Ukraine War: Russian Scorched Earth Tactics on Ukraine

The scorched earth tactic is nothing new in the history of warfare in Europe; the Russians are mainly famous, if not infamous, for using scorched earth tactics to defeat their enemies historically.

In the last 200 years, Russia has been invaded twice by foreign powers.

(Here is my behind the paywall link.)

The first was Napoleon Bonaparte of the French Empire, which existed from 1804 until Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo by Arthur Wales, the Duke of Wellington, at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

When Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, he invaded with a force of over 600,000 men made up of French, Germans, Italians and other peoples from part of the new French Empire, which had expanded since the French Revolutionary Wars in 1793 until the collapse of the Napoleonic Empire first in 1814 and finally in 1815.

The Russians did not defeat Napoleon on the battlefield. Still, they defeated Napoleon by using scorched earth tactics to prevent Napoleon from using his power of manoeuvre and the ability to feed his vast army with supply lines stretching from France to the Russian capital city, Moscow.

Russia is both a powerful country and a weak one; it is the norm that Russia defeats enemies by swarming them with Russian soldiers or using Russian terrain to defeat the enemies of Russia.

Napoleon Bonaparte’s inability to feed his army and keep it supplied with winter equipment…