Back in February, we wrote twice (here, here) about the perils posed by the spring thaw in Ukraine for any activities off paved roads. These are widely known to have bogged down the German army in World War II.
It turns out we were prescient as this brief article notes. Putin waited too late, the ground thawed, and his mechanized columns couldn't maneuver in the off-road mud.
All it took to cause the 40 mile traffic jam north of Kyiv was a few breakdowns and an unwillingness to ruthlessly push the dead vehicles off into the mud and keep going. That, and a failure to foresee what occurred.
Considering the Russians themselves write about "General Winter" helping defeat the Wehrmacht, you'd think they knew better. I guess memories are short, or his people were too afraid to tell Putin the truth about the mud season.
I wonder if, after the war, a cottage industry will develop for stripping abandoned Russian vehicles and using the engines and parts to power homemade farm equipment? Perhaps the gear isn't reliable enough to bother. See our earlier comments about Russian failure-to-care for their stuff.
