Russian Military Disasters

It is impossible not to be surprised by Russia's resilience. For 1,000 years, Russia has survived in some way. Even a brief review of his military history raises important issues, but how?

Russia's historic predecessor was a nation known as the Kievan Rus', centered on modern-day Ukraine Kyiv, and was actually a loose coalition of princes. In the early 1220s, the Mongols rapidly expanded west towards Russia, overtaking the small kingdoms in their path. The remnants of these kingdoms sought help from the Russians and explained the heightened threat from the Mongols. Shortly thereafter, the Mongolian ambassador arrived in a Russian court to reach a peaceful solution. The Russians responded by killing the Mongolian messenger. Russian princes gathered what they believed to be a terrifying army that could stop the Mongols without knowing what they were against. And their first battle was certainly a huge success, routing the invaders. Worried that the war would end before they could kill a few of their own Mongolians, Russian aristocrats began a ruthless pursuit of a retreating army. They chased the enemy jockey for nine days. The enemy jockey led the chase straight to the center of Mongolia's main army, which had been waiting for a long time. The cheeky and disorganized Russian army did not match their ambush. When one of Russia's major princes surrendered, the Mongols gladly accepted him and his army and slaughtered them. As for the captured aristocrats, the Mongols buried them alive under the floor of their confused tent, and then threw a feast to those who were defeated. Centuries ago, the Great Principality of Kyiv did not recover from the dramatic loss of labor, and collapsed rapidly in the decades that followed.

Moscow, the successor to Kyiv, became prominent mainly by submitting its leaders to the rule of the Mongol Empire. 140 years after the Kalka River, the Mongols demanded respect for the Principality of Russia without serious problems. However, as the 14th century came to an end, Moscow prospered as a trading center, and its prince, Dmitry Donskoy, was tired of being a Mongolian footman and was really angry. In 1382, an increasingly resistant horde unleashed their attack dogs on rebellious Russians. Ruthless because it is difficult to pronounce his name, Prince Tokhtamysh marched to Moscow and sent a scout first to assassinate merchants and travelers who might warn Donskoy. Along the way, many Russian princes made wise bets and formed an alliance with Tokhtamysh. Just before Moscow was surrounded, Donskoy fled the city to gather reinforcements. For three days, 20,000 Moscow Defense Force defenders counterattacked Tokhtamysh's army. On the fourth day, seemingly exhausted Tokhtamysh appeared at the gate and waved the white flag of the ceasefire. Luckily, the city's inhabitants sent a parade of envoys to the Mongolian prince with gifts and compliments. But before the peace talks began, the Mongolian swordfighters rushed out of their camp, killing the procession, attacking the Moscow gates, and destroying everything inside. When Donskoy returned, he found a pile of burnt rubble and corpses where his city was. After Donskoy lost everything, Donskoy and what was left in his Principality again submitted to Mongolian rule.

Dimitry Donskoy's efforts showed that Mongolian rule was weakening, but there were many more failures on the road to Moscow's independence. Take Vasily II. The Grand Duke of Moscow struggled to maintain control of his city due to the constant civil war, and a nearby Tatar group raided the border with immunity. In response to one such raid, Vasily formed a strike force of 1,500 soldiers. To prove that his critics are wrong-they said he was a weak and untalented leader-he decided to lead the army himself. Vasili scouts found the attackers and brought great news. The enemy was just a small, uncoordinated bunch. Imagine Vasili's surprise the next morning when he found 3,500 heavily armed Tatars lined up towards him. Taking full advantage of it, he took the initiative and ordered an attack. The Russians fought well and withdrew the legendary prairie warriors. The excitement spread throughout the ranks-they may actually achieve a famous victory. When the Tatars fled, Russian troops broke the ranks and pursued. And the Tatars stopped retreating and instead surrounded their now confused enemies. The results were predictable: "Junk" slaughtered Vasili's army, captured the prince himself, and made a fortune to buy him back in Moscow.

They didn't mean that it was a "time of trouble". The problem began in 1598, when the weak emperor Feodor I died without a successor. Things got worse when Feodor's half-brother Dmitri appeared to take the throne in the midst of a terrible famine. This has been a particularly troublesome event since Dmitri died in 1591. With the support of Poland and Lithuania, the fake Dimitri succeeded in taking the throne. In 1606, the scammer was assassinated by a nobleman named Vasilii Shuiskii who crowned the emperor. Shuiskii publicly exhibited Dimitri's naked corpse for three days, but couldn't suppress rumors that the real Dimitri was still alive. Of course, a second Dmitri appeared and formed a rebel army to challenge Shuiskii. Russia fell into a civil war and ended only after Dmitry II was assassinated. When Russia collapsed, its neighbors Poland, Lithuania and Sweden did not wait. Instead, they invaded and occupied vast territories at Russian expense, as completely confused Russian troops turned into Eastern European punching bags and lost battles with five times as many enemies as there were enemies. The problem was further complicated by the advent of the third fake Dimitri. Eventually, Russian aristocrats agreed that they hated Poland and Sweden more than each other and united to recapture Moscow from Poland. So they called on a kind of National Assembly that elected Michael Romanov as the new emperor of all Russians.

