Russian troops are advancing against several Ukrainian targets. They have taken possession of the infamous, out-of-commission Chernobyl Nuclear Plant, have largely captured the southern city of Kherson, where Ukrainian soldiers and militias continue to resist. Today, they seized the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Europe's largest.

A brutal bombing campaign against Ukraine's second largest city, Kharkiv (1.4 million inhabitants), has destroyed apartment buildings, schools and suburban neighborhoods, leaving a toll of hundreds of civilian casualties. Western nations have denounced the indiscriminate shelling of civilian areas as war crimes. Kharkiv is no stranger to devastating warfare and bloodshed: It was occupied by Bolshevik forces in 1917, recaptured by the White Army two years later, captured by Nazis in 1941, retaken twice by the Red Army in 1943.

In the north, meanwhile, a 40-mile-long Russian convoy on its way to Kyiv remains suspensefully stalled; there are reports that Russian soldiers are sabotaging their own vehicles. The plan is to capture the Ukrainian capital, which Putin claims is governed by Nazis. Eighty-one years ago, real Nazis encircled the city, captured it and inflicted over 700,000 casualties during the First Battle of Kyiv.

Ukrainian troops and civilians have mounted a courageous and effective resistance. Many civilians are arming themselves with Molotov cocktails, homemade bombs originally developed in Finland during the Winter War (1939) to be hurled against invading Soviet tanks. Soviet fake news broadcasted by then-Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov claimed that bombardments over civilians were actually aerial droppings of food. Finns derided the fake gifts as "Molotov bread baskets," and reciprocated with Molotov cocktails. Costing a few cents to make, Molotov cocktails are the poor warrior's version of the American-made Javelin anti-tank missiles, at $80,000 a pop (should I say, "a boom"?)

Kyiv is still standing but it is not clear for how long it will be. Earlier today, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sent an apocalyptic message to the world's democracies: "If we will fall, you will fall."

There are obvious parallels between the Russian invasion of Ukraine and World War II. We hear roaring echoes of Nazi Germany's blitzkrieg (lightning war), a strategy of swift tank-and-air attacks meant to produce psychological shock and achieve rapid victories. Nazis debuted that tactic against Poland in 1939; they repeated the strategy in the Low Countries and France.

We are also seeing images reminiscent of Nazi Germany's indiscriminate attacks on civilian populations. Ukrainian men, women and children are huddling in underground shelters the way Londoners did during the Battle of London. World democracies have come together, once again, to impede the spread of authoritarian rule. As during World War II, we find on one side a bunkered, demented expansionist. On the other, a courageous president Zelenskyy, who in eight days of war has risen to Churchillian proportions.

On Feb. 21, two days before launching attacks on Ukraine, Putin regaled his countrymen and the world with a lecture on Russian and Ukrainian history, fake history at its best. Among other things, he said that Ukraine was an artificial nation generously built by Russian Bolsheviks.

We can look even further into Russia's past. Putin is obsessed with recreating not the Soviet empire, but the Russian empire built by Peter the Great (1672-1725) and expanded by Catherine the Great (1729-1796). It was under Catherine's reign that Russia incorporated what is present-day Ukraine. In 1784, she ordered the construction of an enormous fortress in Sevastopol; 230 years later Putin's troops reconquered Sevastopol.

I have no doubt that Putin will fail to rebuild Russia's former imperial glory. History will judge him not as the reincarnation of Peter the Great but of Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584). Ivan, who suffered from paranoia, pursued an expansionist policy in Siberia. Domestically, he brutalized and exterminated his opposition. He died fighting at age 53 (but only on a chess board).

The clearest parallels (as well as potential consequences and lessons) are with the Crimean War (1853-1856). Tsarist Russia launched the Crimean War with the object of expanding into territories controlled by the Ottoman Empire, including the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, which included much of present-day Ukraine's Black Sea Coast. Russian troops faced fierce resistance from Ukrainian Cossacks and Crimean Tartars. Great Britain and France mobilized in support of the Ottoman Empire, declaring war on the Russian empire in March 1854. None other than Karl Marx, the future father of Soviet communism, viewed the war as a conflict between European democracy and Russian absolutism.

Putin may want to read up on that first Crimean War. Russia lost, its forces pushed to retreat and disarmed in humiliation; its Black Sea fleet and its fortress in Sevastopol destroyed, the empire's finances in shambles. History matters!

Luis Martinez-Fernandez is a Fellow of the Heterodox Academy's Writing Group. He is the author of "Revolutionary Cuba: A History" and "Key to the New World: A History of Early Colonial Cuba." Readers can reach him at LMF_Column@yahoo.com. To find out more about Luis Martinez-Fernandez and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www. creators.com.

Photo credit: voffka1966 at Pixabay