History has long weighed heavily on the mind of Vladimir Putin. His original justification for the invasion of Ukraine was laced with false ideas about the past, including the suggestion that Ukraine did not have a legitimate claim to exist as an independent nation.
But in the exquisite Ukrainian counter-manoeuvre in Kursk, southern Russia, history has come back to bite President Putin. On much the same ground in 1943, vast Soviet forces turned back the Nazi hordes in a battle rightly considered to be one of the turning points in the Second World War. But whereas once Kursk could be assured a special place in the pantheon of Russian pride, Ukraine’s current “tactical” operation there means it may now come to be remembered as a source of Russian humiliation. And if the West allows Kyiv to exploit its successes, it may prove to be the locus of another turning point in Russian history, too.
The Ukrainian troops operating inside Russian territory are not some rag-tag force, but an army that for the first time in this conflict has demonstrated effective combined arms manoeuvre, the “Western” way of fighting. With a small force of determined and evidently well-trained soldiers, and a small number of tanks, they routed a bunch of unwilling conscripts whose shouts and screams will have rattled the windows of the Kremlin, and are now being heard in the homes of the rank and file in Russia, who hitherto have been fed a diet of Putin’s military brilliance.
This is also a harsh lesson for those armchair commentators who, without a whiff of combat experience, have sought to use the Ukraine war to condemn the art of soldiery, of tank warfare and of combined arms manoeuvre, assuring us that the future is drones and cyber and electronic warfare. Perhaps seduced by the devastatingly inept attempt by “elite” Russian forces to conduct armoured manoeuvre at the start of the war, they swallowed the idea that tanks et al are history.
But those of us with a modicum of experience of land warfare saw very quickly that the original Russian attack failed not because the idea behind it was obsolete. It was thwarted because the Russian tank crews were poorly trained and badly led, with tanks being destroyed in their thousands, often by the British NLAW anti-tank weapon.
What Ukraine has proved instead is that the Principles of War – the bible for successful warriors since time immemorial, drawing on the lessons of everyone from Carl von Clausewitz to Napoleon – are very much alive. The principles of surprise, offensive spirit and concentration of force worked for the Soviets in 1943, and are working for Ukrainian forces today. If you had listened to the drone fanatics, you would have thought it impossible to achieve surprise on today’s “transparent” battlefield. They forgot that the drone is only as smart as its operator and that both sides of a conflict have a say in the outcome.
The current Ukrainian move will harm Putin in at least three ways. First, it means that he will have to divert forces to defend against other incursions across the border, which are no doubt planned to further unbalance the Russian aggressors. Kyiv has introduced an extra element of jeopardy into Russian planning. It is now also clear that Russia possesses no mobile reserve to plug gaps in its defences, and there is certainly no sign that the locals have any desire to pick up scythes and picks to slow the Ukrainian advance.
Second, it is deeply embarrassing and might help to destabilise Putin’s rule. The Kremlin cannot defend Russia’s own territory, let alone beat Ukraine, and for the first time this appears to be getting significant airtime in mainstream media.
Third, it demonstrates that Ukraine does not need anything like the same number of men or arms as the Russians to change the military facts on the ground. Back in 1943, the Germans attacked with hundreds of thousands of men and thousands of tanks. The Ukrainians have seized a few hundred square miles with a few thousand men and a handful of tanks. In other words, victory for Ukraine is by no means unachievable.
Europe and the United States might now be looking more to the Middle East than Ukraine, but the latter is much more important to our own security. Instead of fretting about “escalation”, the West should ensure that Ukraine can reinforce its tactical successes in Kursk as a means of forcing Russia to the negotiating table. Indeed, this is an opportunity to shorten the war, one that no doubt Churchill and Roosevelt would have grasped. Sadly, we do not have their calibre today, but it is a chance for Sir Keir Starmer to make his mark and Joe Biden to leave a decent legacy.
But it is also a big signal to the UK’s new Strategic Defence Review that warfare has not been fundamentally changed by cheap drones. The officials running the review should not listen too much to the brilliant academics who seem to know every inch of every battle but little of fighting in one. They should canvass the opinions of those of us who have actually won a few.
Colonel (Retd) Hamish de Bretton-Gordon OBE is a former commander of UK & NATO CBRN Forces