A British military historian said that the harsh winter, which has always been in favor of the Russian armies in the wars they waged throughout modern history, will stand this time with the Ukrainians and their Western allies.

In an article published by the American magazine "Foreign Affairs", Anthony Beevor drew some lessons and lessons from the military battles that took place in Europe since the forces of the Russian Emperor Peter the Great (1672-1725) defeated the Swedes, led by their King Charles the 12th, in a battle Poltava in what is now Ukraine.

The defeat of the Swedish forces was due to their suffering from an exceptionally cold weather called the "Great Frost" in 1708-1709.

However, the most famous Russian victories in Europe occurred in the winter of 1812 - that is, just over 100 years after the Battle of Poltava - when the army of the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who had lost a third of his strength due to summer heat, disease, hunger and exhaustion, withdrew from Russia. before suffering final defeat by the cold of the bitter Russian winter.

Although the Russian army lost about 200,000 of its men on the battlefield, its military leadership did not show much interest in these losses, as Russian officers treated their peasant soldiers like slaves or a little better, says historian Beevor.

However, the Russian leadership's treatment of soldiers hardly changed half a century after its war against Napoleon's army, specifically during the First World War.

The life of Russian soldiers in the trenches along the eastern front stretching from Belarus, Galicia (in northwest Spain) and Romania from 1915 to 1917 was an inhuman experience.

Many of the Russian soldiers resented the fact that their officers took refuge every night in the wooden peasant huts for warmth and comfort.

Stalin and the Finland Frost

However, things started to change after that.

By the 20th century, winter conditions in the Eurasian mainland, the Eurasian region, posed an increasing threat not only to humans and horses, but also to military weapons.

Despite its strength and huge spending on ammunition in a way that was not commensurate with its enemies, the Soviet army failed to break the Finnish resistance in the Winter War (1939-1940).

And when Soviet leader Joseph Stalin invaded Finland at that time, the Finns showed that they were more skilled than their invaders in winter fighting methods, as they continued to terrorize the Red Army soldiers day and night by launching surprise attacks using skis and wearing white camouflage clothes before they disappeared like ghosts, as Beevor put it in his article.

In view of the ingenuity and courage of the Finns, Stalin had no choice but to accept Finland's independence.

Between the First and Second World Wars, which witnessed the rapid development of military equipment, the Soviet Union established the largest tank force in the world.

And the Red Army learned that guns and engines need lubricants, especially in harsh conditions, which helped Stalin repel the armies of Nazi German leader Adolf Hitler that were on the outskirts of Moscow in December 1941.

The British historian goes on to claim that the Russian Winter (as it was called) also played a major role in the final victory of the Red Army in 1945.

The German Eastern Front in Poland collapsed under the weight of the armored offensive, thanks to the ability of Soviet T-34 tanks to handle ice and snow far better than any German armour.

After 1945, these achievements of the Red Army in the Winter War gave it a "fearful" reputation in the West.

It was only after the Soviet Union's ill-planned invasion of Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968 that Western analysts began to suspect that they overestimated the Soviets' combat capabilities, when Warsaw Pact forces lacked maps and were short of food and fuel.


Lessons from Afghanistan and Georgia

Finally, in the 1980s, the collapse of the Soviet empire was marked by its doomed struggle for control of Afghanistan, a country whose terrain made winter warfare difficult for conventional armies.

It became clear, often, during the economic collapse of the 1990s, that the government of Russian President Boris Yeltsin was unable to pay the salaries of officers and soldiers alike, and corruption became entrenched.

Recruits were often on the brink of starvation due to the sale of their rations, and rampant theft, bullying and indiscipline.

Corruption worsened after Russia's "messy" invasion of Georgia in 2008. President Vladimir Putin began pouring money into the armed forces;

He encouraged the extravagance of luxury projects for contractors and generals to increase their bank balances.

It seemed that the Russians did not make much effort to re-evaluate their military doctrine.

The Russian concept of urban warfare had not yet developed since World War II, as their artillery used to smash everything into rubble.

This approach has continued during the Russian intervention in the Syrian war since 2015.

Winter favors Putin's opponents

The author of the article considered Putin's annexation of Crimea as a kind of his angry reaction to the Ukrainian revolution - also known as the Euromaidan Revolution or the Ukrainian Dignity Revolution - which forced his ally, President Viktor Yanukovych, to flee, and led to the outbreak of fighting in the Donbass region in eastern Russian-speaking Ukraine.

And 8 years after that revolution - specifically in February 2022 - Putin launched his "special military operation" in Ukraine.

At that time, the vanguard was asked to bring their uniforms in preparation for the victory celebration, which Beevor described in his article as one of the greatest manifestations of military arrogance in history.

But after 7 "disastrous" months, when the Kremlin was finally forced to order a "partial mobilization" of the Russian population, it was a warning to those called that uniforms, equipment and even wound dressings were in short supply.

The British historian concludes that the structural problem that the Russian army has been suffering from for a long time is a shortage of combat-experienced soldiers, which also caused its inability to maintain weapons, equipment and vehicles, indicating that this shortcoming will become particularly costly in the winter season with regard to the use of technologies. Sensitive like drones.

As the fighting enters a more difficult and challenging phase, the outcome of the conflict will depend to a large extent on morale and determination.

While the Russian army suffers from hot food shortages, Ukrainian forces are now enjoying an influx of insulating camouflage clothing, tents, stoves, and sleeping bags provided by Canada and the Nordic countries.

It seems that Putin denies the conditions his army is going through, and that the "Russian winter" favors his opponents this time.

He may have made another mistake by focusing his missiles on Ukraine's power grid and its vulnerable civilian population, "who will endure the greatest suffering without much prospect of breaking their will," as Beevor puts it at the conclusion of his article.