Ukraine’s incursion into Kursk will have been intended to bring forward the end of the dictator’s rule Russians and Ukrainians, who won the decisive battle of the Second World War at Kursk in 1943 – the largest armoured battle in history and, on most measures, the largest battle of any kind The great temptation, in any war, is to fixate on front lines. It is a mistake. When the Armistice took effect in November 1918, Germany still held most of Belgium, a sliver of France, and the greater part of Poland, Belarus and the Baltic States. What determined the outcome of the First World War was not territory, but productive capacity. The sequence was that Germany ran out of money, troops began to mutiny, the Kaiser was forced to abdicate, and the new government capitulated. Plenty of generals and oligarchs will see that Putin is isolating, disgracing and ruining their country in pursuit of what is little more than a personal obsession brought on by reading too mu...
