“So did the alleged Russian soldiers who packed parade uniforms rather than food”
That’s not a good example. I’ve been hearing tons of reports of Russian soldiers who didn’t even know they were going into enemy ground. Soldiers usually know little, specially those of dictatorships.
“If this was obviously false to you ahead of time I applaud your ability to (seemingly at least) do better than most public military analys in the west over the last decade or more”
All it takes is a bit of common sense and, above all, being able to detect the propaganda on both sides (I’ve also been hearing plenty of military analysts saying the war could last years btw). How on Earth do you conquer in a few days a nation of 44 million who’s deeply adverse towards you, and who’s been receiving plenty of military aid from the West? It’s that simple. This is not Iraq. Sure, Iraq has a similar size and population, but it’s a war-torn hellhole in the middle of nowhere, where the whole world was against it, not supporting it. It’s night and day. (Or one could also think of Hitler breezing through Austria and being received with flowers, but again, you had a population/government who was in full support of him, which is pretty much the opposite of the current stance of Ukraine towards Russia ).
“That’s not a good example”, “Soldiers usually know little”
Fair.
“the war could last years”
Now that Putin is bogged down, apparently unable to make militarily advances, but politically unable to back out, it might well drag on for years. I didn’t hear anyone predicting that until after the advance seemed to stall out though (again, me not hearing about it is not proof of absence. I’d be very interested to find an analyst who predicted this from the start.).
“All it takes is a bit of common sense”
This is not how it looks to me. But if grant that it is obvious, and was well known to all involved players, then that really raises the question of what Putin thinks he is gaining from a long, unpopular, expensive war with his “beloved brother-nation”. Which I suppose was the question that you posed to start with, so fair enough :) Most of my probability mass is still concentrated around Putin simply being mistaken about how he would be received, and thus how things would turn out, like I’ve outlined above. I realize that this is basically the common western propaganda narrative, and I agree that that should make us extra critical. But the fact remains that it sure looks to me like he is deep in the shit now, which clearly implies that something didn’t turn out the way he wanted it to. See also new thread.
“So did the alleged Russian soldiers who packed parade uniforms rather than food”
That’s not a good example. I’ve been hearing tons of reports of Russian soldiers who didn’t even know they were going into enemy ground. Soldiers usually know little, specially those of dictatorships.
“If this was obviously false to you ahead of time I applaud your ability to (seemingly at least) do better than most public military analys in the west over the last decade or more”
All it takes is a bit of common sense and, above all, being able to detect the propaganda on both sides (I’ve also been hearing plenty of military analysts saying the war could last years btw). How on Earth do you conquer in a few days a nation of 44 million who’s deeply adverse towards you, and who’s been receiving plenty of military aid from the West? It’s that simple. This is not Iraq. Sure, Iraq has a similar size and population, but it’s a war-torn hellhole in the middle of nowhere, where the whole world was against it, not supporting it. It’s night and day. (Or one could also think of Hitler breezing through Austria and being received with flowers, but again, you had a population/government who was in full support of him, which is pretty much the opposite of the current stance of Ukraine towards Russia ).
“That’s not a good example”, “Soldiers usually know little”
Fair.
“the war could last years”
Now that Putin is bogged down, apparently unable to make militarily advances, but politically unable to back out, it might well drag on for years. I didn’t hear anyone predicting that until after the advance seemed to stall out though (again, me not hearing about it is not proof of absence. I’d be very interested to find an analyst who predicted this from the start.).
“All it takes is a bit of common sense”
This is not how it looks to me. But if grant that it is obvious, and was well known to all involved players, then that really raises the question of what Putin thinks he is gaining from a long, unpopular, expensive war with his “beloved brother-nation”. Which I suppose was the question that you posed to start with, so fair enough :)
Most of my probability mass is still concentrated around Putin simply being mistaken about how he would be received, and thus how things would turn out, like I’ve outlined above. I realize that this is basically the common western propaganda narrative, and I agree that that should make us extra critical. But the fact remains that it sure looks to me like he is deep in the shit now, which clearly implies that something didn’t turn out the way he wanted it to. See also new thread.