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> and Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops as liberators while Zelensky's government would fold immediately.

It is wild how many conflicts involve this blunder. I can’t think of a single major example where the advisors were right. It’s such a great example of believing your own propaganda and/or being too afraid to actually look under the hood of your claims to your leader.

Autocracy tends to breed lying yes men near the top I suppose.

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There are many ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine that really welcomed the Russian army. The problem is that the rest of the country is not that happy about this.

This has always been overblown and clearly that “many” was an insignificantly small portion of the population once the rubber met the road. Just because you have a favorable opinion of the Russian government doesn’t mean you’re going to suddenly start singing the anthem when their tanks cross the border as they bomb you/your friends (who according to Putin are all probably Nazis) out of nowhere.

So many left after all this so Ukraine’s sympathetic-to-Russia population will no longer be significant by any metric. Putin knows this. He’s lost Ukraine forever if he doesn’t make them surrender.

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