Winter Will Freeze Putin’s War in Ukraine

Here’s what he should’ve learned from Hitler and Napoleon

The night bivouac of Napoleon’s army during the retreat from Russia by Vasily Vereshchagin (Public Dom

The war continues in Ukraine. It even escalated recently when Putin launched over 100 missile strikes on Ukraine’s heating and electrical infrastructure in a direct attack on civilian populations and to get the cold Ukrainian winter on his side.

Winters in Ukraine are cold. It’s mostly 0ºC or below, and can easily fall to -20ºC.

Guns don’t fire. Train tracks freeze and cover in ice. Gasoline coagulates. Engines don’t start. Supply lines fall apart and come to a halt. Troops die from exposure and starvation.

And even when the weather permits a thaw, traffic on roads becomes impossibly mired in mud on impassible roads.

Military excursions in eastern European winters have never been a good idea, and trying to get winter on your side is a strategy that has seldom worked for invading armies. Napoleon found this out on his way to Moscow in 1812. He headed across Europe with 600,000 soldiers and came back with around 100,000.

Hitler had a similar experience when he set out on a winter campaign in 1941. His march into Russia and the subsequent notorious battles on the Eastern Front resulted in military and civilian deaths of over 30 million, including nine million children.

Putin should brush up on the history books.

Troops in Ukraine recently pushed back his army back across a historic demarcation, the Dnieper River (also known as the Dnipro). During WWII, Russians used the eastern shore of the river as a defensive point to beat back advancing Nazi troops in one of the most decisive battles of World War II. Thanks in part to the weather, defending Russians beat the Nazis. And now, the Ukrainians will beat the Russians.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called Putin’s retreat a D-Day-like watershed of the Russia-Ukraine War.

He’s right. And Putin should realize that he can save face by coming to a political solution. Nato nations should facilitate negotiations and use the winter season to their advantage.

Continued attacks on the civilian population’s ability to stay warm this winter will only increase the Ukranians’ resolve to fight it out on the new Dneiper battlefront. And, it will freeze out Russia’s options on the international front as well.