Ken Harbaugh - Ukraine Will Win
I met “Spaniard” in early 2024, at his command post less than 4,000 meters from the front lines. To find him, my fixer and I drove our battered SUV through a war-ravaged village, minefields on either side, searching for a ruined farmhouse draped in camouflage netting.
As we sat down for the interview, outgoing artillery thudded nearby. I flinched. Spaniard did not. “You’ll know when it’s incoming,” he said, “when we flinch.” He had lived in Madrid for twenty years, but when Putin launched his full-scale invasion, Spaniard came home to fight. Russians are not doing that. It was my first indicator that Ukraine will win.
Spaniard’s troops were exhausted, he admitted. “But we are fighting for something real,” he said. “For our families … for our survival.” In Ukraine’s trenches, conditions were rough; in Russia’s they were worse. I spoke with several soldiers in his brigade, including the crew of a T-72 tank. They introduced me to a new term: human radar – the enemy’s tactic of sending waves of infantry toward Ukrainian positions, marking strong points by where the bodies piled up.
When I returned to Ukraine several months later, the war had changed. I could no longer interview a tank crew in the open, even beneath tree cover. Drones had transformed the battlefield, hunting anything that moved. But Ukraine held the edge —in technology, in tactics, and above all, in imagination.
https://www.lincolnsquare.media/p/ukraine-will-win
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