By Jason Fields The Week
The Russian war against Ukraine has so far been fought largely between trained soldiers on both sides, and with tanks, planes, and artillery. But according to many experts, that’s not where this conflict is headed. Russia’s military is just too powerful, and Ukraine’s conventional forces too small, despite high morale.
So, what comes next?
It seems likely that Ukrainians aren’t going to surrender and allow themselves to become part of Russia, or whatever it is that Vladimir Putin has in mind. Instead, there is the possibility of an insurgency.
The dictionary defines an insurgency as “a condition of revolt against a government that is less than an organized revolution and that is not recognized as belligerency.” Think of the French insurgents in World War II, whose fight against the Germans is famed and widely considered successful. But the French rebels never held territory and the actions they took led to harsh reprisals against the citizens they intended to liberate; it was the Allies landing on the beaches of Normandy and the fighting that followed, rather, that was definitive in returning France to the French, according to more recent historians.
There are many reasons why insurgencies succeed or fail, but here are four elements shared by most successful insurgencies:
