ISMAIL LAGARDIEN: Putin has started a war with history
The Russians are fighting in the ‘traditional’ way, while the EU is countering the invasion in more ‘modern’ terms
The ink on our reports, analyses and commentaries — including my own — had barely dried when we went from discussing likely outcomes of a Moscow-Nato standoff, with Ukraine as a sideshow, to a Russian invasion of Ukraine. Head-in-hands friends and associates in the EU (and European parliament) explained (in text messages): “We never thought we’d see war in the union in our lifetimes.”
Without minimising the horrors of death and destruction on the battlefields of Ukraine, there has been an interesting development in Europe’s latest war. With a land, sea and air invasion, the Russians have resorted to a traditional approach to warfare that is very much rooted in the 20th century; boots and heavy armaments on the ground, backed up by firepower from the sky...
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