Fascinating historic comparison:
Janne M. Korhonen 🇫🇮🇪🇺🐟🇺🇦@jmkorhonen
What strikes me in the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine are the similarities to the Winter War (1939-40) against Finland. However, I'm afraid the end result could be similar as well - but it doesn't need to be. A THREAD.
It now seems blindingly obvious that just as in 1939, the yes-men and sycophants in the Kremlin told their master he wanted to hear. "An invasion will be a cakewalk." "The locals will greet us as liberators." "Our mighty army will take the capital in days."
Stalin even told the world, and his people, that this was no war but a limited police action.
Stalin believed he will be in Helsinki in two weeks. (We're still waiting.)
Stalin's henchman even commissioned a musical piece from famed composer Shostakovich, the Suite on Finnish Themes, to be performed by the marching bands of the Red Army parading through Helsinki.
In comparison, Putin's lackeys expecting rapid fall of Kiyv wrote... a blog post.
Russia indeed is no Soviet Union.
Stalin was told that Finland is deeply divided and the working men would not fight for the bourgeois government. What happened was that even middle-aged men who had fought for the Red Guards in the 1918 civil war, and oppressed afterwards, volunteered en masse for the front.
Just like today in Ukraine, in 1939 the Kremlin wanted to change the Finnish government and install a puppet regime.
A puppet government, known as the Terijoki government and consisting of exiled Finnish communists, was announced. The Kremlin announced it the "lawful" government of Finland that had "asked" for "help."
After a manufactured pretext, the so-called Shots of Mainila, the invasion began on the 30th November 1939. The initial Soviet advance was a shambolic mess. Some units advanced with the marching band in front, fully expecting applauses and not murderingly accurate rifle fire.
Some of the units did not even know where they were. For example, the - ironically - Ukrainian 44th Division, mostly farmers and city boys, had been shipped from Poland to the border, to the middle of primeval forest, and few had any idea what they were doing there.
Many units were not even issued with winter clothing and snow camoflage was nonexistent. In their greenish brown coats, they stood against the snow like targets they were.
Stalin's purges had eliminated almost all actually competent officers from the Red Army. Those who remained knew little more than to push the mass of men and material forward, against waiting Finnish machine guns.
Some Finnish machine gunners reportedly went insane from the carnage they inflicted. In places, defenders literally sheltered behind mounds of frozen Soviet corpses.
In the north, the overconfident, tactically inept Soviets managed to surprise the defenders, who had not believed the few puny roads cutting into the primeval forest could support an attack. As a result, columns of Soviets poured deep inside Finland before they were stopped.
Just like today, the Kremlin's forces controlled only the roads, however. Outside the roads, they froze and died. When Finnish forces managed to cut off the roads behind them, they froze, starved, and died.
Unfortunately, the Kremlin had only been humiliated, not defeated. After the initial assault went nowhere, the sycophants who had promised a quick victory were removed and actually competent officers put in charge. They devised a methodical plan to steamroll the Finnish defences.
The Red Army was quick to learn its lessons. The army went back to the basics, regrouped and reinforced, and even trained the assault in advance. Massive artillery concentration was prepared, and the Finnish defenders worn out with bombardment and small scale attacks.
In February 1st, the assault renewed. Tactics had been improved: for instance, tanks and infantry now actually cooperated, making anti-tank defense much more difficult. And firepower was used far more liberally.
After a 10-day round-the-clock artillery barrage, the Soviet forces achieved a breakthrough in the Karelian Isthmus on the 11th February 1940.
At this point, Finnish defenders were outnumbered three to one, and sorely lacking in weapons and ammunition. Initial successes and censorship of Finnish losses had lulled many people into a state of complacency, which may also have slowed down foreign aid.
On 15 February, Finnish forces began a general retreat to a fallback line in the Karelian Isthmus. They were still inflicting disproportionate casualties to the attacking Soviets, but the Red Army just kept on coming, and Finnish defenders and their reserves were exhausted.
On 5 March, the Soviet forces entered the suburbs of Karelian "capital" Viipuri (Vyborg), the 4th largest Finnish city, and established a beachhead on the Western Gulf of Vyborg. At this point, the last Finnish reserves consisted of teenagers and older men.
On 12 March, the Moscow Peace Treaty was signed. Finland lost the war, but retained her independence. The puppet Terijoki government did not take power, as Stalin had planned. But Finland lost Karelia, and 11-12% of all Finns lost their homes.
