Well, yes. The problem is that there is no feasible way the West would win this, there are multiple ways Russia can claim victory:
Economic: Hurt Russia initially but with OPEC siding with them, they'll recover fine plus the west just fucked it's own supply of energy
Military: if they go all out, Russia wins, the fact they haven't shows a lot of restraint.
Political: they west has been shown to be more focused on virtue signalling than pragmatic governance which turns everyone else off (Middle East, Asia, Africa, South America etc) so we are starting to see new power blocs emerge out of this conflict
Military: if they go all out, Russia wins, the fact they haven't shows a lot of restraint.
One wonders why that is. I don't believe it's "concern for civilians" as anything but show (i.e., hope that Ukrainians will flock to the Russian side). But I wonder if it could simply be incompetence and military malpractice.
There's some suggestion that the military wasn't up to the high standards we believed initially but then again they also wanted a lot of infrastructure intact than have to rebuild it after so that could've been a factor .
Allegedly, they didn't even bomb military barracks full of soldiers, in the hope that these soldiers would go over to the Russian side. Some also claimed that it was because mass casualties would not be acceptable to public opinion in Russia - the attack itself was a shock to many who regarded Little Russians as a brother people.
Or that could just be simple cover for incompetence, which I consider most likely.
Well, yes. The problem is that there is no feasible way the West would win this, there are multiple ways Russia can claim victory:
Economic: Hurt Russia initially but with OPEC siding with them, they'll recover fine plus the west just fucked it's own supply of energy
Military: if they go all out, Russia wins, the fact they haven't shows a lot of restraint.
Political: they west has been shown to be more focused on virtue signalling than pragmatic governance which turns everyone else off (Middle East, Asia, Africa, South America etc) so we are starting to see new power blocs emerge out of this conflict
One wonders why that is. I don't believe it's "concern for civilians" as anything but show (i.e., hope that Ukrainians will flock to the Russian side). But I wonder if it could simply be incompetence and military malpractice.
There's some suggestion that the military wasn't up to the high standards we believed initially but then again they also wanted a lot of infrastructure intact than have to rebuild it after so that could've been a factor .
Allegedly, they didn't even bomb military barracks full of soldiers, in the hope that these soldiers would go over to the Russian side. Some also claimed that it was because mass casualties would not be acceptable to public opinion in Russia - the attack itself was a shock to many who regarded Little Russians as a brother people.
Or that could just be simple cover for incompetence, which I consider most likely.