When the Ottoman Empire collapsed in the 19th century, Russia greedily turned to the territory of the Sultan, which would allow the Russian Black Sea Fleet to access the Mediterranean Sea. Russia has expressed concern about the welfare of Orthodox Christians living under the control of the Ottoman Empire. In 1853, Russian troops invaded Moldova, Balkan, Turkey. In response, Turkey declared war. France and Britain followed immediately to prevent Russia from taking over the world. What followed was a battle between three horrific troops and one safe army (French army), of which the Russian army was by far the worst. Russia, a kind of international school tyrant who cannot support its pride, possessed the largest and least effective army of all powers. Its troops were essentially slavesoldiers, armed with the latest 18th century technology—muskets which fired a quarter as far and half as fast as the AngloFrench rifles.Generally, Crimea resembled the American Civil War: Napoleonicera tactics with modern guns. And if the Russians specifically lacked modern guns, they certainly didn`t lack for outdated tactics—they got them firsthand from Field Marshal Ivan Paskevich, aged 72, and a veteran of the Napoleonic Wars.Fortunately for Russia, its enemies were only powerful when combined, as each possessed only one truly effective arm: the British navy, the French army, and the Ottoman, artillery. Of course, Russia had numbers—and if Russia in the 1850s had the railroads or infrastructure to get those troops and supplies into the field, it might have been a different story. Nevertheless, Russia fielded enough cannonfodder, and Allied officers led poorly enough, that a grinding stalemate was reached. In the process nearly a million Russians died, several times the figure for the Allies. The terms of the treaty have further moved Russia away from its Mediterranean dreams. After the Crimean Peninsula, the Allied Powers dismantled Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

Russia was always looking for a hot water port, so she took her to Port Arthur (now Lvshunkou), which she leased from China in 1898. The natural harbor west of the Korean Peninsula may have been a fleet of Japanese Russian warships that did not appear on the Chinese coast to convince them that Russia was a better resident. But Russia's new sphere of influence threatened Japan's hegemony in the region. So in 1904 Japan besieged Russia's outpost at Port Arthur before declaring war. The Russians needed reinforcements to lift the siege, but the closest was the Baltic Sea, 18,000 nautical miles away. The fleet set sail in October and had to go around Africa as British troops locked them out of the Suez Canal. I had a problem from the beginning. In the North Sea, Russian cruisers mysteriously mistaken British fishing vessels for Japanese torpedo boats and fired at fishermen. In the turmoil, the Russians fired at each other for more than 20 minutes, and several Britons were killed in a gun battle. After that, the fleet had to stop to ease the diplomatic affair. Seven months later, the fleet approached Japan. Port Arthur has already collapsed, and the fleet's new goal, Vladivostok, was far north. Instead of going around the east coast of Japan, the tired Russians chose the shortest possible course through the narrow strait that separates Japan and South Korea. Japanese spotters reported Russia's progress over the air and ensured that the Japanese Navy was in the best position to thwart them. The first shot from a Japanese battleship ignited a Russian ship and seriously injured the Russian Admiral. Inadequately trained Russian sailors were in turmoil, making Russian ships a swimming target for Japanese gunners. Of the 34 Russian ships that participated in the battle, only three arrived in Vladivostok. The Japanese captured or destroyed almost the entire fleet at the cost of only three torpedo boats.

When Germany was unable to expel France or Britain from World War I immediately, Germany's High Command ordered its troops to dig into the Western Front. In 1915, the second year of the war, German troops devoted themselves to expelling Russia from combat. Russia had already made some progress in Galicia, but it changed rapidly when Germany secretly moved large numbers of troops and supplies from the Western Front. In April 1915, German artillery illuminated the entire Eastern Front out of nowhere. Currently, two-thirds of all German troops are concentrated in defenseless Russians. Almost immediately the Russian army was crushed. In one skirmish in May, attacks in Australia and Germany captured 140,000 prisoners. A passing attempt was made at holding fortified positions around Warsaw, but these too had to be abandoned before the German advance. Thousands of pieces of artillery and millions of rounds were left behind in the retreat, compounding the already rampant shortages of both in the Russian army. With over a million troops lost or prisoners, the only option for the Russians was a massive withdrawal east, razing everything behind them as they went. In the process, Russia conceded all of PolandLithuania. Thirteen percent of all Russian subjects fell under German occupation. Since 1915, Russian combat troops have been reduced by a third. The catastrophic loss clearly surprised Germany more than Russia. German military headquarters concluded that if Russia did not surrender after the 1915 massacre, it would not surrender.

