Unless you’re a student of World War II battles, or specifically of Russian history during that era, you may not have heard of the Battle of Kursk. The original one in 1943, that is.

The Battle of Kursk was the single largest battle in the history of warfare. And along with the more famous Battle of Stalingrad, Kursk was one of the two most-cited turning points in the European Theatre of Operations (ETO) of World War II. It lasted for one month, two weeks and four days — from July 5 to August 23, 1943 — and was the single deadliest armored battle in history.

The Nazi regime placed great hopes on their capture of Kursk; Hitler believed that a victory there would improve his prestige with his allies, which had recently been waning. But — largely due to intelligence provided by the British — the Soviet government had received warning of Germany’s intentions. Without going into detail here, suffice it to say that Hitler lost the day — and eventually the War — as the Battle of Kursk was the final strategic offensive he was able to launch on Germany’s Eastern Front before having to divert troops to its Western Front.

So the very name “Kursk” has great meaning to the Russian people. But it is also one of the areas from which Russia chose to launch its attacks on Ukraine in this war. Now it is being evacuated, its civilian population finally learning just what it is their military has been doing to the people on the other side of the nearby border for the past two and a half years.

Perhaps someone should have warned Putin back in 2022, before he fired the first shot of this “special military operation,” that paybacks are hell.

But he’s been learning that lesson — a little too late now — over the past seven days, since Ukraine’s surprise counterattack took their troops, for the first time, across the border into Russia, where they now claim to control more than 1,000 square kilometers of Russian territory.

That’s got to feel good . . . for the Ukrainian side. President Zelensky said that Russia had brought war to others, and now it was coming back to Russia.

But on the Russian side, Vladimir Putin called the Ukrainian offensive a “major provocation,” and ordered his forces to “kick the enemy out of our territory.” [Gianluca Avagnina and Frank Gardner, BBC, August 13, 2024.]

Well, they are trying, having launched a massive counter-counteroffensive; and an anonymous senior British military source said there was a risk that Moscow might now redouble its attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population and infrastructure out of sheer anger. [BBC, id.]

Because, in Vladimir Putin’s delusional, narcissistic world, everything is someone else’s fault. And losing — or even the appearance of losing — is intolerable. So he simply strikes out, further escalating what he began in the first place.

And it all devolves into a classic barroom brawl . . . but with deadly weapons. And, as has been the case in every war ever fought anywhere in the world, innocent people on both sides of the border — people who never wanted the fight in the first place — are the real losers.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
8/14/24