To defeat Russia

Of course, when someone says such things, they have an agenda, because they are politicians after all; we don’t want to believe they are deliberately playing along with the aggressor or do it out of sheer ignorance. They say that Russia is the world's second nuclear power and so on... For some reason, they forget that the Soviet Union was far superior to modern Russia in terms of military power, but it also lost, and not even to a regular army, but to Afghan guerrillas. And this, as you know, was the beginning of its end. And even before that, after every lost war, if not unrest and revolutions, then some attempts at reforms spread along Russia, which eventually also ended in revolutions and unrest.

“If we take just the last two centuries, from Napoleonic times to the present day, at least half of the fifteen wars that Russia has fought or gotten involved in have been successfully lost”

This began when Russia was still Muscovy, after Ivan the Terrible, Godunov, and their likes. But let's not go that far, because even if we take only the last two centuries, from Napoleonic times to the present day, at least half of the fifteen wars that Russia has fought or gotten involved in have been successfully lost. However, Russians prefer not to mention the lost wars, and if they do, they distort and twist the facts, emphasizing self-sacrifice and heroism that did not actually happen. Instead, victories, real or imagined, are elevated to the level of a cult, such as the "celebration of the great victory" on May 9.

But if we were to just briefly recall those wars, both large and small, that ended in, if not a fiasco, then in a shameful armistice, we would mention the Crimean War (1853-1856), the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), and World War I (1914-1918), which Russia actually lost while still an empire. And then there were the Polish-Soviet War (1919-1920), during which it was no longer an empire, but not yet the USSR, and then the Soviet-Finnish War (1939-1940), the already mentioned war in Afghanistan (1979-1989), and the First Russian-Chechen War (1994-1995), when Russia became a so-called federation. Of course, the price of victory, as well as the price of defeat, is a separate topic. However, there are times when there is simply no other choice: either to win or to die, to disappear from the world map.

It seems that this is the situation we are in. Therefore, we not only may defeat Russia, but we must do it, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine have already taken the first steps to do so.  

Specially for Espreso TV.

About the author: Oleksandr Vilchynskyi is a writer and journalist. In 2016 to 2017, he was a volunteer and served as a private soldier in the 1st separate assault company of the Air Force.

The editorial staff do not always share the opinions expressed by the blog authors.