Russian Endgames

Russian history is about the country losing in the short term, and winning in the long term.  

Transcript

Russian Endgames

August 2024 

“Progress cannot be achieved without sacrifice.”

Peter I (the Great), Emperor of Russia

I shall be an autocrat: that is my trade. Moreover, the good Lord will forgive me: that is his.

Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia

The first pancake is always lumpy.

Russian Proverb 

After Genghis Kahn had united the various nomadic tribes existing North of China, he set out on an unprecedented career of conquest and destruction.  Though Genghis himself would not enter Russia, his loyal subordinates, sons, and grandsons would occupy the territory.  The Mongols’ first attempt to capture Kyivan Rus was in 1223 at the Battle of the Kalka River, where they defeated a Kyivan Russian army of nearly 50,000. The Mongols returned in 1237 and began a heavy military campaign, taking over major cities and forcing most principalities to submit to foreign rule and taxation. 

Among the many cities sacked were Kyiv, the progenitor of the Russian state, Chernihiv, and Ryazan. The siege of Kyiv in 1240 is generally considered to mark the end of Kyivan Rus, and the Mongols used the city as a starting point for further attacks against Poland, Hungary, Transylvania, and Moldavia. The Mongols were not defeated by any European army but rather by the death of the second Great Khan, which forced the recall of their forces.

The Mongols also burned Moscow to the ground, but Novgorod was spared after Alexander Nevsky agreed to submit to Mongol rule. Another term for this group of Mongols, distinguishing them from those ruling the Middle East, Central Asia, and China, was the Golden Horde.

After 200 years of subjugation, in 1480, Ivan III, Grand Duke of Muscovy (and later known by his epitaph “the Great” (lots of greats in Russian history) led the Muscovite army to victory over the Golden Horde at the Great Stand on the Ugra River. The Mongols, led by Akhmet, the khan of the Golden Horde, waited for their Lithuanian allies on the Ugra River, about 150 miles southwest of Moscow. Ivan III and his Russian army stood across the river from them. The bloodless confrontation is traditionally considered the end of the “Mongol yoke” in Russia. Ivan III’s victory gave Moscow more influence among other Russian principalities.  Eventually, his son, Ivan IV, known by his epitaph “Terrible,” took the title Tsar, a derivation of Caesar. Ivan intended to tie his Russian state closer to the history of Rome.  

The Golden Horde began to fall apart in the early 15th century, and by 1466, it was known as the “Great Horde.” The Horde’s territories were divided into many Turkic khanates, and Ivan III stopped paying tribute to the Horde and no longer recognized it as an authority over Muscovy. The last remnants of the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate and the Kazakh Khanate, were conquered by Russia in 1783 and 1847, respectively.

Despite the massive, near overwhelming power of the Mongol Tumans, Russia, under the leadership of Moscow, eventually prevailed.  This pattern has been held for 550 years between Ivan’s liberation and Putin’s Russia.  Russia has both invaded and, in turn, invaded by Poles, Lithuanians, Swedes, French, and Germans twice and, through all this, ultimately emerged victorious.  

The “terrible Ivan” initially fought a losing war with an alliance led by Poland.  The Livonian War (1558–83) involved Poland, Lithuania, and Sweden for control of greater Livonia—the area including Estonia, Livonia, Courland, and the island of Oesel—which was ruled by the Livonian branch of the Teutonic Knights (Order of the Brothers of the Sword). In 1558, Ivan invaded Livonia, hoping to gain access to the Baltic Sea and take advantage of the weakness of the Livonian Knights; he seized Narva and Dorpat and besieged Reval. The Knights, unable to withstand the Russian attack, dissolved their Order (1561); they placed Livonia proper under Lithuanian protection and gave Courland to Poland, Estonia to Sweden, and Oesel to Denmark.  However, Ivan’s conquests were short-lived, and after his death (he had killed his own son), succession issues suspended expansionist activities.

During the Polish–Russian War of 1609–1618, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth fought the Russians in a series of events, including the Battle of Moscow in 1612. The war ended in 1618 with the Truce of Deulino, which granted the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth some territory but preserved Russia’s independence.  Despite Russia’s Time of Troubles, the nation won the war’s final battles, but it was still a major setback in the Russian quest to become the preeminent power of Eastern Europe.  

