The Washington PostThe Washington Post

Putin is embracing Stalin's way of war

By Leon Aron

26 Jan 2023 · 4 min read

Editor's Note

Putin is mimicking Stalin, particularly in his willingness to sacrifice massive numbers of Russian troops, whose lives are deemed to be of "no importance," argues an essayist in The Washington Post.

"When we kill five out of 10 of their soldiers at once, they are replenished again over the course of several hours," a Ukrainian officer said recently of the Russian troops that for weeks have besieged the town of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. The Russians, he added, stormed the defenders' positions "five, six, seven times" a day.

In the unprecedented ferocity and relentlessness of the Russian assault, Bakhmut might signal the emergence of a new Kremlin warfighting doctrine.

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