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Invasion Madness: Five Times Russia Vastly Underestimated A ‘Weaker’ Opponent

Ukraine is just one in a long line

Paul Combs
5 min readNov 3, 2022
Polish defenses near Milosna, August 1920 (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

When he launched the invasion of Ukraine on February 24th of this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin believed his army would take Kyiv in two days. 252 days later, Russian forces are in retreat across eastern and southern Ukraine, and Russia can only reach Kyiv with long-range missiles targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. To say that Putin underestimated the resolve and abilities of the Ukrainian people is as blindingly obvious as the fact that water is wet.

For someone who claims to be a student of history, Putin really should have seen this coming. With the exception of World War II (in which they had the Americans and British as allies), Russia’s military track record over the past 100 years or so has been spotty, to say the least. They did put down popular uprisings in Budapest (1956) and Prague (1968) using tanks against lightly armed citizens and subdued Chechnya in 2000 by basically leveling the country, but their success against other supposedly weaker foes has been virtually non-existent.

Here are five times that Russia brazenly went to war against a much smaller nation with the expectation of a quick victory, only to face a far different outcome than they could ever have imagined:

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Paul Combs
Paul Combs

Written by Paul Combs

Writer, bookseller, would-be roadie for the E Street Band. My ultimate goal is to make books as popular in Texas as high school football...it may take a while.

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