Lessons from Vietnam and the Ukrainian Crisis

Abstract

The article analyzes the experience of Hanoi's leadership of the national liberation struggle in the South of Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s, and then the liberation of Cambodia from the criminal Pol Pot regime in the context of the absence of a “second front” during the implementation of Russia's special operation in Ukraine in 2022. The author takes the reader back to 1950–1965s, when, as a result of the neo-colonialist policy of the United States, the implementation of the Geneva agreements on Vietnam was disrupted and there was a real threat of perpetuating the division of the country into two hostile parts. Under these conditions, a bold decision was made in Hanoi to deploy a full-scale guerrilla struggle in the South, to create the National Liberation Front (NLF) and the People's Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF), led from Hanoi and relying on military, economic and political assistance from the North. The article shows how victoriously the war of Resistance developed, which ended on April 30, 1975 with the liberation of Saigon, the reunification of the forcibly divided country and the proclamation of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV). According to the author, as the experience of Vietnam shows, in order to successfully complete the special operation in Ukraine, it is necessary, as military successes are achieved, to focus efforts on the timely implementation of purely political tasks – the creation of a new military-political administration in the liberated regions and skillful propaganda work.

Keywords

• russia
• ukraine
• vietnam
• cambodia
• strategy of the united national front
• special operation
• political tasks