Back on February 18, a week before Russia’s unjustified invasion of Ukraine, I spent some time sifting through Russian media accounts and concluded:
To hear the Russian media, President Vladimir Putin’s saber-rattling against Ukraine has been a huge success. After decades of being shunted aside as an irrelevant corrupt backwater, the world has to pay attention again. Just like North Korea’s missile tests, Russia’s self-worth is apparently measured by how much everyone else pays attention to them. Like a toddler. (A toddler with weapons and nuclear missiles.) [...]
This is about wounded pride. And wounded pride cannot be negotiated away without complete acquiescence to Russia’s ridiculous demands. And if Russia actually wants to do something about it, it is in a race against time.
Diplomacy never stood a chance, because this was never a war about substantive issues. No one could ever find a diplomatic solution to Russia’s “humiliation” that wasn’t “give back the Warsaw Pact countries to Russia.” It was literally what Russia was demanding, as ludicrous as it still seems. And they were serious.
Russia’s sense of grievance is shocking for a major colonial power that has mostly been on the subjugating side of the sword. It feels humiliated at having lost the Cold War and its empire, humiliated at the United States brushing aside Russia to look eastward to China, humiliated that NATO set up shop on its borders, and humiliated that those nation’s invited NATO in. And the ultimate humiliation was watching Ukraine—their Slavic children!—make kissy-face with the European Union and the West, rather than bend the knee to Russia.
Thus Vladimir Putin, seething with those grievances and more, looked at the state of Ukraine’s armed forces and became concerned. Turkish TB2 Bayraktar drones were streaming in the country. The United States, Canada, and other NATO nations were training and modernizing Ukraine’s armed forces. Ukraine’s experience as an arms manufacturer for the Soviet Union was yielding some quality home-grown weapons systems, like Neptune anti-ship missiles and precision-guided artillery munitions. Every year that Russia waited, Ukraine would be that much harder to defeat. Russia spectacularly lost the flagship of its Black Sea Fleet, the Moskva. Imagine if Ukraine had another year to stockpile dozens or hundreds more Neptunes. Putin must be kicking himself for not invading during the Trump administration!
Having finally decided to invade, Putin made his second major delay error.
Mud saved Russia twice, against Napoleon and the Nazis. Its existence and relevance to military movement wasn’t lost on Russian planners. There is even a Russian word, rasputitsa, for the periods in both spring and fall when rain and melting snow makes travel on unpaved roads difficult. They knew they had to launch Putin’s “special military operation” before April rains arrived, the very rains that haven’t just fixed the battlefield in place this week, but also masked the successful attack on the Moskva. However, this year there was one thing that slowed Russia down even before the mud arrived; the Olympics.
The Olympic Truce requires ceasefires starting one week before the games begin, and ending after the closing of the Paralympic games. The truce has been violated three times, all three by Russia: In 2008, during the Russian invasion of Georgia, in 2014, during the Russian annexation of Crimea, and of course this year.
Here is Kyiv’s historical daytime temperatures:
You’ve seen Ukraine’s flat, wide open spaces. With frozen ground, tanks would have have all the freedom to maneuver as needed. Historically, January and February were ideal, before warmer weather in March began thawing Ukrainian fields. However, this year’s Olympic truce began January 30, and while Russia maybe cared about host nation and ally China’s feelings, it really wasn’t about to give up its own pursuit of Olympic gold. No reason to waste all that cheating.
Russia didn’t bother observing the full truce period—they’re too barbaric to care about the Paralympic games—but they did wait for the main games to end on February 20. Starting the operations this late in the calendar, Russia needed a quick victory to avoid disaster. It also needed global climate change to not exist.
Russia started this war February 24. On February 20, the high in Kyiv was a balmy 46 degrees. On February 22, it was a ludicrous 50 degrees. In fact, in all of February the daily highs were below freezing only a single day. Ukraine never got its historical hard-freeze. But what could Russia do? Wait until summer, when the forests around Kyiv would be lush, giving defenders fantastic defensive cover. Wait until fall, and we’re talking mud again. Wait until winter 2023, and Ukraine has that many more Neptunes, Stingers, TB2 drones, NLAWS and Javelins, and who knows, maybe Ukraine might’ve convinced Israel to allow it to purchase and deploy the Iron Dome air defense system, or at least American Patriots.
Somehow, Russia managed to invade too late, in 2022, and too late, in late February. With the litany of Russian failures—to win quickly, to capture Kyiv, to achieve air superiority, to keep its navy on top of water, to keep its own cities safe—Russian media is sounding a wee bit different.
Gone is the triumphalist, imperialistic, smug hubris. Now it’s just anger and fury as they realize that this supposed backwater province of Russia isn’t just refusing to surrender, it’s actually—gasp!—winning! So they blame NATO and the United States. “It’s easily called WWIII,” says the host of the show. “We’re fighting against NATO infrastructure!” They can’t fathom being in a fight for their lives against just Ukraine. It is Russia’s shitty army losing to Ukraine’s spirited, fierce and not-shitty-at-all defenders.
So is Russia going to mobilize? For unfathomable reasons, Vladimir Putin has refused to tread there. He’s supposedly at 80% approval ratings, yet he refuses to ask his nation to sacrifice for his “special military operation.”
So once again, he’s late. Too late in 2022, too late in late February, and too late in reinforcing the outmatched and outclassed troops dying in Ukraine.
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