Ukraine's citizen army takes on the Russians

Could the Russian invasion force face a highly motivated urban guerrilla war if they succeed in occupying and controlling Kyiv and other cities across Ukraine? Determined citizens throwing Molotov cocktails at Russian troops and vehicles will not cow an invasion force as capable and as well-armed as Russia’s army and special forces. However, the history of guerrilla and insurgency warfare has shown that if resistance forces are appropriately and consistently armed by sympathetic foreign governments, an invasion force deployed by a military superpower such as Russia can be effectively opposed and even defeated in time. There are numerous precedents: *The CIA-armed and Pakistan intelligence service -backed Mujahideen fought the Russian occupying forces in Afghanistan for nine years in the 1980s and drove them out of the country. *The US-led coalition force suffered the same ignominy at the hands of the Taliban after 20 years. *The US-led invasion force that defeated Saddam Hussein’s army in 2003 was then challenged by years of guerrilla warfare initially waged by dismissed and disillusioned Iraqi soldiers who metamorphosed into the Islamic state (Isis). A guerrilla war or urban warfare mounted by the Ukrainian people against the Russians would depend on the scale of arms received for a covert battle, coordination and leadership skills crucial for an effective and lengthy campaign, and the level of brutality the armed citizens might face from Russia’s occupiers. Would the people of Kyiv be prepared for or capable of mounting another Stalingrad? The Battle of Stalingrad, from August 23, 1942 to February 2, 1943 in the Second World War can only be a metaphorical comparison because it involved the full might of the German 6th Army against the Soviet Union’s Red Army in the most brutal of campaigns for the city. There were more than 750,000 Soviet and 400,000 German military casualties and 40,000 civilian deaths before the 6th army commander surrendered. The scale of the battle, the most horrific example of urban combat in history, is not going to be repeated in Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million. However, all Ukrainian males of potentially fighting age have been urged by the Kyiv government to take up arms and confront the Russian troops. Could this lead to a citizens’ resistance capable of spoiling Vladimir Putin’s ambition to control the city and the rest of the country? Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have had eight years’ experience of fighting Russian separatists, backed by “little green men” Spetsnaz special forces sent by Moscow to eastern Ukraine. They have learned tactics and irregular-force skills which could be passed on to a citizens’ army. There are already more than 150 territorial defence battalions which were established to cover the whole country. While they are not best-equipped or manned, they, too, could be used to stir up an armed resistance. In July last year Ukraine passed a law called the foundations of national resistance which provides a legal framework for a nationwide resistance campaign. This was aimed at avoiding potentially the worst scenario which would be a guerrilla war involving thousands of enthusiastic patriots taking up arms without any form of controlled or organised structure.