VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: History Should Be Our Guide in Ukraine.
That Ukraine is morally in the right and certainly deserves Western help does not mean that all Russians should be demonized or an often-corrupt Ukrainian government that just suspended its opposition parties should be deified.
Fifth, the Russian military abroad. The Russian army is historically unbeatable on its home soil. Charles XII of Sweden, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Adolf Hitler all wrecked their once indomitable militaries once they crossed into Russia.
But the expeditionary armies of a multiethnic, disparate Russia have never done well abroad in major foreign invasions against determined enemies.
Moscow faced a series of embarrassing and utter defeats in the Russo-Japanese war of 1904-1905.
The czar’s 1914 invasion of German East Prussia ended in catastrophe. Russia invaded Poland and lost the Polish war of 1919-1921.
Stalin’s attack on tiny Finland in 1939 soon turned into a bloody quagmire. The decade-long invasion and occupation of Afghanistan ended in defeat.
It’s VDH, so needless to say, read the whole thing. Incidentally, Stalin’s Finnish quagmire was the topic of a recent video by historian Mark Felton: