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by miguelazo 927 days ago
There was never a plan to decapitate the Ukrainian state. That is utterly absurd when you consider there were Russian intelligence assets in Zelensky’s inner circle for a very long time. Russia could have killed him day 1 if they wanted to (or before). Encircling Kyiv was merely for negotiating pressure. As evidenced by them withdrawing from that position as part of the ceasefire negotiations in Turkey in the Spring of 2022– the ones that the US and UK undermined, recently confirmed by additional parties.
3 comments
gpderetta 927 days ago
[citation needed]. A decapitation strike doesn't just remove the leader, it needs to remove the whole (or a significant part) of the government. Additionally Russia likely wanted to replace it with a puppet.

It likely wasn't the primary objective, but most likely was an important one.

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meroes 927 days ago
So they left a strong wartime leader in place for their enemy for their upcoming war? Why? Since you’re so sure about intelligence capabilities, why couldn’t the West have known and taken precautions?
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miguelazo 927 days ago
“Strong wartime leader”? The guy is an actor. Also, he was elected on a platform of making peace. It was the right wing neonazis who scared him into backing off of the platform he was elected on.
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H8crilA 927 days ago
There were multiple assassination attempts at Zelensky, they just failed. Allegedly he was even protected at some point by foreign commandos (possibly French), but this is still rumours. There were also kill lists found when the russian army retreated from Kyiv, clearly aiming at killing the "upper classes" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre for a historic example). BTW, this is what "de-nazification" actually means - purging the elites of their western, meaning "nazi", influences. After all the great nation of Russia is never attacking, always defending, this time again from the evils of the "collective west" meaning "nazi".

Russia withdrew because it turned out that their forces are (or at least were) utterly incompetent, and they just cannot continue. They got beaten up. I wish they stayed longer to lose more troops and equipment.

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miguelazo 924 days ago
>There were multiple assassination attempts at Zelensky, they just failed.

Do you have an example of one of these attempts from a credible source?

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