During the Second World War, Ukraine became one of the most significant strategic battlegrounds. In the first Battle of Kyiv in 1941, German Wehrmacht and SS units fought their way across the Dnipro river – the only natural obstacle on the northern European plain – into eastern Ukraine and the Donbas region.  

Then, as now, the opposing sides fought for control of the strategic crossing points of the Dnipro river – the third longest river in Europe, after the Volga and Danube. 

The fighting was savage and after two months of brutal combat in eastern Ukraine – where civilians were repeatedly massacred – the Nazis managed to push 650km towards Moscow.  

In December 2023, Ukrainian forces crossed the Dnipro in Kherson Oblast, attempting to form a bridgehead near Krynky to drive Putin’s forces further east toward the Russian border. Whilst the context is very different – Ukraine is fighting for its own survival against a Russian invasion – it is an example in some respects of history repeating itself. 

In 1943, in one of the major turning points of World War Two, the USSR mounted a massive armoured and infantry assault against Nazi forces – hoping to drive them back towards Europe – in an attempt to drive them west, back across the Dnipro river and out of Ukraine.  The second Battle of Kyiv involved over four million troops and lasted from August to December 1943. This great victory for the Soviet Union – achieved by their legendary generals Georgy Zhukov, Aleksandr Vasilevsky and Konstantin Rokossovsky – was fought over the same ground that is contested in Ukraine today. 

In his speech before the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Putin questioned the legitimacy of Ukraine as an ‘authentic’ national identity. In this speech and in many others – and in a pattern repeated throughout Russian elite circles and propaganda channels – Ukraine is presented as an extension of Russian territory and Russian identity, sometimes referred to as ‘Little Russia’.  

In this regard, Putin mobilises rhetoric around a proposed common identity and affinity between Belarus, Ukraine and Russia – what has been referred to as the ‘politics of eternity’, an immutable, permanent Slavic, Orthodox, linguistic, cultural and ethnic common identity. 

In outlining his reasons for mounting what he termed the ‘Special Military Operation’ (SMO) or full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Putin also referred to Ukraine’s potential membership of Nato as an irrevocable step toward an inevitable invasion – once again – of Russia through the north European plain.  

Putin refers to the eastern expansion of Nato as a ‘red-line’ provocation and links the growing presence of the military alliance along its borders as an unacceptable encroachment on Russian territory.  

As a consequence of Putin’s full scale invasion of Ukraine – over 100,000 Ukrainian and Russian troops have been killed in combat in the Donbas region, with at least a quarter of a million troops seriously wounded. This is combat on a scale in Europe not seen since World War II.

Many political and military analysts link the current crisis to the April 2008 Nato summit in Bucharest. At this conference – after a visit to Kyiv – then President George W Bush, announced his support for Ukraine and Georgia’s full membership of NATO. This is said to have infuriated the Kremlin whose spokespersons repeatedly state that they had been given explicit assurances that NATO’s eastward expansion – encompassing the Baltic States, Hungary and Romania – would not continue.  

Despite the contested nature of such assurances, President Bush insisted that the Kremlin would not have a ‘veto’ over membership of Nato and pressed for ‘Membership Action Plans’ to be initiated for Ukraine and Georgia – much to the surprise and scepticism, including opposition from other NATO member states.

In a blueprint for what would happen in Ukraine in 2014, Russia promptly invaded Georgia in August 2008. In a short campaign – over just 5 days – 70,000 Russian troops quickly overwhelmed the Georgian military. 

The Kremlin then effectively annexed Abkhazia and southern Ossetia – territory they still occupy – as a barrier between Russia and Georgia and neighbouring NATO member Turkey. 

Just six years later, with Putin in power, following pro-EU ‘Euromaidan’ protests in Ukraine and the ‘Revolution of Dignity’ in February 2014, the Kremlin annexed Crimea. Within weeks, Putin had orchestrated the ‘Crimean Status Referendum’ and on 18 March, the ‘Crimean Accession Agreement’ was signed with Moscow.  

A few short weeks later, the ‘Donbas War’ began – a de-facto invasion of Luhansk and Donetsk Oblasts by pro-Moscow separatists and with overt and covert support from Russian special-forces.

Unlike the Georgian invasion, Putin’s Donbas War was a ‘grayzone’ operation, asymmetrical warfare involving conventional military attacks by militias, terrorist attacks and targeted assassinations, cyber attacks, propaganda, misinformation and comprehensive attempts at deception or the classic Russian military strategy of ‘Maskirovka’.  

