1/8 Multiple videos from Ukraine show Russian tanks running out of fuel, & soldiers standing round listlessly. Supply lines are breaking down, as Ukrainians harass the advancing army. Something strangely similar happened during the first months of NZ's Waikato War.
2/8 NZ's governor & settler politicians invaded the independent Waikato state after denying its right to exist & making absurd claims it was planning to attack the NZ capital in Auckland; Putin's used the same rhetoric about the Ukraine. But both invasions stalled.
3/8 After crossing the Mangatawhiri Stream, the northern border of the Waikato Kingdom, the invading army had to pause for months. The Great South Road, which connected it to Auckland, came under constant pressure from Maori guerrilla attacks.
4/8 Just as Russian tanks are being abandoned or being attacked, so carts & wagons that brought supplies down the Great South Road were raided & wrecked. Colonial politicians were furious with the commander of the invasion, General Cameron. Maori called him 'the lame seagull'.
5/8 For a long time the slowness of the invasion of the Waikato was blamed by historians on Cameron's incompetence. But in the '80s James Belich looked at the evidence in detail & saw that Cameron had been forced to spend months protecting the road with new redoubts.
6/8 The Russian army is known to have a very poor resupply system. Its forces take large amounts of material into battle, which means they can fight hard for a week or two. But then they run out of material, & often need to be relieved.
7/8 The failure of the Russians to capture the airport near Kyiv on the first day of the war may well have been disastrous, because it may have meant that they can't relieve the troops near Kyiv & bring in fresh supplies.
8/8 Once Cameron got into the heartland of the Waikato he was able to overcome outnumbered & comparatively poorly armed indigenous forces. If he can get over his supply lines crisis and get into the heart of the Ukraine, Putin won't have same overwhelming advantage as Cameron.
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