Not really. Well, at least not IMHO. If that were the case you could conceivably stretch a major U.N. Peacekeeping mission like Somalia into a ‘World War.’ Oxford says: a war involving many large nations in all different parts of the world. So multi-continental struggle and many fronts. For example when this IMHO slightly ridiculous bit of speculative military porn was published the authors invented scenarios like Cuban-supported Angola and Mozambique invading South Africa as part of a generalized Soviet blitzkrieg in Europe. Just to make it properly broad and world war-like .
I don’t really consider ‘big war’ to be a synonym for ‘world war’. Of course that is just me and Oxford and we aren’t the gods of the English language, much as Oxford might think they are .
So does Oxford say that World War II did not begin until June 10, 1940, when the war spread from Europe to North Africa? Or Pearl Harbour, when Japan and the US entered the war, and Germany declared war on them? If it has to be in all parts of the world, then WWII did not begin when Germany invaded Poland.
As there is no objective criteria, it’s basically whatever people want it to be.
That said, IMHO, it was not only the location of the fighting but also the scale of the conflict and that the effects were seen worldwide, including in other continents.
Compared to WWII, the vast most majority of the fighting was regional, even though battles occurred at sea and many places around the world.
There is an argument that the term “First World War” is appropriate because that was was the world’s first industrialized “total” war, followed by the second one.
One reason why historians often initially dated WWII from 1939 was that the war between Japan and China was not really the same “total” war between two heavily industrialized sides.
Recently, more historians have started to date WWII from 1937 because of the continuity of the China - Japan conflict with the later involvement of the Western Allies.
For me, a “minor” shooting war between Nato and Russia that didn’t turn into a total war or involve nukes would not be a world war, although I have a hard time imaging that happening.
Standard grenade launchers have been provided. I know Canada sent a bunch of M72s and rounds, which are lovely, easily used weapons against vehicles with no to medium armor.
Soviet-era RPGs are, according to Wikipedia, “widely available” in the Ukrainian Ground Forces, and they also have some recently-donated Swedish ones, as well as a multitude of man-portable anti-tank weapons:
Bootb, that map illustrates my confusion. Russia already has pretty much of what it wants; the two breakaway republics, Crimea, and a strip of land connecting them in the south. I suspect one reason the Kyiv and other Northern/Western attacks have gone so relatively poorly is that the Russian Army put most of their more able troops into the Southern region that they most wanted and used conscripts on the other fronts, figuring that would be sufficient.
If the Russians withdrew from Kyiv and the other areas but reinforced those Southern areas, it would put Ukraine in a bind; they wouldn’t have the destruction of their cities to point to and they would have to attack to get the Russians out, and the Rus have always been tough to root out of an area once they have it. Could eventually lead to a stalemate, Ukraine not recognizing the area as part of Russia but unable to do much of anything to pry them out of there–sanctions might do it, but they would have to be long-lasting and without cities burning and refugees everywhere, it would be harder and harder for the West to keep up the sanctions.
Of course, this would mean the Russians had a deep and covert plan way ahead of time and things are going as they planned. More likely (as others have alluded), they thought it would be a walkover and over and done with in a week or so. They should have read Clausewitz.
Ukraine reckons that 31 Russian battalion tactical groups have lost their combat capability in the first two weeks of the war, 13 of those completely destroyed.
Russia originally invaded with about 120 BTGs, which means they have lost about a quarter of their fighting capability on the ground.
The strikes on Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk were on military airfields. Up to now western Ukraine has been pretty much untouched by the conflict, and the Ukraine air force has been able to operate from there with impunity.
I can’t recall if it’s been brought up in this particular thread, but I have a genuine problem with the idea that Russia has a doctrine of sending it’s more poorly equipped/trained troops in as its initial assault. My problem is that it’s so dumb you’d have to be Zapp Brannigan to come up with it.
Sure, if your enemy has to expend a lot of its resources to kill your troops, it might have an economic drain on the defenders. If you do it really fast, you might overwhelm them. But if they’re killing them with inexpensive-ish weapons that are easily replaced and they aren’t overwhlemed, all you’re doing is providing a bunch of on the job training for them. You’re giving them the skills and the confidence they’ll need to use those same inexpensive-ish weapons to counter your elite troops.
I mean, that might actually be their doctrine, but I wouldn’t be able to stop arguing with anyone who thought it was a great idea. In this case, all you’re doing is providing training to the defender.
.
.
