Russia’s Western Front
Russia suited to enclose geographical gaps.
While military strategists and armchair historians alike mock leaders who decide to invade Russia (especially those who invade Russia in the winter), it is important to note that numerous incursions into Russian territory have been successful before Moscow ever existed. Russia is flat. More importantly, the parts of Russia that are most heavily populated and the parts of Russia that contain most of the land for crop production are easily traversable from the Northern European Plain. These wide stretches of open terrain are nigh impossible to defend from enemy raids, as forces can be easily detached and dispersed to evade capture or engagement with defense forces. As defense is almost impossible within her borders, Russia represents the strangest power relationship as described by Catherine the Great, who stated Russia must expand to be secure. Normally expansionism means there is more territory that the state needs to defend, but for Russia expansion means it can focus its forces into bottlenecks and keep invaders out of the softer lands of the interior.
To the south and east of Moscow Russia has the advantage of relative allies and disinterested potential invaders. With these states occupying the staging areas for any incursion force, Russia has few threats coming from Central Asia. While this does not make Russia’s holdings unassailable, it does provide a certain degree of security. The problems Moscow faces are to its west and south-west. To its west lies the Northern European Plain. Most recently, the Germans have used this stretch of land between the Baltics and the Carpathian mountains to batter technologically inferior and poorly led masses of Russian soldiers. For example, in both World War I and World War II, Russia was unable to achieve victory without the cost of millions of men, women, and children in a loss ratio of 8-1. Many historians argue that, without Allied intervention, Germany would likely have been victorious over Russia in both wars. Even the encirclement at Stalingrad, hailed as one of Russia’s greatest victories, came at a cost in excess of 1 million lives: tripling the losses suffered by the Germans. Beyond her borders Russian victories can be absolute, but inside her borders Russian victories are almost always pyrrhic at best.
To Russia’s south-west lies the Bessarabian Gap, a small land bridge between Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine that straddles the space between the end of the Carpathian Mountains and the Black Sea. This small saddle is home to some of the richest agricultural land in the world, but it also has been the road by which Goths, Turks, Bulgars, Ottomans, and many others have used as a throughpoint to wreak havoc on Russia’s unprotected grassland. The Bessarabian Gap is potentially the most important geographic feature to Russia, because it is a small and easily defensible area that lies just beyond Russia’s conventional borders. When Russia is in control of this gap, it becomes far easier for Russia to send most of her conventional forces to fortify the long open landscape north of the Carpathians. When Russia does not control this gap, the borderland it has to defend from invaders almost triples.
Herein lies the problem, and why Russia’s strategy to move south west towards Odessa is so important: Russia needs to plug the Bessarabian Gap. While many analysts might argue that Russia, a nuclear power, has nothing to fear from any of its conventionally armed neighbors, those analysts forget that Russia is not considering its relative safety today. As long as the means of its continued existence lie beyond its grasp, Russia will not hesitate to commit any manner of atrocity for some semblance of security. These aggressive actions are naturally cruel and detestable, but to Russia they are necessary. Russia does not mind leveling entire cities full of civilians because this war was never about reconstituting the people of Ukraine. Rather, it exists to plug the relative insecurity Russia encounters as a function of its geography. I do not say any of this to justify the inhumanity of Russia's actions, I mean only to provide the rational process by which Russia prosecutes its war against their Slavic kin.
