Russia and Ukraine

[Leonardo17]

For a more sober analysis of why it's going as demonstrably poor for russia as it is, as hard as it is to take anything russia-related seriously anymore.....russian intelligence had to get three crucial things wrong, and all at the same time, for ukraine to have so much as a chance.  It probably seemed unlikely, on the russian end, that they would get all three wrong in that way.  The resistance of ukrainian defenders.  They believed there would be parades.  Their influence in us politics, they believed that they could prevent us aid.  That there was a disagreement between The West as to whether or not they would support ukraine.  Turns out there was a disagreement between western partners as to whether or not russia would be so foolish - thus a lack of preparedness.  

Notice that "believed their troops were better equipped or trained or would perform better on the field or would be less corrupt" was not included.  This is not an unintentional omission.  I think russia knew exactly what kind of army it was going to take to war - see their target selection.  They knew...long before anyone else...that they didn't have much, and that what they had was shit.  I apologize if I get easily irritated by seeing the question "when will the russians run out of gear" when they've been sending museum pieces to the front as fast as they can for some time now just to get blown up impotently while thousands of men are cut down around them.  If the us army was raiding the infantry museum in georgia for spare parts and whole kit as it lost half the landmass....no one would ask when we would run out of stuff.  Imagine, if you will.... an armed convoy of rebels advancing directly on washington with no resistance to speak of.  The moment, in that case, had clearly already arrived.  

There are questions that, honestly, make the whole thing moot, too.  For example..is russian life so worthless to the russian administration that it doesn't and never would matter when or if they ran out of gear?

There is one issue I would like to mention here and that is that dictators are usually very poorly informed. Like Hitler attacking Russia after obtaining a non-aggression pact with Stalin. He overestimated his own army (like Napoleon before him) and destroyed everything he built during all these years (assuming that he had the capacity to defeat the allies in the long of middle term of course).
 
There are many reasons to this:
 

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1) Its their own ego or hubris if you want. That is why in ancient Sparta they had two kings. The duty of the second king was to protect the first king from giving in to his own ego-induced madness.
 
2) Propaganda is basically madness. Once you start feeding an entire population with lies on the so called greatness and power of a country, creating imaginary enemies, imaginary struggles and wars etc. how long does it take for the governing elites to start believing in their own lies and fantasies?
 
/ So republican ideals are not just renaissance era idealisms. It’s a practical way of doing things that is designed to have society work in the best possible way (taking into consideration all human weaknesses that are present within each and every one of us)
 

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ATACMS are destroying Russian S-300 / S-400 air defenses, paving the way for better use of F-16’s + Glide bombs by the Ukrainians: