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> we forget that Ukraine is not just Kyiv, it is slowly being swallowed up from all directions

Except we haven’t forgotten, news orgs are reporting on things happening outside of Kyiv. Russia seems to have really overplayed their hand because they were barely able to take Kherson after like a week, and can’t even take bigger cities like Kharkiv, even with intense shelling.

Russia may not be a paper tiger, but they sure can’t do much against an enemy many times smaller than them.

> they sure can’t do much against an enemy many times smaller than them.

Neither could the US.

Another factor here is that Ukraine isn't Afghanistan or Vietnam where natural barriers offer chance for insurgency to hide out, regroup.

Russia here can absolutely level cities and buildings and it is impossible to construct underground tunnels in flat lands known for its ability to soak up water (the tunnels would not be structurally safe), and it is far too late now in this stage of the war.

An incompetent large army vs a competent large army makes little difference when the fighting environment is against the defenders (no mountains or jungles to hide out in).

The best chance at insurgency would be to start digging but again the soil in Ukraine makes this a challenge, my prediction is that we could see something similar to what Hamas is doing in Palestine in the form of human shields, swaying public media through casualties, urban warfare at best but unlike IDF which does to a certain degree exercise in minimization of collateral damage (ex. calling occupants in the apartment building to evacuate before bombing Hamas launching rockets) where as Putin/RF has zero qualms about collateral damage.

The Western sanctions have only esclated tensions, have emboldened Putin even more, as they've given him nothing to lose. When you corner a wild animal like Putin you will get bitten.

There's just no way out for him except to escalate from what I can see since Ukraine has rejected giving up DNR/LNR/Crimea. Neither side is willing to budge so this will simply continue to lead to human suffering on both sides.

> When you corner a wild animal like Putin you will get bitten.

In this analogy, doesn't the wild animal then typically get killed?

not when it has nukes

Except if another animal in the cage thinks it would be more fit to handle the nukes.

>Russia may not be a paper tiger, but they sure can’t do much against an enemy many times smaller than them.

How long did it take for the US to take Afghanistan?

The logistics of taking a country that is thousands of miles away are very different from taking one you share a border with.

It took 47 days to take Kabul, counting from the first day the CIA agents were sent to prepare the invasion. Furthermore, the objective was to find bin Laden, not to take cities.

The war in Ukraine isn't really comparable to Afghanistan. The US mostly "softened" strategic objectives with air strikes, whereas Russia can't/won't do that in Ukraine.

It wasn't logistics that caused issues in Afghanistan though.

Parent was commenting about the speed of the invasion not the general parallels between Ukraine and Afghanistan.

Differences are: USA never planned to invade and anexate (e.g. USA never bombed cities to terrorize people), and supply lines were waaaay worse for the USA.

Also, the terrain is very favourable to create a quagmire in Afghanistan (resistance can retreat to the mointains) while Ukraine is mainly open terrain.

Iraq was on the other side of the world from us, not next door, and we took that over in a matter of days.

Just to correct the info: the invasion of Iraq (a much weaker country) by the combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland lasted just over one month … but it’s not really comparable situation here for the reasons you pointed.

Not to be too picky about the details, but it took about three weeks to finally get to Bagdad. The Ukrainian conflict has not been going quite that long.

Never.

The accounts I follow (like @OSINTtechnical) are careful to point out that Russia is doing relatively well in the south of Ukraine but I’ve never seen a believable analysis that they actually are doing well, and I’ve looked. The ones out there are base contrarianism, usually disproven in the next day or two. In particular they assume Russia somehow controls land by driving straight past it so it gets marked red on the map.

Still, it doesn’t change their ability to flatten any city they want. And the lack of any good successor government in Russia to allow the current one to collapse, so they have nothing to lose.

In the end it’s all Larry Summers’ fault, like everything else in the world.

I think you're overreacting. There is literally an article on the homepage of The Guardian today that explicitly talks about the over-focus on Kyiv https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/08/kyiv-deadlock-...

yeah fog of war makes understanding the situation as a 3rd party cumbersome. I've essentially given up and just going to wait and see what falls out.

I just checked and you can access Russian state media, so have at it please https://ria.ru - I don't speak Russian but from my research this is state owned media, please if others know better can we prove that if you really want to read Russia propaganda it is still possible, you just need a bit more effort then opening FB or twiiter or your TV

I understand Russian. Looking at ria.ru over the past few days there is barely any mention of the war, certainly no details, there's much more mention of sanctions but only some weird stories about their origin and motivation.

> right now the atmosphere is like if you even remotely suggest that Russia is actually making slow progress despite losses you are viewed as supporting Russia!

Only on Twitter and Reddit. Look at conventional media and they are mostly discussing Russian gains in the south, while occasionally mentioning that their advance has ground to a halt in the north.

> what we've done in the West is effectively ban impartiality.

WTF is there to be "impartial" about?

If Putin fails in Ukraine, he'll be forced from power in Russia. He has no reason to give up and every reason to continue until he can claim at least some sort of victory.

What is clear is that Putin is highly paranoid and has been since taking power and he's willing to commit crimes against humanity to stay in power.

He's already announced he is willing to use nukes if threatened and NATO will not respond unless multiple re-entry vehicles carrying nukes rain on their cities. He could do a lot here by using small scale nukes that don't create huge fallouts even.

If you were Putin, does it not make sense that his least trusted, potentially disloyal officers, generals would be on the frontlines and hope they don't come back?

Putin is not that unrealistic, he knows very well that even just one nuke would make Russia a pariah state for the next 100 years at least. Even China would turn their back on them. Turning Russia into a second North Korea was never Putin's plan.

> ban impartiality

What ban was impartial?