Russians as liberators, there were many who would not. So the problem arose as to how this unsympathetic group would be handled.
Looking back at the manouvre, particularly the major thrust towards Kiev, it threatened to cut off the capital, a city of 3m and seemed poised to cut the country in two. It was this move that engendered a mass movement of Ukrainians to the west, it is said some 14 M in total, with 8 million relocating to Nato countries.
It must be that the Russians accomplished one of the greatest ethnic cleansings of all time. Which was not only the least bloody by far, considering the numbers involved, but was so sophisticated that few even noticed what they had done.
This quite suprising, as the notion that the Russians ever wanted to take these cities is patently absurd.
Holding hostile major cites is a logistical nightmare. It was for this reason the Germans never stormed Leningrad.
From Day 1 the Russians had prepared for a general war with Nato and so had committed only 200K troops to the Ukrainian theatre. This would have been a hopelessly inadequate number of troops to hold both the Donets line of engagement and a periphery around both Kiev and Kharkov, let alone to police these cities and supply them.
While the cartoon version of the Russian military may admit such stupidity, reality does not.
There were some other benefits. The relocation of such a vast number of people, abt 1/3 of the population, collapsed the Ukrainian economy. While an additional 8 M beneficiaries may not have appeared to be a great burden for NATO, we are now seeing just how fragile the global economic order really is.
In any advance such as this, with exposed flanks, there is always going to be a tactical cost. But as the saying goes, tactics may win battles but strategy wins wars.
That this brilliant maneuver was seen as a muddling failure shows that the vast bulk of the population simply relate on an emotional basis and don’t get strategy.
The Daily Lama 