Fog of war: Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian forces

      Russian and Ukraine war image

It possessed what had one been the most beautiful beaches in theUSSR, ontheCrimean peninsula, where the Russian tsarshad spent their summers, as well as theUSSR'slargest warm. water naval partin Sevastopol. It have suffered greatly during the German advance into the SovietUnionin1941-ofthe13 "herocities"of the USSR, so called because they saw the heaviest fighting and raised the stoutest resistance,fourwereinUkraine(Kyiv,Odesa,Kerch andSevastopol) .The  economies of Russia and Ukraine were deeply intert wined.Ukrainian factories in Dnipropet rovsk were avital part of the military-industrial capacity of theUSSR,and Russia's largest export gas pipeline ran though Ukraine.Strategically in the word of historian DominicLieven , describing the situation circa the first worldwar, Ukraine could not havebeen mortal. 

 "WithoutUkraine'spopulation,industryandagricultural,early-20th century Russia would have ceased to be a great  power."The same wastrue, or seemedtobetrue, in1991.Ontopofthis, Ukrainewas,if not divided then certainly notimmediately recognisable as a unifiedwhole .Because  it had so many times been conquered partitioned, the country'sis historical memory itself was fractured. In the words of onehistorian ,

"Its different parts had different pasts". To makethings worse, one of the most treasured aspects of thepoliticalculture ofUkraine,historically_thelegacyofCossackhetmanateofthe17thcentury-was anarchism.The original Cossack were warrior who had escaped serfdom. Their political system was aradical democracy. There was something beautiful about this.But intermofthe

 construction of a modernstate, it had its drawbacks.Inanow-infamous CIA analysis written shortly after the creation of independent Ukraine,it was predicted that there was a good chance the country would fall apart. 

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