[andrewclunn]

If the Ukrainians are allowed to protest, then Russia is fighting this while trying to minimize overt civilian casualties (most likely to avoid video of such acts becoming galvanizing propaganda tools against them). If things go poorly, then what? If Russia then starts fighting to destroy rather than conquer Ukraine intact, then it's a whole different story. This piece reads of wishful thinking.

[crooked-v]

I find it less likely that Russia is trying to minimize civilian casualties, and more likely that their occupying forces just don't have the numbers or cohesion to do anything about the protests without getting picked off piecemeal.

[ShivShankaran]

>I find it less likely that Russia is trying to minimize civilian casualties

A significant population of east Ukraine has family in Russia. This is like New York invading New Jersey. Ridiculous and terrible but they are aware that their family and friends live there.

There are hundreds of videos of Ukrainian civilians trying to climb aboard moving Russian convoys and blocking their paths and knocking out their mirrors and the Russians doing their best to ignore it.

Would it have been possible for Iraqis/Afghans/Syrians to do this to the US army?

[magicalist]

Cool, thanks new poster, but there's also videos of Russia shelling hospitals and using cluster bombs (plus there's that whole occupying a country that doesn't want them there thing), so it's likely a case of soldier actions in spite of Russia's intentions rather than because of them.

[spacemanmatt]

Putin is a totalitarian. Russian citizens do not see accurate reporting on this war. They're fed more lies than FOX viewers. Their view of the war might just be more distorted than Putin's.

[it]

Would you care to name a specific lie and explain how you know it's a lie?

[spacemanmatt]

No, because the analysis out more than available to all interested, without my unavoidable editorialization of the topics. This typically isn't the place for it anyway.

[epistasis]

Russia is doing nothing to minimize civilian casualties. I've made three trips to Ukraine, spent about three weeks total in Eastern Kharkiv in a residential neighborhood with nothing but apartment buildings, shopping, schools, and restaurants, and the utter destruction I have seen of sights I have known has been heartbreaking.

Russia's internal propaganda controls are so good that in the early days, two mothers we know refused to believe their sons' reports of being bombed in Kharkiv. Since then, this has become a wider reported story. Our Russian friends in the US have come over to video chat with their relatives back in Russia to convince them of the indiscriminate bombing of civilian areas. And they have not believed. Or at least they are too embarrassed to admit that they have been fooled by propaganda.

Russia will likely deploy chemical weapons in Ukraine as they lose, just as they have elsewhere. There is no humanity, no rules, among their commanders and Putin. And they have suffered zero consequences for their war crimes in the past.

[spacemanmatt]

> And they have suffered zero consequences for their war crimes in the past.

Bringing me some grim joy that Ukranians have picked off at least 2 high-ranking Russian military. The morale setbacks for Russia, just the ones that make the news, are pretty serious. It's not clear there will be a winner of this war, but the losers are already stacking up on both sides.

[iab]

Way too much hopeful rationalization

[ggm]

It's certainly not blitzkrieg, more blyatzkreig. The western belief was 72 hours to complete. He didn't even make 400 hours, it lost momentum. The materiel by volume and age does not speak well of supply chain logistics. There is no rational plan of battle which puts your weakest armour first.

He's lost the media war facing westward, India and China are temporising friends at best. Inward media is paper thin maintaining "the Ukrainian nazi" story, it's leaking like a sieve. Mobile crematorium won't bring conscripts home any better than body bags, so belief in a victory worth winning is dying on the vine.

Other articles have spoken to systematic corruption in petrol and tyres: these ones haven't been rotated and checked in storage, are cheap import knockoffs and look like a huge mistake.

I still think a repression/occupation is going to materialise in at least part of Ukraine but the outcome is not net advantageous to Putin medium to long term.

It's at best stalemate with adjusted borders.

[spacemanmatt]

As long as western weapons flood in, there's no hope for boosting the morale of Russian troops.

[ggm]

Presumably attacking Lviv has dual benefit: close refugee paths (increase terror and social pressure to compromise) and interferes with materiel delivery to the east where the action is.