Bungling.

This is coolbert:

As it was between the Soviets and the Finn in 1939 as it is now between the Russian and Ukrainian in 2022? Parallels are striking?

"BUNGLING THE PREWAR AND FIRST MOVES IN FINLAND 1939 AND UKRAINE 2022: A COMEDY OF ERRORS FOR STALIN’S SOVIET UNION AND PUTIN’S RUSSIA, RESPECTIVELY"

The article By Brian E. Frydenborg  05/23/2022 - courtesy "Small Wars Journal".

"The staggeringly ridiculous parallels between the First Soviet-Finnish Winter War and the current war in Ukraine are both profoundly illuminating and especially instructive"

As extracted:

 "Stalin was unrealistically influenced by the headline-grabbing antics of the Lapuans, the grotesque fantasies of the Karelian irredentists, and the exaggerated reports of agents who were eager to tell the Kremlin what they thought the Kremlin wanted to hear. From remarks made during his later negotiations with the Finns, it seems clear that Stalin really did believe that the interior of Finland seethed with class antagonism and fascist plotters and that all of Finnish society was undercut by smouldering grudges left over from the civil war days. Ill feeling persisted, of course—the conflict had been too bloody for all the scars to have healed in just two decades—but Moscow’s estimate of its extent, importance, and potential for outside exploitation was wildly inaccurate. In fact, the old wounds were healing faster than even the Finns themselves realized; with the onset of a massive contemporary threat from the Soviet Union, those old enmities looked remote and historic."

[....]

"Official Soviet publications and news services referred to the Finnish government and leaders as 'the Fascists' and emphasized the supposedly oppressive conditions of the Finnish working class and their readiness to ally with the Soviet would-be 'liberators.'”

"This was, and to a certain extent still is, the official justification given to the Soviet public for why the war was fought.  It permitted the Kremlin to rationalize the apparent lunacy of a nation of 3.5 million souls attempting to invade a nation of 171 million." 

Devoted readers to the blog and those perusing casually are strong encouraged to read the entire article.

Was and to a certain extent is! 1939 and 2022 both. OH MY!

coolbert.