The next couple of weeks is likely to see Ukraine’s weather taking a turn for the worse, bringing first rain and then, as temperatures plummet, increasingly heavy snowfalls. “General Winter” has always had an important part to play in armed conflicts in this part of the world – something that Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolph Hitler both learned to their cost (Hitler was clearly an imperfect student of military history, given he appears not to have factored the catastrophic 1812 retreat from Moscow into his Operation Barbarossa invasion plans).
Once the snow sets in, it’s generally there until April. Frank Ledwidge, a military strategist at the University of Portsmouth, has spent a lot of time in these conditions and describes it as being like walking out of your well-heated apartment and into a freezer. Not that Russia’s troops will be bivouacked in apartments, of course. This time round, it’ll be Russians suffering the privations that Hitler and Napoloeon’s military experienced. Far from home and with uncertain supplies of food and cold weather equipment, morale will be difficult to maintain.
This, writes Ledwidge, is one reason for the attacks on Ukraine’s power plants. Vladimir Putin is only too aware of the onset of winter and wants the Ukrainian population to suffer as well. On the battlefield, the swift offensives of recent weeks are likely to move at a slower pace as first mud, then ice underfoot make rapid manoeuvring more difficult.
