War could be Russia’s Vietnam, says Wallace

Defence Secretary draws parallel with 1973 conflict where US suffered military and public support failure

THE war in Ukraine could be Russia’s “Vietnam” if it turns from a “quagmire to a rout”, the Defence Secretary has said.

Although fielding far more highly advanced weapons than Ukraine, the strain of operating beyond its borders and the potential to lose public support at home could see Vladimir Putin’s forces “collapse”.

Speaking in Finland, with his opposite number during a visit to British troops on exercise, Ben Wallace said it could result in a frozen conflict, like that of Korean peninsula, or a military collapse such as the US experienced in south-east Asia in 1973.

“Vietnam lasted 15 years and led to the overwhelming defeat, the rout, of the biggest military power in the world with highly advanced weapons over their enemy, because they had home advantage and public support.

“This could be a Vietnam. Armies reach a breaking point. If the Russians collapse like they did north of Kyiv, it could very quickly turn from a quagmire to a rout and the whole thing could collapse back into Russia.”

The suggestion that Mr Putin’s anticipated lightning military success is seriously bogged down was echoed by the leader of Belarus.

Alexander Lukashenko, one of Mr Putin’s closest allies, said Russia’s war in Ukraine was dragging on and it was time to resume peace negotiations. He stopped short of criticising the Russian leader directly.

“I am not immersed in this problem enough to say whether it goes according to plan, like the Russians say, or like I feel it,” he said. “I want to stress one more time, I feel like this operation has dragged on.”

Mr Lukashenko also bragged that only he could broker a peace deal and blamed Ukraine for slowing down the negotiations.

“Thanks to yours truly, me, that is, negotiations between Ukraine and Russia have begun,” he said.

Belarus has offered only half-hearted support for the invasion and has not committed troops south of the border. Hinting at suggestions that locals opposed to the war had taken action to slow the movement of Russian forces attempting to reposition to push into the Donbas region, Mr Wallace noted Belarusian rail lines had developed the habit of “exploding”. As fighting in the Donbas continued, a Kremlin official has said there will be no Victory Day parade on May 9 in the Russian-controlled territories of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Speaking on a square in Mariupol, Sergei Kiriyenko, Mr Putin’s deputy chief of staff, said it would be “impossible to hold an Immortal Regiment march or a Victory parade in Donetsk or Luhansk on May 9”.

However, “this time will come and will come soon,” he was quoted as saying by Russian state-owned newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

It would be the first time a May 9 parade has taken place in Luhansk and Donetsk since 2014, when those territories were seized by Russia, according to the Ukrainian newspaper Pravda.

Mariupol would become “the centre of celebrations”, Ukrainian intelligence officials said on social media, adding: “The main avenues of the city are being urgently cleaned, the debris and the bodies of the dead removed, as well as the ammunition which did not explode.”

Mr Wallace said Mr Putin could use the May 9 parade “as a chance to broaden the fight” over Ukraine.

Stressing this did not mean Russia was likely to invade another country, Mr Wallace said Mr Putin might take the opportunity to say he was “defending the world against Nazis” and that his socalled “special military operation” was “now a bigger thing” in order to mobilise Russian society.

Suggestions of a potential wider mobilisation were refuted by a senior Russian MP.

Yuri Shvytkin, deputy chairman of the Duma’s defence committee, said the Kremlin had no plans to escalate the war in Ukraine by introducing martial law. “In recent days, foreign media has been circulating information that a general mobilisation is being prepared in Russia. These rumours are being spread in order to sow confusion and panic among the population,” he said in an interview with a Russian radio station.

‘If the Russians collapse like they did north of Kyiv, it could very quickly turn from a quagmire to a rout’