Yet later, The Russo-Polish War of 1654–1667, also called the First Northern War, saw the eventual ascendency of Russia. Between 1655 and 1660, the Swedish invasion was also fought in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, and so the period became known in Poland as “The Deluge” or Swedish Deluge.  The Commonwealth initially suffered defeats but regained its ground and won several decisive battles. However, its plundered economy was not able to fund the long conflict. Facing internal crisis and civil war, the Commonwealth was forced to sign a truce. The war ended with significant Russian territorial gains.

And Russia had the last laughs.  In the late 1700s and early 1800s, teaming up with Austria and Prussia, Russia, which Poland might have conquered at one point, wiped the nation off the map.  Even after its restoration in 1918, Russia, under the guise of the Soviet Union and in concert with Nazi Germany, again destroyed Poland.  If Present-day Poland, now a member of NATO, looks warily to the East, it is for good reason.  

Under King Gustavus Adolphus, Sweden, for a time, had the best army in Europe and, under King Charles XII, used it against Russia.  The 2nd Great Northern War (1700–1721) was a conflict in which a coalition led by Russia successfully contested the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in Northern, Central, and Eastern Europe. After initial successes against the Russians, the Swedes learned the same lessons as the Polish; they won the first battles, but Russia always returned.  Quick aside. Just as Ivan the Terrible moved from Grand Duke to Tsar Peter I to be more Western, he styled himself Emperor so that I will use that title.  We all like the term Tsar; it is cool, but I want to be accurate.  

The Battle of Poltava (July 8, 1709) was the decisive and most significant battle of the Great Northern War. A Russian army under the command of Emperor Peter I defeated a Swedish army under the command of Carl Gustaf Rehnskiöld. Charles XII was wounded and did not direct the battle. Nevertheless, Poltava ended the Swedish Empire’s status as a great European power and its eastbound expansion, which marked the beginning of Russian supremacy in Northern Europe. And what is even more interesting is that the battle was not fought in modern-day Russia but in modern-day Ukraine. Why would a Swedish army be in Ukraine?  A large army of Cossacks under Hetman Ivan Mazepa had formed, and Charles, after a terrible winter had halved his force (a theme that later struck terror into French and German soldiers), decided to move southwards into Ukraine and join Mazepa, then in revolt against Peter. With his victory over Sweden, Peter regained Ingria and Finnish Karelia and acquired Estonia and Livonia, with the ports of Narva, Revel (Tallinn), and Riga. The latter is now located in the Baltic states, as noted once part of Russia and claimed today by Vladimir Putin. The issue with the Baltic States? They are part of NATO, unlike Ukraine. 

What Charles learned was the maxim stated in the movie The Princess Bride: Never start a land war in Asia or, in this case, the vastness of European Russia. The Mongols are the exception, of course, but they were the exception to most things in warfare.  

Moreover, of course, there is Ukraine.  Under Peter I, military successes were reversed.  He initially won several battles in the South while losing those in the North.  Later, after beating Sweden, he experienced reverses at the hands of the Ottoman Turks and others.  But again, Russia plays the long game.  

Before Russian control, Poland dominated Ukraine but not without other entities.  After the Polish defeats, others tried to dominate the region.  The Bulavin Rebellion (Astrakhan Revolt) is the name given to the war in 1707 and 1708 between the Don Cossacks and Russia. Kondraty Bulavin, a democratically elected Ataman of the Don Cossacks, led the Cossack rebels. The conflict was triggered by several underlying tensions between the Moscow government under Peter I, the Cossacks, and Russian peasants fleeing from serfdom in Russia to gain freedom in the autonomous Don area. It started with the 1707 assassination of Prince Yury Vladimirovich, the leader of the Imperial army’s punitive expedition to the Don area, by Don Cossacks under Bulavin’s command. The end of the rebellion came with Bulavin’s death in 1708. Keep in mind the quote above. Peter may be celebrated as the Great, but his rule was still highly authoritarian and brutal in the case of the Don Cossacks.  

