This piece was written by Robin Ashby, editor of Defence Viewpoints, on the last day of 2008, as the 50th British fatality of that year in Afghanistan was announced. It was originally published as "On Entering 2009." Seventeen years on, with American forces striking Houthi targets and the question of military engagement with Iran unresolved, the final paragraph in particular requires no updating whatsoever. We republish it without alteration. The more things change, the more they stay the same...

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Russia's war in Ukraine has inflicted damage on its Arctic military capability that will take a generation to repair. Robin Ashby reports

The Bear's Broken Paw

On the morning of 24 February 2022, units of the 200th Separate Motor Rifle Brigade crossed into Ukraine from Belarus. They were among Russia's finest soldiers — Arctic-trained, Syria-hardened, equipped with vehicles designed to operate at minus fifty degrees Celsius on terrain where wheeled transport is impossible. Within weeks, one of their battalion tactical groups had been effectively annihilated. By December 2022, the brigade as a coherent formation was described by multiple independent analysts as mostly wiped out. Russia attempted to reconstitute it at its Pechenga base using Northern Fleet sailors and reservists. Some of those replacements, it later emerged, were issued World War Two-era helmets and body armour without ballistic plates.

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