It was “an army of beggars”, one eyewitness wrote - a mass of soldiers seemingly as interested in plunder as in fighting. Another spoke of their outdated equipment, shabby uniforms and dilapidated vehicles, as likely to break down as to be destroyed in combat.
This description might adequately apply to Ukrainian reports of the Russian invasion of 2022. In fact, it is a portmanteau of reactions to the Soviet invasion of Poland more than eight decades ago, in September 1939. Every conflict, of course, calls up its own historical echoes, associated with the events themselves or the locations being fought over. In that respect, the war in Ukraine is no exception. Indeed, given that the Kremlin's methods of subverting its
