Getting Pummeled in War Is a 200-Year Russian Tradition
The West made an honest effort to work with Moscow after the USSR’s fall — it was Putin who doomed any partnership. His disastrous Ukraine war was the result.
Tsars.
Photographer: Alexey Druzhinin/AFP/Getty Images
Despite President Vladimir Putin’s bluster yesterday that “it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield,” there’s no question the last twelve months have been terrible for his nation. But frankly, Russia has had not just a disastrous year, but a couple of bad centuries.
Just over 200 years ago, Napoleon invaded Russia, eventually occupying and burning Moscow before the Russian army, aided by a brutal winter, was able to eject the French Grande Armee at a cost of more than half a million casualties on both sides. In the middle of the 19th century, Russia lost the Crimean War against the combined forces of the UK, France and the Ottoman Empire, crippling the Imperial Russian Army (500,000 casualties in a two-year war), forfeiting the right to base warships in the Black Sea.