(The people in occupied areas were given a choice to stay if they wanted. Something like a dozen stayed, about 420 000 chose to become refugees instead.)
I'm afraid a similar story may yet unfold in Ukraine. Ukrainians are not telling about their own losses, and the Kremlin still has very powerful forces arrayed against the Ukrainian defenders.
The Kremlin's initial assault has now stalled. Just as in the Winter War, the Kremlin is in desperation resorting to increasing use of firepower to destroy the defenders, caring little about civilian (or its own) casualties.
The Ukrainians have inflicted horrendous casualties upon their enemy, and fought with amazing determination and bravery. Finnish veterans have already congratulated them. But so far even optimistic accounts suggest the Kremlin's invasion force has suffered only about 5 % losses.
If the Kremlin's forces now learn their lesson, they may yet manage to steamroll the Ukrainians. They will suffer casualties, but they may have enough power to prevail.
On the other hand, the odds against the Ukrainians are not as bad as the odds against Finland were in the Winter War. Ukraine has 11 times the population of Winter War Finland, and the armed forces are roughly equal in number to the Kremlin's invasion force.
Ukraine is also receiving foreign support much more forcefully than what Finland received during the Winter War. Finnish defences would have withstood much better if Finns had had more anti-tank weapons; these are now being delivered in encouraging if still limited numbers.
Most importantly, the morale of the Russian troops seems to be awful. In war, morale is famously to material as three is to one. Russian forces are abandoning the fight in large numbers, and leaving even high tech equipment to the Ukrainians.
Even at the Russian home front, the situation does not look rosy. Even though information supply is tightly controlled, Russians have far better means of gathering accurate information than they had in 1939, and international sanctions are infinitely more biting.
Finally, in modern war logistics are even more important than in 1939. From all accounts, it seems the Russian forces did not have good enough logistics "tail" even to serve the forces in their jump-off positions before the invasion. It's even harder now.
In the absence of proper logistics, the Kremlin's vast hordes are far less dangerous than mere numbers suggest. As someone noted, a 40-km long column of military vehicles that isn't moving is not an army but a traffic jam.
If logistics do not work, the Kremlin's forces that are still unengaged can fight with whatever ammunition and fuel supplies they can carry - and the latter are already depleted, because simply keeping the vehicles operational consumes fuel every day.
In short, much of the rest of the Kremlin's troops may to be a glass cannon: it may hit once very powerfully, but will crumble soon afterwards.
Will the Ukrainians withstand this blow? I hope so.
Some have suggested the Kremlin has not even committed its best troops yet. To me, this seems implausible. Their elite enforcers, the airborne troops of the VDV, have now been committed en masse, and failed to make much headway.
The supposedly crack Kantemirovskaya or 4th Guards Tank Division has also seen combat, and, amazingly, lost even high level command vehicles and their contents without much of a fight or even an attempt to destroy valuable documents.
Some tanks have been lost with their guns still fixed on transport supports, that is, without firing a shot at the Ukrainians. Even extremely valuable surface to air missile systems have been simply abandoned.
Unbelievably, the Russian forces are even communicating using commercially available, unencrypted radios, as radio amateurs around the world have noticed. This was a bad idea in 1914 - see the battle of Tannenberg - and it's suicidal today.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tannenberg
All this points to a conclusion: the Kremlin not only misjudged the Ukrainians, but its beliefs about its own army were also seriously in error, probably due to endemic corruption. Sun Tzu says: "If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
So I remain reservedly optimistic. The Kremlin is probably even now firing the most incompetent officers and trying to find competent ones, but it's not clear who they would be. In an autocracy, competence is a threat.
It's not clear how much even competent leadership could do to improve the morale of the Russian soldiers in Ukraine, although as they take losses, they will inevitably become angrier. We will probably see how this plays out in the coming days.
Meanwhile, foreign aid continues to pour into Ukraine, and the morale of the Ukrainian defenders remains high. If they can avoid exhaustion, they can continue to maul the invaders.
If the Ukrainians can avoid defeat, it seems to me quite likely that the Kremlin will have to settle for some face saving "win" before torches and pitchforks begin to mass in the Red Square.
Perhaps the Ukrainians will have to allow this.
In the end, it's far too early to say how this war will end, and when. By now it's clear the Kremlin is not going to win this war even if it wins the coming battles, and Ukraine will definitely win the peace.
But Ukraine too can still lose the war, and many battles. Let's continue to support them so that they won't.