5 Months of Non-War: A Lot or a Little?

Or just enough time for a change in military fortunes?

Another chronological milestone is approaching - the non-war has been going on for 5 months. The children conceived in those last peaceful months before it began have not yet had time to be born. Almost everything that we see around us in the cities - transport, construction, landscaping - is maintained on peacetime budgets. 5 months is not so much after all. Although it seems like an eternity has passed, the last 150 days were so difficult and gloomy. And there is no light to be seen ahead. If at first many literally counted the minutes, and scrolled through the news in Telegram for signs that this hell would end, now the non-war looks endless, like autumn rain.

No, 5 months is not that short at all. The first Chechen war lasted 21 months. The Great Patriotic War lasted 46 months, and all of World War II, 72. World War I - 51 months. Our 5 months are much less, but these are already comparable values which can be compared with the first stages of the wars of the past.

By May 1995, Russian troops had - just like now - gone through two stages of a campaign to “restore constitutional order in the Chechen Republic.” The first stage was the bloody assault on Grozny. By February, that city had been successfully reduced to rubble, but had at last came under federal control. That same May, the Russian army had driven the militants out of almost all of Chechnya’s the lowland regions. Had there had been a pool of pro-Kremlin Telegram channels back then, citizens would have simply been flooded with colorful maps testifying to territorial successes. But these victories cost the Russian army dearly. It suffered heavy losses, and its prestige shriveled under anti-war criticism from the opposition media. By the end of April 1995, Russia announced the suspension of hostilities. That truce would last only two weeks, but after it the war would take on a completely different, protracted quality. The federal troops would no longer enjoy decisive successes. Partisan and counter-partisan actions, ambush attacks, and shelling of rebellious villages would continue until August 1996, when General Lebed signed the shameful Khasavyurt agreements.

During the first five months of the Patriotic War, the USSR suffered a number of heavy defeats. By December 1941, the Germans had captured the entire Baltic, all of Belarus, most of Ukraine, and many regions of the RSFSR. Minsk fell on June 28, Smolensk on July 11, Kyiv on September 19. On September 8, the noose around Leningrad closed. In October and November, the Nazis stood at the very gates of Moscow. The capital survived the three days of the “Moscow Panic” in October as the government prepared to evacuate the city. The Red Army lost about 3 million people, which is almost half of all military losses in that war. But for all that, the blitzkrieg was thwarted. The German units faced the Soviets’ fierce defenses, only to become fatally bogged down. The USSR undertook a general, mass mobilization - 14 million citizens were drafted into the army. An unprecedented operation was carried out to evacuate industrial production west and to put the entire economy on a military footing. Despite the catastrophic defeats of the first 5 months, the USSR survived and prepared to launch a counteroffensive. This began outside of Moscow on December 5, 1941, and marked the beginning of the end of the Reich.

Back further: The first months of the First World War were strikingly different from its continuation. Combat operations developed rapidly. The Germans broke through the Allied defenses on the western front and quickly advanced deep into France, whose government fled to Bordeaux. Events on the eastern front were similarly turbulent. The Russian army occupied nearly the whole of East Prussia, forcing the enemy to withdraw reinforcements from France in order to plug the gaps in the east. But, recovering quickly, the Germans would defeat the Russian armies.

Russia found much more success on the Austrian sector of the front. Russian troops took Lvov, Galich, and by the end of autumn controlled almost all of Galicia, where a new governor-general was appointed. Only in November-December 1914 would the fronts freeze, and the war then acquired a protracted, positional character. For the first months of the war, the rear echelons were beset by a jingoistic mood. But by winter this began to gradually weaken, giving way to fatigue and social discontent. Soldiers on the front line began spontaneous fraternization, strikes were taken up in the rear. But it was still a long way before this muffled discontent grew into a revolution...

The text was published on the Nevoyna Telegram channel