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Ukraine Should Invade Russia
Simple Sun-Tzu. Attack where the enemy is not.
Russian forces are in Ukraine. In the South (the 60 mile-wide path from Donetsk to Crimea), Russians have numbers and have massed their resources. War now, as is usual in history, tends to favor defenders. Ukraine has enough force there to keep the Russians busy, terrified of a mass surrender from Kherson.
But in the North, there is nothing. The Russian rout from Kharkiv Region leaves Belgorod entirely undefended (with tens of thousands of people fleeing Belgorod as I write this).
Intelligent war strategy is to attack where the enemy is not. Ukraine can – and should – invade Russia where it is soft and undefended. Do lots of damage. Do it on the ground. you might even follow the highways around to encircle the Russian forces facing into Ukraine. Wreak havoc, and spread fear. And keep doing it until Russia sues for peace. Then you trade invaded Russia for invaded Ukraine.
Done and dusted.
Published in General
Seriously? Find me one Russian who believes that Ukraine wants to invade and KEEP Russia?!
History says this is a bad idea – see Germany and France
Russia is a very large area – Supply chain will become an issue the more they go into Russia
A Russian population which is not happy about Putin’s invasion will change if attacked on their soil
They lived off the land already. Rich pickings up North. Worked a treat for Sherman.
The only way the South could have won the war was by invading the North until the North sued for peace. But in their quest for glory, they ignored common sense (AKA Sun-Tzu).
They tried it twice and were stopped twice, at Antietam and Gettysburg.
No. God, No. This sort of thinking is how World Wars start.
How did this make it to the main feed?
It doesn’t mean they necessarily agree. It means they think it’s worthy of “publication” and wider conversation. I have certainly benefited from R’s willingness to air contrar(ian) views.
Good point. So have I.
Here’s a surprisingly good (that is, quality) news snippet from a US big-3 network outlet:
They were not stopped. The South did NOT go North to Philadelphia. They turned to fight a battle they did not need and could not win.
Our government – and most people – tend to always think inside the box. Military history is full of people who walk around with hammers and consider everything to be a nail. War is often like this – “I have an army, so I should go look for another army.” This is colossally stupid, strategically. But it is more the rule than the exception nevertheless.
If I had a kid in the fight, I’d want their commanders to be thinking with their heads. I’d want them to prefer to attack where the enemy is not, rather than going into the teeth of a prepared defense.
War is horrible. But when it is necessary, it is best to win definitively and rapidly. The Ukrainians have a window of opportunity right now that will not last long – winter is coming, and the Russians are going to dig in. If Kherson falls in the next week, then that will probably end the war, with Ukraine getting all the land back. But if Kherson does NOT fall, then Ukraine needs to be thinking out of the box – which is to say, using common sense.
Russia is not all powerful, as this war has shown. And “invading Russia” to Belgorod or otherwise within a few dozen miles of the Ukrainian border is not comparable to Napoleon or Hitler’s invasions. But the psychological value can be enormously positive.
Think, for example, of how Doolittle’s Raid transformed Japanese strategy, and helped them lose the war. The damage was barely symbolic – but it changed how the Japanese thought about the war. Ukraine can achieve similar results through similar means.
I think they should do so. I welcome counterargument, of course. But I’d suggest that those who just reply with, “That would be terrible!” wargame out the alternatives and ask whether a long, grinding conflict of men in mud is really such a great solution.
So this was your version of “what Sun-Tzu really meant by that, was…”
:-)
They turned to get ready for a fight because the Army of the Potomac was moving faster and farther than Lee had anticipated, Lee’s army was widely spread out, and Lee was concerned that his army could be destroyed piecemeal. So Lee gave orders for his army to concentrate in the vicinity of Gettysburg ( where several roads converged, giving his army the chance to concentrate as quickly as possible)or Cashtown.
Lee did NOT want the battle he got, but did what he thought was right given the information he had at the time. As one historian ( Gary Gallagher, in his Darden Gettysburg Leadership Ride lectures on YouTube) said, if “ Jeb” Stuart had been doing his job, Gettysburg would not have happened.
Exactly.
But I humbly venture that somewhere Sun-Tzu says, “these proverbs should be applied on a case-by-case basis and not by some armchair warrior who lacks sufficient intelligence of what’s happening on the ground, and all bets are off if one side has nukes and the other doesn’t” or something like it.
I am not a “my country, right or wrong” sort of a guy. When my country is doing something I do not approve of, I want it to stop. This war in Ukraine looks like yet another US colonial campaign, all of which are always doomed to fail.
They fail because they have no popular support. In the US this always matters, in the long term. In the short term our elites can cause all sorts of damage.
In my understanding, the Russians attacked in February of this year to stop the attack the Ukrainians were about to make to conquer the long rebellious provinces of Donbas and Crimea. The Russians feinted toward Kiev to stop the invasion, giving them time to move in troops and establish the current battle lines. Seven months later Donbas and Crimea still have the governments they prefer and a lot of people have died.
I am very much of the opinion that a long, grinding conflict of men in mud is not a good idea.
Bah. If Lee had been facing a real general instead of Maclellan at Antietam, he never would have made it back to Virginia. Mutual exhaustion prevented Meade from chasing him down after Gettysburg. Two invasions, both of them repulsed. By ’64, Grant had ahold of Lee and never let go.
I’ve got a rather long joke about Ukraine taking Moscow and leaving the Russians to take Ukraine and who debate whether to bring peace to the region by simply nuking Moscow, but I won’t mention it.
Seriously, how would Ukraine protect its supply lines inside Russia. And if Ukraine leaves a degraded Russian army behind, what’s to stop Russia from taking much of Ukraine? And besides all this, who would the Ukrainians be fighting 500 miles inside Russia?
