UKRAINE FUMBLED THE BALL IN THEIR DEFENSE STRATEGY: WALL OF JERICHO & TROJAN HORSE.

ICHEOKU says whoever the defense minister or defense chief of the Ukraine is that crafted how to defend against the Russians did not do a proper job. It is a great defense error of judgment to make one's position or place or homeland the theater of a conflict. Notwithstanding that the Russians invaded them, they should have mounted their defense at the border of Ukraine. They should not have allowed the Russians to first get into Ukrainian cities before putting up the belated effort now being seen, when Russians have already saturated their land, destroying it one city at a time from within, and with such a great vengeance and vengeful animosity. 

It was a huge mistake for them to have allowed the Russians a free stroll into Ukraine and would have taken a page from so many stories of past armies which defended their cities and nations from foreign invaders. Even if they could not have militarily stopped the Russians at the border, at least they would have forced the issue there and started the wearing out of the Russian troops out there and early enough when they were still several hundreds of miles away from their cities. Even a nuisance distractive engagement at the border would have been sufficient to make the battlefront at the border and not the current country-wide battlefront which overstretched them against a much bigger and larger Russian military. 

Such engagement would have at least slowed the Russians drastically down, as they would have lost some equipment and manpower at the border instead of allowing them to fully steam into Ukraine with their full tank still in place before engaging them. A fierce resistance of the Russians at the border would have surprised and shocked the Russian advance force and leave them second-guessing their mission, wondering what else the Ukrainians might have lying in wait for them inside their country, if they could mount  such a resistance at their border. 

Something definitely went awfully wrong with Ukrainians' earlier response to the Russian invasion. Maybe they were paralyzed with fear of the mighty Russian red army and couldn't timely react when it could have mattered most and made a whole lot of difference. Whether their strategy was to let the Russians to first fully enter their country and then fight them from within inside their country, ICHEOKU does not know; but no thinking person ever freely opens the door of their home to a thief or allows a thief to first gain entrance into their home before defending themselves and their home from such an intruding thief right inside their home. 

It is the reason homes are equipped and sometimes reinforced with parameter fences, strong doors, burglary proofs, alarms and security cameras; in order to give homeowners and occupiers of dwellings advanced heads-up or warning about bad intentioned persons. This helps them to stop such intruders before they make their entry as they can dial 911, pull out their gun and be ready to shoot the intruder through the door if need be. The best defense is always an offense and by preventing the staging of a conflict inside, injuries, loss of lives as well as destruction of properties are reduced to minimum.

The worst part of it all was that the Ukrainian government and military got early warning about the Russian invasion several moons before the Russians finally barged right through the borders into Ukraine. Instead of readying their defenses to meet the Russian challenge, Ukrainians were busily distracted with hoping that President Vladimir Putin will not attack them because they are all Slavs and share close affinity to one another. They appear to be too naive also not to trust American and other Western intelligence that were eavesdropping on Russia to learn of the impending invasion. It is possible too that they initially lacked the will to defend their country from the Russians?

The lesson from the Wall of Jericho and the Trojan Horse stories is that the defense of any place, be it home, city or as in the case of Ukraine, country, primarily rests at the border. It is the principal first point of contact which any invading force must first breach before they can enter and conquer or vanquish their target place. It is therefore expected that resistance from the victim will be strongest at the border, the reason the Wall of Jericho has to first fall before the Israelites army could march in and conquer Canaan. Ditto the hidden Greek soldiers inside the Trojan Horse (fake trophy to Troy) have to first be smuggled through the gate of Troy before they conquered Troy. 

The Russians were literally allowed to "walk" into Ukraine, meeting little to no resistance as they breached the border and at one point had a forty mile long military convoy sit at one place for nearly one week without any consequences from the Ukrainians. The same thing happened when the Russians seized Crimea in 2014 using their little green men, without meeting any fight, resistance or contest from the Ukrainians. Whether it is fear of the Russians or lack of adequate preparation or lack of weapons, only the Ukrainians would tell us what took the steam out of them and prevented them from engaging the Russians at their border.

History and posterity will not be kind to the military planners of Ukraine who failed to confront the Russians at the border and allowed them to permeate Ukraine, freely drove in through many roads and now laying siege and claim to some sections of many Ukrainian cities. Even an ordinary piling up of dirt in large numbers on the roads or extensively digging up the roads leading into Ukraine would have done the magic of confining the Russians around the border and making the frontiers of Ukraine the theater of war, instead of watching Russian tanks prying the streets of Ukrainian cities and wrecking such a havoc on Ukraine. 

So, while President Volodymyr Zelensky can be frantic all he wants, seeking a NATO or America to blame for the hell which Ukraine is passing through right now, he and his government and military has a great share of the blame for the manner they approached their defense. First, he dismissed the threat of the Russian invasion and blamed America for hyping the Russian military buildup at Ukraine's border. He called it a false alarm and said that there is nothing to worry or unnecessarily be concerned about. Then he failed to mobilize his military on time nor order them to the border to defend Ukraine's border and prevent the Russians from gaining unauthorized access into Ukraine or at least slowed them down drastically. 

Anyway, the Ukraine war will be studied for a long time as a lesson on how not to effectively defend a country from an invading army. Nobody is saying that Ukraine would have completely prevented the Russians from bringing the war to them, but at least some of the tanks causing great havoc inside Ukraine would have been destroyed at the border, put out of action and decommissioned right there. Some of the soldiers who are presently killing Ukrainians inside Ukrainian cities would have also perished at the border as well. Then add the morals of the Russian troops which would have been greatly dampened, being surprised by Ukrainian soldiers confronting them at the border. 

Although it is now a Monday night quarterbacking and every attention is focused on President Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine, but, what actually did the Ukrainians do to help protect themselves from such an invasion? What happened to their defense budget and what weapons did they buy with it, afterall the West does not owe them anything. All the West has been doing, supplying them with advanced defensive weapons to help them defend themselves from the Russians is out of pure magnanimity and their hatred of President Vladimir Putin and a tactical decision they made not to allow Putin prevail in the proxy war they are fighting with Russia in Ukraine. 

It was a big fumble not to engage the Russians at the border and Ukrainian cities and people are now paying the price for that failure of defensive judgment. It is sad watching beautiful Ukrainian cities being pulverized by Russian military weapons, with the attendant loss of human lives. The chances of Ukraine recovering from such a massive destruction is steadily nearing a point of difficulty, if not impossible. Who will pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine and how many decades would such a gargantuan "Build Back Better" endeavor take? Maybe the Ukrainian president was too stubborn for Ukraine's good and was too naive not to first obtain an ironclad commitment to fight along with Ukraine from the West, before challenging President Vladimir Putin to do his worst. (Chinua Achebe's nwa nzaa rijuee afor, ochele chi ya ngbaa). There is enough blame to go around and war fatigue is gradually creeping in too.