The Ukrainian Blitz
Rachel Moltz
Tue, 10/18/2022 – 08:03
For several days now Russian forces have launched cruise missile and drone strikes against Ukrainian cities, targeting the electrical grid as well as targets clearly meant to terrorize the civilian population and kill noncombatants. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the strikes in retaliation for a truck bomb—which he claims was directed by Ukrainian intelligence—that destroyed a portion of the twelve-mile, $4 billion bridge connecting the Kerch Peninsula with Russia. Upon the bridge’s opening in 2018 Putin declared it a “remarkable” achievement, meant to permanently link Russia with the illegally annexed Crimean Peninsula. Its partial destruction dealt a blow not just to Russian logistics, but to Putin’s fragile ego. The strike on a target steeped in prestige has set off an aerial blitz that has a direct antecedent from the early months of World War II in Europe more than eighty years ago.
After the Wehrmacht triumphed over France in just six weeks in May and June 1940, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler believed Britain would sue for peace. When Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his cabinet held firm and pledged to continue fighting even if doing so meant a direct attack on …read more
Source:: Hoover Institution