The conquests to the South, begun under Ivan IV and perpetuated by Peter I, were primarily completed under Catherine II in the mid-1700s. Once Lithuania, Poland, and the Cossack Dons were defeated, Russia was left alone to finish the efforts that had started centuries ago and, in a sense, reconstitute the Kyivan Rus.  

As historian Carolyn Harris, writing for the Smithsonian, notes, “Catherine, who ruled from 1762 to 1796, presented herself to the world as an “Enlightened” autocrat who did not govern as a despot but as a monarch guided by the rule of law and the welfare of her subjects. Yet at the same time, she annexed much of what is now Ukraine through wars with the Ottoman Empire and the partition of Poland and brutally suppressed the largest peasant rebellion in Russian history.”

Moreover, of course, there is Napolean.  In his masterpiece of Austerlitz (incorrectly depicted in the movie), Napoleon crushed an allied army of Austrians and Russians in 1805.  He later inflicted other defeats on the Emperor of the time, Alexander I.  Then, in 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia with the largest army ever assembled in Europe up to that time, over half a million men.  After a pyrrhic French victory at the battle of Borodino, Russian space and the Russian winter did what no European general had to Napoleon, destroying his army. And not defeated or destroyed. Of the 600,000 men he started with, less than 50,000 were left.  It was the Russian armies that rolled up Napoleon’s army.  Unlike Sweden or Poland, Russia did not take decades but ten years to crush this enemy.  

In 1809, as part of the Napoleonic Wars, Sweden sided (temporarily) with France and against Russia. Ostensibly to protect the capital of St. Petersburg, Russia invaded the province of Finland, which had been part of Sweden for 700 years, and conquered it.  After World War I, Finland became independent, but Russia tried again in the Winter War of 1939.  With Britain and France fighting Germany, Stalin, the Soviet Ruler of Russia, figured he would reconstitute the Tsarist Empire and take Finland.  They were invading on November 30, 1939, three months after the outbreak of World War II.  

When they say that politics makes strange bedfellows, the enemy of an enemy is my friend, or whatever cliché fits, they were referencing something similar to Britain, America, and the Soviet Union’s calling themselves Allies.  

In some regards, Josef Stalin was every bit as horrific as Hitler, yet when a politician wishes to besmirch another, it is rare that he is cited as the epitome of evil.  Moreover, he, too, was not above strange bedfellows.  Communists and Fascists are supposed to be the worst of enemies unless one believes, as I do, in the horseshoe theory.  So, when Hitler invaded Poland from the West, Stalin went in on the East, carving up the nation similar to his forebear Catherine.  Stalin also thought it politically savvy to try to conquer Finland. Alternatively, should I say reconquer, given that Tsar Alexander did the same in the late 1700s?  It did not go quite as Stalin had planned.  The Russians lost some 126,000 troops to Finland’s 25,000.  The winter that had proved so devastating to Napolean in 1812, and would later help Stalin against the Nazis in 1941, was on the side of the Finns in the Winter War.  The conflict ended three and a half months later with the Moscow Peace Treaty on March 13, 1940. Despite superior military strength, especially in tanks and aircraft, the Soviet Union suffered severe losses and initially made little headway. Russia’s army was 600,000 against that of the Finns’ 300,000, but in terms of tanks, it was 2,000 machines vs. 50, and in planes, 100 vs. 2000. It was a valiant defense and imponderable that the Finns would do so well as to 2022.  I believe that Stalin would have tried again, but Germany’s incredible success in 1940 made him wary.  And The Nazi invasion in 1941 kept the Finns safe for the time being.  

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the initial campaign could not have gone better. Operationally, German forces achieved significant victories and occupied some of the most important economic areas of the Soviet Union (mainly in Ukraine) and inflicted, as well as sustained, heavy casualties in the hundreds of thousands. However, despite these early successes, the German offensive ended during the battle for Moscow near the end of 1941, and the subsequent Soviet winter counteroffensive pushed the Germans back.  Then, in early 1942, the Germans again were conquering vast swathes of Russia in an offensive in the South.  However, that, too, ended with the loss of the entire German army of 250,000 at the Battle of Stalingrad.  As illustrated so often in this podcast, the Germans never regained the initiative, and the entire war ended with Soviet armies in Berlin and across all of Eastern Germany.  

