An ode to the old Finnish joke from their Winter War against Russia in 1939-1940. When Russia attempted to take over Finland while the rest of the world was busy with Germany;
A Russian commander on the invasion front pushing into Donbas comes to an open field with a forest on the far side. He has a full compliment of infantry with armored transport for all of them and an impressive line of tanks. Once he has set up operations, he sends two BMPs with troops,and a tank escort across the field. His coms officer reports hearing some unencrypted traffic on the radio. “2 Ukrainians can beat 20 Russians.”
“There are only 2 of them, too easy” the Russian commander says.
Halfway across the field, two ATGMs slam into the tank causing an instant fireball. 2 FPV drones already in the air head toward the BMPs, disabling them, troops pile out. As more drones arrive dropping grenades on the surviving troops, the Russian coms officer says “Listen to this Commander:”
“2 Ukranians can beat 100 Russians! Ha ha ha! Pathetic”
The Russian commander is furious. “Send in half of what we have. Crush them!”
12 tanks head out. Russian troops pile into BMPs and any other transport they can find and begin tearing across the field from several angles toward the forest. 2/3 of the way across the field they start to hit the mines. Several BMPs and tanks are total losses, others are disabled. FPV drones scream in to destroy the disabled. Previously unseen Ukrainian artillery rains down. The field becomes littered with burning Russian assets.
One Russian BMP nearly makes it to the forest and a few of the Russian soldiers that bail out manage to find cover at the edge of the woods. The squad leader sends one man in each direction to reconnoiter and report back while he sets up coms. After several minutes his runners return and he radios the Russian commander.
The squad leader’s panicked voice comes over the radio: “Don’t send in anymore, it’s a trap. There are 10 of them!”
The original joke from the link above:
It is 1939 and a Soviet army is marching on Finland. As they pass the border, they hear a Finnish voice over the hill; “One Finnish soldier is better than 10 Soviet soldiers!”
The Soviet general laughs, as he sends 10 men on the hill to capture it. There is gunfire for a minute and then everything goes silent for a moment, and they then hear the same voice; “One Finnish soldier is better than a hundred of yours!”
Annoyed, the Soviet general sends hundred men to capture the hill. There is gunfire and bombs going for ten minutes, and everything goes silent again. Suddenly, the same voice yells out; “One Finnish soldier is better than thousand of Soviet soldiers!”
Enraged, the general sends a thousand men, accompanied with tanks, artillery, mortar teams, and tells them to not return until the hill is theirs. For half an hour hell breaks loose, bombs and explosions, gunfire, screams and death all around, and then it goes silent again. One Soviet soldier crawls back, severely wounded and battered. Before the general could say anything, the soldier says;
“Do not send more troops, comrade general, it’s a trap! There is two of them.”
Cheating bastards. 😋
Iirc, the Russian forces during the winter war were mostly from Ukraine.