As much as I would like to see Ukraine reenact Sherman’s March to Moscow, they don’t have the resources to fight a large war. But I’m with you in spirit! Russia needs to feel what they have been doing to so many other countries – East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Afghanistan, Georgia, and Moldova to name a few.
True enough. However what you are advocating could well provide two incentives for the use of tactical nukes.
An excuse for Russian internal propaganda – and the nature of your plan – spreading destruction and fear on Russian territory -(and tacitly backed by NATO) could easily be construed as a real threat. That is/was his original claim! Wrong then maybe but try to convince him or most Russians that results imply intent.
Aggravating the situation is putting Putin in an embarrassing position where he has to act decisively or lose power and his life.
An invasion or incursion of – as you describe – a malicious nature to destroy and spread fear (not ostensibly on mere control or a political claim) will require a reaction.
You suppose this will make Pooty-Poot look bad and he will fall.
As others have stated, the risks are far beyond the gains here. Losing the moral high ground on the world stage.
While Zelinsky has acted disgracefully in many ways already with his everything is justified because we are victims positions, this wouldn’t help his cause on that front.
Putin and his generals would be forced to escalate. Do you think for a moment that Putin would allow a loss or failure in this situation?
Apparently the Russian troops didn’t refuse orders to knock out 50% of Ukraines energy production. This marks a new escalation, another dimension this war can take, as many can foresee. The Russians have not run out of options. They are a massively larger country in full control of their population. Their economy is fine, especially compared to ours. They can hold out. We don’t even know that if somehow Putin is embarrassed, disgraced and toppled, that the next guy won’t be worse.
You know nothing, John Snow.
I’ve heard (Military Summary) that this was immediately to stop the quick movement of military material from Kharkov to Donbas – which would normally be done by trains, which run on electricity.
(They also mentioned that the delay in knocking out civilian infrastructure was noteworthy – because otherwise [eg US invasion of Iraq] that’s the first thing that an invading army does.]
Would it be the equivalent of the Mexican Army invading US territory?
Count me as another that sees a full on invasion of Russia as a bad idea. Even letting aside the risks of losing ‘good guy’ status or provoking a WMD exchange, Ukraine simply doesn’t have the logistical capability to pull it off. Russia has shown us exactly the outcome when an army using Soviet era mechanized forces gets beyond its logistical abilities. Ukraine taught that lesson to Russia, why would they now ignore it?
I am not, however, saying don’t go past the Russian border. Invasion is one thing, raids are another. Russia continues to pot-shot Ukrainian towns and infrastructure with artillery and missiles launched from Russian territory. That makes those weapons, troops and supporting infrastructure fair targets, for HIMARS, drones, or ground raiding parties.
Separating this into another post:
Comparing Ukraine/Russia to Lee vs. Meade is ridiculous (and I say this as a long term Civil War buff). A Civil War army had a fraction of the supply usage and logistical tail as a modern mechanized army. Lots of difference between a foot and horse-borne army that can supply itself from the enemy as long as it keeps moving, and a column of tanks, IFVs and artillery that gulps fuel by the 1000s of gallons and fires off ammo at a rate Lee could only dream of.
And for that matter, one of the reasons Lee had to fall back from Gettysburg was he had shot through almost all of his artillery ammo, and the closest resupply was in Virginia.
< /civil-war-nerd>
Maybe we’ve only been listening to one side of the propaganda. But somehow this (other) side is the more entertaining.
I’m very cynical now, except for the poor civilians and conscripts on both sides. Hating Putin doesn’t help them and actually hurts them in most scenarios IMO.
But we must account for other forces:
Sort of a side note: I’ve always been interested in one of the most basic questions of WWII: What did Germany and Japan think would happen? Even if they’d beaten us in battle, neither country would have had anywhere near enough manpower to occupy and control the continental US. And they knew it, going in. The answer seems to be, they expected shock and awe to make us give up quickly and withdraw. They figured we had no stomach for a real fight. They made a drastic misjudgment about Americans based on lousy, and self-flattering “information”.
That’s also why Russia expected Zelensky and the Kiev government to pack up and flee. That’s what Russia’s “intelligence” agencies told Putin. After all, that’s what their boy Yanukovich did. Bad mistake.
It’s also the fallacy at the heart of this post. If Russia was invaded, no Russian would refuse orders to launch missiles at Kiev–or, I suspect, at Berlin, Paris, or London.
Funny, but also shocking in its crassness. Like saying the quiet part out loud.
This is why I finally think that Russia is now relatively more likely to use tactical nuclear weapons — not at all likely, just now more likely than zero. If it comes to defending Russian soil from any serious devastation, that changes the whole thing.
The quiet part is the most important to me. Jimmy Dore is a great show. Like anything I don’t always agree with some of his assumptions but I respect his perspective.
Seriously: please read what I wrote. If Ukraine can raid 5 or 50 miles in, it delivers tremendous PR value.
I am not suggesting you remove the holding forces that have the Russians in the South locked in. You leave them there. And you use indirect attacks to achieve the primary war goals.
Wouldn’t that work for Putin within Russia wrt escalating, general mobilisation, etc.?
And don’t you think it would give iffy Europeans an excuse to turn on Nordstream 2, since Ukraine is now attacking Russia (and not just Donbas)?
The underlying common-sense strategy remains as true in the ancient world as in the modern world. You do not accept battle on the enemy’s terms. You always seek to destroy the enemy’s strategy – and if you can do it without bloodshed, so much the better. And if the populace loses heart, the army will, too.
Attacking entrenched positions is deeply stoopid. The Ukrainians have not been stupid to date. They have done a very good – or even superb – job of following these same dictums thus far. Which is why they are already raiding Russia, and hitting targets across the border.
I just think they should do more of it. And I suspect they will.