Kyiv’s residents have watched shells rain down on the city in the past few days, as they did in 1941, then at the start of a brutal war in which Ukraine endured unthinkable suffering.
As images circulate of families huddled in basements and in the city’s subway stations for safety while rocket strikes light up the sky, it is hard not to make the comparison. Except, this time, the threat is from the east.
It is an imperfect parallel, but a vivid one for many Ukrainians, that clashes starkly with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s outlandish claims to be “de-Nazifying” Ukraine.
Never mind his narrative — glossing over inconvenient details such as the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact — that the events of 1941 are in fact a reason for his invasion, with Putin citing an effort to avoid past errors of “appeasement.”
“We will not make this mistake the second time,” he said in a televised speech on Thursday.
However, it is also a parallel that the Kremlin, even in its delusional state, would be unwise to dismiss.
Blitzkrieg campaigns are appealing in the eye of planners, but rarely turn out to be either painless or brief — even for powerful nations with apparent military superiority.
Russian forces might overwhelm the Ukrainian capital, but maintaining that control in the face of a motivated defense force and hostile population, not to mention actually achieving Putin’s longer-term aims of regime change and security, is a different matter altogether.
It is worth noting that Ukraine has already held back Russia more effectively than many thought it would.
The Russian attack is in its early days, but it has so far not been surgical nor have particularly sophisticated tactics been on display.
A battle outside Kyiv on Thursday saw Russian airborne troops attack an airport, only for the Ukrainian side to reportedly recapture it.
There is also the question of numbers.
Combat theory dictates that attackers need at least a three-to-one ratio to overwhelm defenders in the first instance, and that holds even in today’s conflicts, with new technologies and autonomous systems, as Mick Ryan, a strategist and retired major general in the Australian Army, told me.
The estimated 190,000 Russian personnel in and around the border area are facing a force of 205,000 active Ukrainian troops.
Fighting on the ground is always uncertain and unpredictable, and Moscow might have underestimated the difficulties ahead, Ryan said.
Of course, Russia has more resources it can deploy. Western intelligence officials have warned that Moscow is planning to take control of the city with “overwhelming force.”
As reported in Ukrainian media, the plan to capture Kyiv and seize the Ukrainian government — with a cyberattack, airborne troops and saboteurs engaging in arson and looting, triggering a panic exit — would be difficult to repel if numbers are sufficiently large.
However, that is at best a battle won, not triumph overall, let alone long-term success on Putin’s terms, which would involve securing Ukraine’s fealty to Russia.
The Russian military is far better trained and equipped than when I was alongside its troops in the Second Chechen War more than two decades ago.
Moscow has spent heavily on overhauling its armed forces for this very moment. Commanding officers are prepared, as are the conscripts they lead.
However, Russians are attacking a neighbor with whom many might have family ties — they are not, as the Ukrainians are, defending their livelihoods, homes, families or values that are high-minded, but motivate, like democracy and freedom.
There is also a more fundamental question of whether such a victory, as Putin sees it — securing a friendly government, halting Ukraine’s westward drift — is achievable at all with the current strategy.
That seems doubtful, and the Kremlin might even be achieving the opposite.
The Kremlin says it wants to liberate Ukraine, not occupy it. It wants to remove Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and replace him with a friendly alternative.
However, Ukraine, for all its troubles, is a democracy, not an autocracy. Its leadership cannot just be replaced by removing the Zelenskiy administration.
While Ukrainians were once overwhelmingly friendly toward Moscow, opinion polls suggest that it is no longer the case.
Keeping a pro-Russian alternative in place would be impossible without sustained force — in other words, an occupation Russia can ill-afford.
Moscow would have counted on Zelenskiy’s unpopularity, not the emergence of the comedian-turned-president as a wartime leader, with even opponents rallying behind him.
He has plenty of detractors and has certainly stumbled through difficult moments in this crisis, but he has risen to the occasion. Having delivered rousing emotional speeches, he is vowing not to leave Kyiv, although he and his family are likely Moscow’s prime targets.
Finally, there is the question of time.
Ukrainians might fight for as long as it takes, because they have little choice. They might receive financial and military support, even if the West is reluctant to put boots on the ground.
Russia is not exactly fragile, but it has finite resources, a stagnating economy now under assault from wide-ranging sanctions and a population that, despite official opinion polls, is in no way supportive of this war in its name. The elite are watching assets crumble.
Putin might take Kyiv. He will certainly achieve instability — he already has — but can he turn Ukraine into a loyal neighbor and the buffer he needs?
That seems far harder.
Clara Ferreira Marques is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and member of the editorial board covering commodities and environmental, social and governance issues.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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