In 1939, the Soviet Union wanted to rule Finland and create a buffer state. Finland really didn't want to be part of the Soviet Union. Despite the fact that the Red Army had more soldiers (5 million) than Finns (4 million), Finns turned out to be a stronger motive. Of course, that didn't help with a seemingly grounded strategy. Due to the arrogance of suicide, the Soviet Union stumbled upon Finland in preparation for the severity of the long Arctic war. Oddly enough, if there were generals who understood such a war, they would think they were Russian. Still, Soviet black-painted tanks ran into Finland and were easily targeted in the snow. Many Soviet soldiers participated in the battle in khaki or green uniforms without proper cold climate equipment. Finland's defense consisted of a series of semi-strengthened machine gun nests that bisected the Karelia archipelago connecting Finland and Russia. But the bigger problem for the Soviet army was its reliance on remote roads in Finland. There, ambushing Soviet lines was like a duck hunting game for Finnish snipers and anti-tank crew. The Soviet Union could not respond effectively, and there was a shortage of skis that the Finns had disappeared into the wilderness. Finnish soldiers were messed up on a daily basis, saying, "Very many Russians! After all, the number of Finns alone was overwhelming. Finland caused about 70,000 casualties, but the Soviet Union. Was forced to use more than one million soldiers, of which 273,000 died, unlike the message Stalin wanted to send at the beginning of World War II.

As one of the two major Soviet counterattacks following Stalingrad, Operation Mars II was a very incredible disaster, and the Soviet Union simply omitted it from subsequent history books. Like Napoleon, Hitler tried to invade Russia, but stalled him thanks to the defender's scorched earth operation and the country's cruel winter. By the fall of 1942, the Soviet Union had stabilized the Eastern Front and distracted German troops from Moscow. However, dinosaur head and neck-like protrusions still protruded from the German line, threatening Moscow. In Operation II Rzhev, Soviet troops were to siege German troops, concentrate their troops on a narrow neck, and cut off the "head" from the German line. Instead of maintaining a continuous line, they chose to significantly strengthen their troops, concentrating them on villages and rugged farmhouses across the shelves. This turns out to be a wise choice. On the day of the attack, heavy snow and heavy fog prevented the Soviet aerial attack and their artillery from concentrating on the German fortress. In the turmoil of the early battles, Soviet elements completely bypassed the myriad German fortresses. As a result, the pockets of resistance were full of Soviet ranks. During the simultaneous Soviet offensive at Stalingrad, a counterattack from a position that bypassed the disconnected supply line and prevented Soviet field commanders from communicating with each other. As a result, they killed, injured, or captured 500,000 Soviet soldiers in less than a month, surpassing the number of German defenders, but lost only 40,000 of themselves.

As it turned out, Russia gave Grachev 38,000 troops and hundreds of tanks to quash the Chechen separatist movement. And it still took him almost two years to end the war (by losing it).Of the many Russian defeats during the First Chechen War, one of the worst came at Grozny, the de facto Chechen capital. Ever since Russia annexed their country in the 1870s, the Chechens had been longing for independence, so fierce resistance was expected in Grozny. Yet Grachev`s assault was hastily planned—basically, armored columns, complete with antiaircraft vehicles to counter the nonexistent Chechen air force, were to converge on the city center from four sides. And that`s about as far as the planning went.First, the initial air strikes to soften guerrilla resistance accidentally destroyed city roads the Russian tanks needed. Embedded journalists describe the advancing Russian army as a "blind kitten" because a Russian armored vehicle rushed in front of an infantry escort, but was stranded and destroyed by a Chechen missile fired from a high-rise window. bottom. Most Russian soldiers lacked urban warfare training and refused to leave the personnel carrier when Chechen fighters fired. Troublesome Russian armor was unable to steer the narrow streets of Grozny and, as one Chechen said, was almost deadlocked like a "sausage." In just a few hours, the Chechens destroyed 400 Russian tanks and armored vehicles. And as many as 4,000 Russian soldiers could have been killed in battle.