These grayzone operations were consistent with the ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’ – brainchild of Putin’s top general and principal architect of the subsequent full scale invasion of Ukraine, Valery Gerasimov.

The Ukrainian military responded to the Donbas War with an aggressive campaign of containment and managed to reverse many of the gains made by pro-Russian separatists and Russian mercenaries operating in the Donbas.   

A cessation of hostilities of sorts was achieved with the Minsk Protocol of September 2014 – agreed between Moscow, Kyiv and separatist elements in Luhansk and Donetsk. However, over the months and years that followed, hundreds of breaches of the ceasefire occurred with heavy loss of life within the Donbas region. 

With the ‘Donbas War’ in Ukraine effectively stalled, Putin re-started the conflict in earnest on 24 February 2022 with an unprovoked full-scale invasion.  

Precisely why this dramatic – and criminal – escalation took place at this point in time is unclear. However, it may have been for a variety of factors, which, when taken together, constitute a breathtaking failure of intelligence on Putin’s part.

After four years of the Trump presidency, which eroded the United State’s ethical, political, diplomatic and military status – including Trump’s serious and consistent questioning of and criticism of the Nato military alliance – Putin may have sensed weakness in the West’s unity, coherence and military capacity.  

With Nato having been effectively defeated in Afghanistan, with the humiliation of a rout at Kabul International Airport, Putin and his generals may have – mistakenly – believed that Nato would lack the resolve to respond meaningfully to an invasion of Ukraine.

The Kremlin may also have seen the EU as profoundly weakened with the Brexit departure of its principal military member, Britain. The rancorous departure from the EU of the UK - as a key linchpin of both the Nato alliance and the transatlantic alliance between Washington and Brussels – may have further emboldened Putin in his decision to strike at Ukraine. 

Based on his three axes of advance, and the relatively small invasion force deployed by Putin, it is clear that his generals expected Ukraine to simply collapse with the seizure of Kyiv and the elimination of President Zelensky.  

The Kremlin would appear to have grossly overestimated the capabilities of their own military machine and seriously underestimated the resolve of the Ukrainians to resist regime change and to fight for their very existence.

The invasion was initially quite dynamic but very quickly faltered.  Putin’s troops were expelled from Kyiv, Sumy and shortly thereafter from much of the Kharkiv Oblast.  In the Winter of 2022, Ukraine managed to liberate Kherson and established a minor bridgehead over the Dnipro river.  

The war however, has reached a costly attritional stalemate with catastrophic losses on both sides. Estimates suggest 50,000 Ukrainian troops killed in action thus far with a similar number of Russian losses. 

It is clear that Ukraine is prepared to fight for its existence and that there has been considerable consolidation of Ukrainian national identity. 

Putin’s imperial attempt to forcibly ‘re-integrate’ Ukraine into a ‘greater Russia’ and to restore the original borders of the USSR have backfired spectacularly.  This will force him to reconsider his calculus for what to do next in Ukraine. 

The 92.3% of Ukrainians who voted for independence in the referendum of 1991 are clearly determined to resist at all costs any attempt on the part of the Kremlin to subsume them into what Putin has called the ‘original’ Lenin Military District – which would have restored the Rodina’s borders up to NATO member states Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland and Sweden. A border with Nato stretching from the Black Sea to the Arctic.

For now, Putin has been thwarted. If he were to fully mobilise Russia militarily, he would eventually overwhelm and defeat Kyiv. This would be a disaster for the EU, Nato and the US and would reboot the Cold War – with Europe having to arm itself and return to a posture of proactive military deterrence.

For now, despite the current stalemate, Putin may well be relying on ‘Ukraine fatigue’ to undermine Kyiv’s extraordinary defence of their country. 

If Kyiv succeeds and is admitted in time to the EU, it will represent an important strategic member state – well armed and capable of defending itself – on the northern European plain. 

An increasingly prosperous and democratic Ukraine on the border of Russia might be the most single most powerful weapon against tyranny and autocracy – more powerful than any artillery or missile system.  

Putin and his enablers know this and will do all in their power to undermine and thwart Ukraine’s ambitions to realise its fullest potential as an independent, democratic state. 

Unlike some of the wars fought across the northern European plain – the war in Ukraine is a war for the democratic values and aspirations of not just Ukraine – but all of Europe.