25 May 2024

Lede: The Fifth Battle of Kharkov

There are certain regions of the world that seemed destined by the cruel caprice
of geography and chance to be perennial battlegrounds. Often these ravaged lands
lay at the crossroads of imperial interests, as in the case of Afghanistan or
Poland, which have been so frequently trampled by armies going this way or that,
or else they are simply plagued by perennially unstable governance or roiling
ethnic conflict. Sometimes, however, it is the peculiar logic of military
operations that brings violence to the same place, again and again. One such
notorious sufferer is the great industrial city of Kharkov, in northeastern
Ukraine.

Originally founded as a modest fortress in the 17th Century, Kharkov was fated
to play an unusual role in the Second World War. The city became a sort of
symbol of frustration for the warring Soviet and German armies: it was the place
that both armies wanted to get to, but could not quite seem to take and hold. In
1941 the city was captured in the waning phases of Germany's colossal invasion
of the USSR, and fell under occupation through the winter. In 1942, the city's
environs became the scene of an enormous battle when the Germans planned to
launch an offensive out of Kharkov at exactly the same time that the Red Army
planned an offensive towards it. The following year, the city was briefly
recaptured by the Red Army as it pursued retreating German armies away from
Stalingrad, before once again changing hands after a timely German
counterattack. Finally, at the end of August 1943, the Soviets retook the city
for good as they began their inexorable drive towards Berlin.

No major city changed hands as many times in World War Two as did Kharkov, which
became the scene of no less than four substantial battles. The cruelty of fate
had turned Kharkov into a sort of mutual culmination point - the spot on the map
beyond which both armies repeatedly found it difficult to advance.

History does not repeat, as they say, but it does rhyme. Kharkov's strategic
position, as the great urban center blocking the inner bend of the northern
Donets River, has not changed much in the eighty years since the Soviets and the
Germans last fought in the forests here, and Kharkov Oblast is once more
becoming the rope in a deadly game of tug of war. The area was briefly overrun
by the Russian army in the opening weeks of the Special Military Operation, with
the Russians establishing a screening line to cover their capture of the Lugansk
shoulder. Later that year, Kharkov became the scene of Ukraine's seminal
military achievement of the war, when they overran the thin Russian defenses and
launched a pursuit all the way to the Oskil River. And now, the Russians are
back, launching a fresh attack into Kharkov Oblast on May 10. The sound of
artillery is once again heard in the city.
-- Cont'd at https://bigserge.substack.com/p/russo-ukrainian-war-widening-the