WHAT’S THE STORY?

IT seems strange to me that in all the coverage of Putin’s war on Ukraine, there have been very, very few mentions of the fact that the Battle of Kyiv which is now under way is actually the third time in 80 years that this great European city has been under siege.

What is more, there are lessons to be learned from that history dating from the Second World War.

President Putrid knows he cannot claim victory in his war without taking Kyiv and the Ukrainians have made it very clear that Russia will pay a price in the blood of its military on the streets in and around their capital city. History suggests that price will be heavy.

HAS KYIV ALWAYS BEEN A BATTLEGROUND?

ON numerous occasions Kyiv, then spelled Kiev, has been a battlefield. Its strategic importance was known for centuries, and from ancient times there were numerous battles fought in and around the city, including the Siege of Kiev in 968 when the then capital of the Kievan Rus’ empire – from which Russia gets its name – was besieged by the Pechenegs or Patzinaks, a tribe of Turkic ethnic people who were eventually beaten off by the forces of Kiev’s Grand Prince Sviatoslav I.

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Or perhaps Putin sees himself as a new Subutai, the great commander of the Mongol horde of Batu Khan that devastated Kiev in 1240, killing all but 2000 of the city’s estimated population of 50,000 before moving on to what are now Hungary and Poland.

Kiev was the scene of three battles in the Russian Civil War, while it also featured in the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1921.

For our purposes, I will be concentrating on the events of the Second World War and the two huge Battles for Kiev.

The first took place in 1941 and the Soviets called it the Kyiv Strategic Defensive Operation – could that be where Putin found his “special military operation” term for his war? The second battle was known by the Soviets as the Battle of the Dnieper or the Kyiv Strategic Offensive Operation and took place in 1943. The first battle is most instructive, as it took place during Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the USSR in June, 1941.

We know from their own records that the Nazis were intent on the genocide of the Slavic people, and Hitler sent 3.8 million troops into the Soviet Union with the ultimate aim of capturing Moscow and destroying the Communist leadership under Stalin.

Then the Fuhrer made a big mistake … WHAT DID HITLER DO?

THE German blitzkrieg – lightning war – was working as huge areas of the western USSR were occupied. The race for Moscow was on, but Hitler intervened. On July 19, 1941, he issued the infamous Directive No 33 which stated that Moscow was no longer the primary objective and instead ordered the seizure of Leningrad and Ukraine.

Hitler was obsessed with taking the industrial and agricultural riches of Ukraine and he was particularly fixated on gaining the oilfields of the Caucasus.

Take them and the German forces could deal with Moscow later was his plan. Several of his generals protested that Directive No 33 was a bad idea, with General Heinz Guderian, the main proponent of blitzkrieg, strongly arguing that any delay in attacking Moscow would see the onset of the Russian winter.

Hitler ignored all the protests and thus the German army split with Army Group South under Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt heading deep into Ukraine.

With their Panzer armies attacking behind tanks, the Germans quickly won a huge battle at Uman in central Ukraine and encircled two whole Soviet armies. Only small detachments were able to escape, and more than 100,000 Red Army troops were taken prisoner.

The same tactics would now be used against Kiev. The Southwestern Front of the Red Army commanded by General Mikhail Kirponos prepared to do battle to defend the city but their task was hopeless against overwhelming forces that enjoyed far superior weaponry and complete air control.

Putin probably knows that Hitler committed nearly 600,000 men to the attack on Kiev – perhaps double the Russian forces now attacking the city. And as is happening now in Kyiv, the citizens helped fortify their city with pillboxes, mines and anti-tank ditches. On August 23, Guderian visited Hitler and made one last plea to attack Moscow rather than Ukraine. Hitler insisted on his plan and the First Battle of Kiev began that day. The aim of the Germans was to encircle Kiev and trap the Soviet armies in the city. The Red Army resisted fiercely and the whole city came under murderous bombardment.

Guderian’s tactics paid off and the city was effectively taken by September 19. The whole Southwestern Front of the Red Army was encircled – the largest encirclement by numbers in military history – and Soviet resistance collapsed. The Germans claimed to have captured 600,000 in the First Battle of Kiev. Tens of thousands of Soviet troops died – including General Kirponos - against the German losses of 12,000 dead and 46,000 wounded.

HOW DID THE RED ARMY RE-TAKE KYIV?

THE delay in the Germans’ offensive on Moscow was fatal for their Eastern Front ambitions. As Guderian and his fellow generals had warned, the Russian winter set in while Stalin and his Stavka – the Soviet High Command – were able to summon reserves from the eastern USSR to successfully defend the capital. The Germans kept marching eastwards through Ukraine and into Russia but their troops were exhausted, supply lines were stretched and at Rostov-on-Don in late November, the Southern Front of the Red Army inflicted a first major defeat on the Nazi forces.

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In late 1943, with the war having turned decisively in favour of the Allies, the Stavka sent several armies into Ukraine as part of the Battle of the Dnieper river which saw four million Soviet troops attack the Germans along an 870-mile (1400km) front. An estimated one million men were killed, missing or wounded.

The Second Battle of Kiev saw the Red Army reach the city in overwhelming force. After some initial fighting, the Germans recognised the hopelessness of their position and evacuated the city, rushing to what they hoped was safety only for the Soviets to smash the entire Eastern Front and march on to Berlin.

DOES PUTIN KNOW THE HISTORY?

HOPEFULLY, for then he might realise the folly of attacking Ukraine. Those who think Putin is trying re-create the Soviet Union might be wrong. For in bringing war to Ukraine and threatening more elsewhere, he looks as if he wants a new dictatorial Russian Empire – and guess who will be the Tsar?