OLLI-POLT-6091 - Putin's Invasion of Ukraine: Total War Returns to Europe

Course Description

Why did Putin invade? What are we learning about modern conventional total warfare? How will it end? These are just a few of the questions we will explore as we examine the origins of this "special military operation” (as Putin calls it); follow the course of the war beginning with Russia’s massive multi-front attack; its initial successes and failures; Ukraine’s surprising early counterattacks; bloody winter stalemate; Ukraine’s organized counterattacks in the summer of 2023; and the action on the battlefields and Black Sea since then. What stopped the initial Russian unannounced attack? Was it really a “surprise”? Why didn’t Russia gain immediate air superiority? What are we learning about 21st Century conventional warfare? What is new? Effective? What countermeasures appear to work? Why and how has Ukraine done as well as it has? What role has the U.S. and other European NATO powers played in the war? And finally, how could it end; and what are the potential ramifications for the current Pax Americana world order?