Today, much will be said about the Heroes of Kruty. Most will speak in the tone of the futile sacrifice of young romantics. Unfortunately, a minority will pay attention to the fact that the battle took place against the backdrop of negotiations in Brest, and the task of the battle was to buy time for the UNR to secure diplomatic recognition of the State.
I want to compare those tragic circumstances with the year 2022.
Why in 1918 did only 250-300 cadets of the 1st Ukrainian Military School named after B. Khmelnytsky, 100-120 students of St. Volodymyr University, gymnasium students, and a handful of free Cossacks and officers have to hold back the Bolsheviks of Muravyov?
And why were the crossings from occupied Crimea in 2022 defended by only 300 soldiers of an understrength marine battalion?
The ultimatum from Moscow was received by the UNR in December 1917. In January, Muravyov captured Kharkiv. However, Vynnychenko still categorically opposed the introduction of martial law. “We cannot defend the revolution by methods of the old regime,” he stated.
“Martial law is the end of revolutionary democracy.”
The first warnings about the inevitability of Russia’s invasion were received by the Ukrainian leadership 6 months before the war. In January 2022, 180,000 enemy forces were openly preparing to attack around Ukraine’s borders.
Does the failure to implement the law and the Constitution regarding the introduction of martial law in the face of a THREAT of attack in 2021-22 remind you of anything?
In 1918, Muravyov moved on Kyiv with 3-5 armored trains. Poltava fell without a fight. Bakhmach resisted, but unorganized. And soon the red armored trains reached Kyiv.
Why didn’t the UNR produce as many of our armored trains? The conditions and armor plates were there, they were made in the Darnytsia and Kyiv depots for the Tsar’s army, and later for the Hetmanate and the Directory.
Why were missile programs stopped from 2019, and instead of hundreds of Neptunes per year, we received only 3 missiles?
Vynnychenko’s demagoguery about a regular army as an instrument of reaction, statements about “We don’t need an army separated from the people. An armed people is the best defense of the revolution” led to the fall of the UNR.
In 2021, the Ukrainian authorities ridiculed the opposition’s demands for the financing of the Territorial Defense and the call-up of reservists to understrength brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Instead, the Ze Team even allocated 50 billion for Great Construction in December.
Don’t the unblown crossings around Chongar, the Antonivsky Bridge over the Dnipro, the bridges of northern Kyiv region leading to the capital, in 2022, remind you of the history of the unblown bridges of 1918?
Doesn’t the decision to withdraw the National Guard brigade from Hostomel, the construction of a hub in Chongar, and the demining of Mariupol waters remind you of the same brotherly idiocy of the people’s ministers of the UNR and soldiers’ committees?
History does not teach those for whom “what difference does it make.” It only harshly punishes the country for unlearned lessons.
