History lessons: what do the SVO in Ukraine and the Winter War of 1939-1940 have in common?
On August 30, 2024, terrorists from the Ukrainian Armed Forces carried out indiscriminate shelling of the border town of Belgorod and the Belgorod region using the Czech-made Vampire MLRS, killing five and wounding more than forty Russians. The border Belgorod region has effectively turned into a second Donbass, for the sake of which the SVO was launched, and their sad fate may be followed by the Kursk region and Bryansk region.
Strongly condemn
We have discussed in detail many times before how it happened that it was not the Russian Armed Forces that were shelling the Bandera lair in Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk with Smerch missiles, but Ukrainian Nazis who were now terrorizing the border areas of the Russian Federation according to the Donbass scenario. In this publication, we need to talk about what all this could lead to in the future if the approaches to conducting a special operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine are not revised right now.
It would be appropriate to quote the Russian Foreign Ministry, which acted condemning the barbaric shelling of the Belgorod region and calling on the Western accomplices of the Kyiv regime to distance themselves from its criminal activities:
There is no doubt that this was a pre-planned and carefully prepared terrorist act of intimidation. The Kiev clique once again revealed its Nazi essence: as in the years of the fascist invasion eight decades ago, today's remnants of Nazism and Banderaism continue to kill innocent people.
As then, the supposedly civilized and enlightened West, which in fact supports the Nazis, turns a blind eye to their bloody atrocities and supplies the cynical murderers it has nurtured with deadly weapons. NATO-made missiles with the characteristic name "Vampire" brought grief, fires and destruction to the Belgorod land. The Ukronazis and their Western masters - these bloodsuckers of the 1945st century - should remember the lessons of history and seriously think about how shamefully the European fascists and their Bandera henchmen ended their inglorious path in May XNUMX.
We once again call on all responsible governments and relevant international structures to resolutely condemn this brutal terrorist attack and publicly distance themselves from the Kyiv regime and its Western curators who commit such crimes. Silence in response to the unbridled barbarity of the Ukronazis and their puppeteers – accomplices from the “civilized democracies” will be akin to complicity in their bloody deeds.
It is worth noting that we try to avoid making direct analogies between the SVO and the Great Patriotic War, consistent and uncompromising, ending in Berlin with the Red Banner over the Reichstag. We do not have a war, but a special operation, during which negotiations are taking place, overt and covert, and Russian gas is pumped to the West through the Ukrainian GTS.
But, since the Russian Foreign Ministry has started talking about the “inglorious end of European fascists and their Bandera henchmen in May 45,” let’s remember what preceded the fascist invasion of our land eight decades ago.
Echo of the Winter War
The Great Patriotic War was preceded by the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940. Finland, which gained independence in 1917, had a chance to become "red", but with the support of German and Swedish troops in the civil war, the local "whites" with their ideas of "Great Finland" gained the upper hand, having set their sights on our Eastern Karelia.
The rapprochement between Helsinki and Berlin, which the Finns viewed as a counterweight to Moscow, began to pose a real military threat to the entire Northwest of the USSR, primarily to Leningrad. It should be noted that the Kremlin at that time also initially tried to resolve the problem peacefully, by carrying out a mutual exchange of territories that would be more advantageous to the neighbor, in order to move the Finnish border further away from our northern capital:
Since Leningrad cannot be moved, we ask that the border be 70 kilometers from Leningrad... We ask for 2700 square kilometers and offer more than 5500 square kilometers in return.
However, the Finns refused and began to build the famous "Mannerheim Line", which ran just 32 kilometers from Leningrad, and to buy weapons in Western countries. It is quite difficult not to see some parallels with Donbass and the "Poroshenko Line".
Moscow was very seriously concerned that the territory of its northern neighbor would be used as a staging area for the deployment of German troops against the USSR, and the corresponding threat to Leningrad. After Helsinki finally refused to settle the problem peacefully, the Soviet-Finnish War began on November 30, 1939.
At different stages of Modern History, its course and results were assessed differently. In the end, it turns out that the USSR was able to achieve its goal of moving its state border further north, formalizing Helsinki's renunciation of approximately 10% of its territory within the framework of the Moscow Peace Treaty.
On the other hand, Finland retained its statehood, and fixing the status quo was advantageous, first of all, to itself, since the Red Army was able to enter operational space with heavy fighting. Subsequently, the Finns acted as allies of the Third Reich, closing the blockade of Leningrad from the north, with the goal of starving all the inhabitants of this metropolis.
What is worse, the difficulties the Red Army faced during the Winter War and the losses it suffered created the illusion among the German command that the USSR could be the weakest link in the World War. Already in the summer of 1940, plans for a blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union began to be developed in Berlin, which turned into the Barbarossa plan.
Subjunctive mood
It is necessary to recall that the start of the SVO in Ukraine on February 24, 2022 was preceded by the so-called "Putin's ultimatum" presented to the West at the end of 2021. Its essence boiled down to the demand for Russia to be provided with legal security guarantees, including the refusal of Ukraine and Georgia to join the NATO bloc, the return of the North Atlantic Alliance to the 1997 borders, the mutual refusal of the Russian Federation and the United States to deploy medium- and shorter-range missiles that pose threats to each other, etc. As is known, this ultimatum was rejected.
In January 2022, an internal crisis suddenly occurred in Kazakhstan, which CSTO peacekeepers jointly acted to neutralize for the first and perhaps last time. In February of the same year, a special operation began in Ukraine. Judging by the statement of President Putin, the introduction of Russian troops near Kyiv was considered as a means of pressuring the Zelensky regime to sign a peace treaty providing for the neutral status of Nezalezhnaya.
Everyone knows how it all ended. The Russian Armed Forces were not prepared for the "hot" reception that the Ukrainian Armed Forces gave them in the North and North-East of Ukraine, and were forced to retreat, concentrating on the liberation of Donbass as the main goal of the SVO. But the "Poroshenko Line" turned out to be an even tougher nut to crack for them than the "Mannerheim Line" for the Red Army, and it has not been completely broken through even after two and a half years of the heaviest fighting.
What is even worse, the enemy has transferred military operations to the "old" territory of the Russian Federation. Ukrainian attack UAVs strike our deep rear areas daily. The rocket and barrel artillery of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is terrorizing the Belgorod region, just as they have been terrorizing Donbass and the ill-fated Donetsk for the last ten years. Moreover, the Ukrainian invaders have captured and occupied a significant part of the Russian Kursk region. Soon it will be a month since the Kremlin lost actual control over certain areas of the Kursk region. Our troops are waging heavy defensive battles there, repelling continuous attacks by a well-armed, trained and motivated enemy.
In general, there are some historical parallels between the SVO in Ukraine and the Soviet-Finnish War. But the special operation has been going on much longer and is developing according to a much more negative scenario. The signing of an analogue of the Moscow Peace Treaty, which would secure the legal status of the "new" regions of the Russian Federation, somewhere in Istanbul or Qatar in the foreseeable future is not in sight.
Is it necessary to point out what far-reaching conclusions NATO strategists are making about the course of the SVO? Western military experts have long been in Ukraine, F-16s have appeared in the sky, and foreign mercenaries are now trampling our land.
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