Russia invades a small neighboring country, using a false flag operation as a pretense. Everyone expects the small country to be quickly overrun by the vastly larger Russian army, but the smaller country beats back wave after wave of Russian attack. After several months of hard fighting, the two countries reach a peace settlement. The smaller country has to cede 10% of its territory, but has held off the invasion, retains its independence and received praise from the rest of the world for its heroic defense.

It sounds like the war in Ukraine, but it’s happened once before. In November of 1939, Stalin eyed his weaker neighbor Finland as an easy conquest. He gathered a large Soviet force, made a pretense for war by having one of his own secret Soviet units shell a Soviet border post and blame it on Finland, and invaded with the expectation of easy victory. The Soviets even sent a band along for the victory celebration and cautioned their combat units on not accidentally invading too far and ending up in Sweden. But things did not go as planned.

Simply from looking at numbers, one would expect the Soviet Union to have an easy victory. While the Soviets had only a slight advantage in numbers of soldiers committed, they greatly outnumbered the Finns in combat aircraft, tanks, and artillery.

	Finland	Soviet Union
Combat Aircraft	114	3800
Tanks	32	2500 (later 6500)
Troops	300,000 to 400,000	425,000 (later 760,000)

Source: Wikipedia

The Soviets, however, used unimaginative tactics such as charging soldiers directly into Finnish machine guns. So many Soviet troops were slaughtered, some of the Finnish machine gunners had to be relieved just from the guilt of killing all those soldiers. The Soviet tanks could operate only on a few narrow, unpaved roads cut through the forests, leaving them vulnerable to attack from the side. The Finns developed a tactic of taking out one tank in a column and then another tank a short distance behind the first, leaving small groups of tanks isolated with nowhere to maneuver. The Finns would then destroy the isolated tanks one by one. Finnish snipers hiding in the forests picked off Soviet soldiers. The Soviet fighters did not have the range to escort bombers all the way on their runs, allowing the vastly outnumbered Finnish air force to dive directly into formations of unescorted Soviet bombers.

By February of 1940, both sides were facing pressures to end the war. Finland was running short of ammunition. On the Soviet side, the ground was beginning to thaw, which would change the ground to mud and swamps. As a result, both sides reached an agreement to end the war. Finland would have to cede 9% of its territory to the Soviet Union, but the Finns retained their integrity as an independent nation

/No one knows for sure how the Ukrainian war will end, but maybe we can use history as a predictor of the future. If Ukraine cannot drive the Russians out of their country, they may end up having to concede territory the same way as the Finns did. But, they will retain their independence from Russia and receive the admiration of the world.