Roving Periscope: Can Ukraine become Russia’s Afghanistan-II?

Virendra Pandit

New Delhi: It was a smooth run in 1979 when the then USSR invaded Afghanistan for a pro-Moscow ‘regime change’ in Kabul; then the invader got trapped in the mountainous, landlocked Muslim country as the Taliban guerrillas engaged and bled it until the Soviet Union itself disintegrated in 1991 and the Islamist militia came to power three years later.

Has Russia’s ‘misadventure’ in Ukraine become a repeat of Moscow’s in Kabul? Can Ukraine become Russia’s Afghanistan-II and backfire to trigger dismemberment of the invading country itself?

Indications to these probabilities have emerged thick and fast.

For one, French President Emmanuel Macron, who had tried to dissuade his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin from attacking Ukraine and making peace with the US, has warned that the world must brace for a long war between Russia and Ukraine. He was a key figure in efforts to avert conflict, repeatedly spoke to Putin, and sought in vain to broker a summit between the Russian and US Presidents.

“If I can tell you one thing this morning, it is that this war will last,” Macron’s told France’s annual agriculture fair, two days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to the media reports on Saturday.

“This crisis will last, this war will last and all the crises that come with it will have lasting consequences,” he added, warning again: “We must be prepared.”

Macron even cut short his visit to the agriculture fair to return to dealing with the emergent crisis.

“War has returned to Europe, this was chosen unilaterally by President (Vladimir) Putin, with a tragic humanitarian situation, a (Ukrainian) people who are resisting and a Europe that is there and resisting by the side of the Ukrainian people,”  Macron said.

In view of the fast-changing scenario, the French President, who is bracing to win a second term in April, has left the official declaration of his candidacy by the March 4 deadline.

His statement came a day after Putin asked the Ukrainian troops to quickly surrender and help him in a regime change. However, a defiant Ukraine President Vladymyr Zelenskyy vowed to continue the fight until the last and resist the Russian army closing in on the capital Kyiv to take it anytime.

While many thought the war may be over with the Russian troops taking Kyiv, why did Macron say the conflict may last longer than expected?

The answer may come from the shadowy presence of the Azov Special Operations Detachment, also known as Azov Regiment or Azov Battalion, inducted as part of the Ukrainian troops five years ago.

This right-wing extremist, White-supremacist militia, raised by western funding and workforce, is said to have around 20,000 armed guerrillas. Russia has claimed they are neo-Nazis. President Zelenskyy, however, debunked it, saying, on the contrary, his Jewish grandfather was a soldier who fought against Nazi Germany in the 1940s.

It is easy to win in a small country but difficult to manage. If the Russian troops take Ukraine, they may find it difficult and expensive to stay on. The armed and motivated Azov guerrillas may pin down the Russian troops across Ukraine the way the Taliban had engaged the Soviet army in Afghanistan for years, and force Moscow to spread its resources too far and too thin.

A major security firm, the European Security Academy (ESA) trained the Azov Battalion, now part of Ukraine’s National Guard.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on Thursday, it reported that groups of 25 to 30 armed militias were already attacking its troops on the streets of different cities.

That was the beginning.

It is still to emerge if the Azov guerrillas would be as intrepid, motivated, and ready for the long haul as the Taliban!