The Rise Of Australasia-Chapter 1349 - 973 The Russian Army Defeated Again

Chapter 1349: Chapter 973: The Russian Army Defeated Again

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Chapter 1349 -973: The Russian Army Defeated Again

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It’s extremely difficult to make a frontal assault on the Daugava River. Although the German army to the south of the river isn’t large, the attacking forces will inevitably suffer more casualties than the defenders.

Australasia has more options and naturally wouldn’t waste limited manpower in such a place.

Currently, there are two ways to bypass the Daugava River defense line. One way is to adopt airdrop tactics, attacking areas such as Kaunas and Morojachino in Lithuania and German-controlled Vilnius from behind, severing the German army’s retreat route.

However, this demands a lot from paratroopers, as they must penetrate deep into enemy territory and may also face encirclement by German forces from the directions of Minsk and Białystok.

But the advantages are also clear. Whether it’s capturing Kaunas, Vilnius, or Morojachino, it would cut off the Germans’ retreat routes and cause their painstakingly established Daugava River defense line to collapse instantly.

The other plan is to land on the coastline of East Prussia and Lithuania through seaborne landings. This method allows for mobilization of more troops for the landing battles, but the bad news is that they need to confront more German troops, and certainly, the process won’t be as swift as an airdrop.

But the advantage of seaborne landings is safety. The British and Australasian fleets have complete control of Baltic Sea naval superiority, and the Australasian landing fleet amassed along the Lithuanian border doesn’t need to worry about threats from the German Navy.

Furthermore, Australasia also controls the air superiority, ensuring the safety of the landing operations, which is clearly a more prudent choice.

Each of these two methods has its pros and cons, but on the whole, they’re definitely more cost-effective than a frontal assault.

However, in light of the current situation on the Eastern European battlefield, Arthur is more concerned with the combat conditions of Germany and Russia Nation.

If the Australasian Army advances into Lithuania or even Poland too quickly, would Germany divert a large number of troops from the Ukrainian region to deploy a defensive line in Poland and East Prussia?

That is actually a certainty. Compared to Russia Nation, which has not yet posed a threat to Poland, Australasia, being within striking distance and even capable of influencing East Prussia, is clearly the greater threat.

If this situation arises, then it wouldn’t be so favorable for Arthur.

After all, being the beneficiary fisherman behind the German-Russian war is in line with Arthur’s plan, and confronting the Germans head-on doesn’t seem to be a worthwhile deal.

The good news is that the Russian army soon ended the encirclement.

Yes, after suffering tens of thousands of casualties, the encircled over 1.5 million Russian soldiers chose to surrender.

In fact, these Russian soldiers can’t be blamed. It was the orders from the Russian High Command that led them, after the victory at Stalingrad, to hastily move out of their positions and closely follow the retreating German Army.

This resulted in more than 1.5 million Russian soldiers lacking adequate grain supplies and corresponding logistics support.

Originally, according to the Russian Government’s plan, after the recovery of Ukraine, Ukraine could provide these troops with enough grain supplies.

Even the defeated German Army could provide the Russian army with some weapons and ammunition, which is why the Russian troops hastily acted without preparing food and supply provisions.

But the Russian Government hadn’t anticipated the Germans would deploy such a massive encirclement around Kiev, with 1.5 million troops naively charging into it and getting firmly intercepted by the Germans in the area protruding in front of Kiev.

Now, the Russian troops that came without adequate grain and ammunition supplies were completely at a loss.

Although the besieged area also had vast fields of farmland, it wasn’t the time for harvesting crops. Before forming this encirclement, even upon occupying Ukraine, the Germans had already gathered a large amount of grain from here.

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This also meant that the Russian army was fundamentally unable to obtain food supplies in this region unless they were willing to plunder all of the Ukrainian civilians in the area.

At the beginning, the Russian army still had some semblance of rationality. They resisted the German army’s attempts to tighten the encirclement while searching for a breakthrough within the entire encirclement.

Meanwhile, the Russian army also made contact with Ukrainian civilians around the farmlands, trying to obtain food supplies from them in various ways.

But soon, the Russian army became desperate.

The nearby Ukrainian civilians might have had some food reserves, but these were definitely not enough to support the entire Russian army of more than 1.5 million.

Even reducing this number by tenfold would not achieve that, as the Germans had already taken several rounds of grain from all Ukrainian civilians by means of half enticement, half compulsion.

As the Germans gradually tightened the encirclement, the situation for the Russian army became increasingly critical.

Eventually, a part of the Russian army could not bear it anymore, and they forcibly took food from nearby Ukrainian civilians to fill their stomachs, which had been empty for several days.

But setting such a precedent was not a good thing for the Russian army of 1.5 million.

Ukraine and the Russian native land were different, and each had developed its own distinct national consciousness.

Although they both belonged to the Eastern Slavs and even looked quite similar, the people of the Ukrainian region still insisted on identifying themselves as Ukrainians.

Faced with such overt acts of plunder by the Russian army, this naturally caused dissatisfaction among many Ukrainian civilians.

The Germans were pleased to see this and did not block the Russians from obtaining food from Ukrainian civilians. Instead, they relaxed related restrictions, ensuring that the Russian army could continuously plunder food from the Ukrainians.

One or two small-scale lootings might not seem significant, but when the Russian army looted food from Ukrainian civilians on a large scale, their crisis loomed.

The Ukrainian civilians began to cooperate with Germany voluntarily, and the whereabouts of the 1.5 million encircled Russian soldiers was exposed to the German army.

With extensive coverage by the German media, the civilians in and around Kiev, and even the entire Ukrainian region, expressed their dissatisfaction with the Russian army, with even Ukrainian political parties declaring that these Russian soldiers were the real enemies of Ukraine.

After a few instances of looting food, the Russian army also found that the Ukrainian civilians in this region no longer had any surplus food for them to consume.

Lacking ammunition and food supplies, the Russian army only lasted half a month and was finally defeated step by step by the German army, which shrank the encirclement, culminating in a military defeat of the entire Russian army over 100 kilometers east of Kiev.

Out of the 1.5 million Russian soldiers, over 600,000 were either killed or wounded, with nearly 900,000 captured, and more than 10,000 Russian soldiers went missing on the battlefield.

If it were before the war, these missing Russian soldiers would have been well hidden in the Kiev Region. With the people near Kiev hostile towards the Germans, the Germans would not have been able to track down the Russian soldiers.

But after thoroughly offending the residents near Kiev, the whereabouts of these Russian soldiers became transparent.

Just a few days after the Russian military defeat, civilians near Kiev began to voluntarily report sightings of Russian soldiers they had discovered.