Russian power, again in the form of the Soviet Union, reached its Zenith in 1945 when the Red Army pushed the Nazis out of Central Europe and sat down to stay. Though ostensibly independent nations, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia were all puppet states ruled by Moscow.  This lasted for 45 years until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the establishment of the Russian Federation.  In 1999, after the ineffectual rule of Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, an ex-KGB member, took power, and he has made it no secret that he would like to reconstitute the Tsarist state conquered by Ivan, Peter, and Catherine.  

One of his first steps was to install puppet rulers in neighboring states such as Belorussia. But when the Ukrainians threw out one of his puppets, Putin decided a more direct, tsarist approach was in order. In 2012, he invaded the Ukrainian province of Crimea to reunite native Russians with their motherland. Putin is not a conqueror, you see, but a liberator.  

When Putin invaded the remainder of Ukraine in 2022, on two fronts, no less, this was supposed to be over in a matter of months, if not days.  The valiant resistance on the part of the Ukraine, coupled with the overestimation of the Russian army, seemed like the Russo-Finnish War of 1939 all over again.  However, there were two huge differences.  First, Stalin concluded peace with the Finns in three months because it was concerning that he tied down so many divisions with Nazi Germany, now sharing a border with the Soviet Union.  Second, which is crucial to understanding Putin’s position, was that through his 1930 purges, Stalin consolidated power to such an extent that he could lose a minor war and not worry about threats to his rule.

Putin is the proverbial man who has the wolf by the ears.  As long as he holds onto the ears, he is safe and in control, but should he lose his grip, the wolf will kill him.  Unlike his contemporary dictator, Xi Jinping of China, and Stalin’s in 1939, Putin’s rule is tenuous.  If either the army or the oligarchs who benefit from his rule decide they no longer want him, he will not be allowed to retire to some Dacha as did Mikhail Gorbachev in the 1990s; he will either be murdered outright or tried for war crimes, ending with the same result.  Once he invaded Ukraine, no matter the result, he could not walk without victory. 

Here, history is his help and guide. Russia views wars not as the United States sometimes does, with a view that once entered, how can we exit?  It took centuries to get rid of the Mongols, one hundred years to defeat the Poles, and 50 to get rid of the Swedes. It took decades to conquer the Crimea and eventually defeat Napolean, carve up Poland, and take Finland.  

So, Russia is now in a war of attrition. Putin's population is 180 million, compared to Ukraine's. He has allies such as China, Iran, and North Korea willing to support him. And his ace in the hole, Russian oil and natural gas, can keep the all-important revenue necessary for any war to keep coming.  

In the summer of 2023, the Ukrainians attempted a counteroffensive, which was a failure. The accomplishment was to grind up Ukraine’s best units, use up their equipment, and depress the population's hopes. After the initial surge of patriotism, Ukraine is now struggling to staff its army. And in 2024, Russia has slowly, mile by mile, begun to take more territory and push Ukraine back.  

In a brilliant counter-move, almost reminiscent of Washington going on the offensive in 1776 and crossing the Delaware, the Ukrainians opened a new front by turning the tables and invading Russia.  Putin and his generals were caught flat-footed and were highly embarrassed. In the short term, it seems like a great masterstroke.  But it will not work.  It is not Russia but the Ukraine that will struggle to keep the momentum on a new front, stretching their forces.  Moreover, since this is Russia, it is not like they can capture cities or take over vital resources that will permanently impair Russia’s ability to continue.  

In 2025, either the Harris or Trump administration will have a decision on day one on whether to equip the Ukrainians with the latest military technology in order to permanently cripple the Russian effort and eventually bring down Putin’s regime.  The stasis enabled by the Biden administration, giving just enough to keep the war going but not enough actually to win, will not go on forever.  Another group that lived in the region, the Cossack Dons, were such fierce warriors that the Tsars later used them as bodyguards.  However, for all their valor and dedication, the Russian war machine, after decades, chewed them up.  The same fate is for the Ukrainians if there is no more forceful resource intervention.