Russia and Ukraine

[The Grand Nudger]

It needs to be pointed out that russia emphatically did not attempt anything that might harken back to the soviet union of old. It's not just that they can't, they know that they can't - which is why they selected the btg as interim organization in the first place.

I strongly suspect that there was no actual plan for this conflict as it happened. You can add a failure of pre conflict intel - they brought their parade uniforms. The operation they were trying to mimic happened not but a few years ago - but relied completely on a ready force of local paramilitary troops. I strongly suspect that russian planners...such as they are...saw those paramilitary troops as not just expendable, but as offering less of a contribution to their previous success. All of a piece I suppose. If you think they're filthy local bullet sponges, you're unlikely to credit them with the win - and that might be consequential if you end up, just a few years later, high on your own supply and some intense, immediate, and still unexplained need to invade a neighbor.

I'll probably have to wait until the end of my life, if ever, to read exactly what prompted this bit of adventurism. Was it that they felt their window of opportunity for holding onto or gaining more territory was closing, and, if so, that would suggest they understood more about the militarization of ukraine than their eventual operations would seem to imply - and still. Is there some back-of-shop ticking clock in russia known only to the most obscure and obscured layer in civil administration, that they needed x before so and so time entirely aside from whether or not they secured that in ukraine or elsewhere? Or, maybe it's the simplest and most routine explanation and I'll be super disappointed. A pirate ship full of bilge rat pricks ordering a hallowed out clown army to throw themselves down for somebody's doomed vanity project.