The elite of the Ukrainian army was drawn into a "snare" at Kursk - a Russian specialty from the time of Marshal Kotuzov. In 1812, Napoleon's "Grand Army", which had melted from 600,000 to 30,000 frostbitten, bearded and sick soldiers, reached the Berezina River, whose bridges had been blown up. The temperature was minus 20 degrees. Napoleon ordered the construction of pontoons. Dozens of soldiers entered the icy water and died of cold. The Russians from the armies of Wittgenstein and Chichakov counted the corpses of the French and waited for the order of Marshal Kotuzov, made commander-in-chief of all Russian armies by Alexander I, to destroy the remaining survivors and capture Napoleon. This order did not come and Bonaparte managed to escape. The anger of the Russian army and society as a whole is best expressed by Tolstoy in "War and Peace". He writes, among other things: "This aged Kotuzov must understand that his time is up!" None of them remember that in the Battle of the Three Armies at Austerlitz, when the victorious French also made a "noose" around the Russian Tsar Alexander. Then Napoleon sent a letter by courier Dolgoruky, in which he informed the besieged Russian Tsar that he could return to Russia without being disturbed. Kotuzov was certainly there with the Tsar. A detail that the angry Tolstoy omits.
The current situation at Kursk is reminiscent of Austerlitz, with the difference that it is not Napoleon and Alexander I against each other, but Zelensky hand in hand with Macron against Putin. And what happens? The French president, whom no one asks, warns: "Russian aggression must stop! The Russians must stop spreading! They must also stop the declarations, the purpose of which is to gain time!"
From Moscow, Putin responds with a distinctly cool, even frosty, tone: "Let them lay down their arms and they will remain alive and sent away with dignity!"
In such difficult times, history has its good sides. For those who like to read.