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Putin was holding back the entire time
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the only rational explanation for his restraint was that he wanted to minimize civilian casualties and damage to critical infrastructure
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this desire to minimize collateral damage makes Putin a better man than all of the Western commanders who indiscriminately carpet bombed their enemies in virtually every major conflict since WW2
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at this point, if Western media are speaking, they’re lying
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everyone on this board who thought the Ukraine was winning this war, or that Russia was somehow outmatched, is a fucking retard
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Incompetence. Or perhaps not wanting to make things too bad in order to allow for a negotiated settlement.
Minimizing "civilian casualties" doesn't do anything for Putin ipso facto. Maybe they did try to prevent it to make it easier for Ukrainians to turn. It's not out of humanitarianism - that is not even a consideration for countries like Russia or the US, or its deputy Evil Empire the EU.
Russia clearly isn't outmatched, and Ukraine isn't going to "win". That said, they believed that Ukraine could inflict enough pain on Russia to make it not worth it for them, like Afghanistan was for the US. Of course, that was a shithole in the middle of nowhere, while Ukraine is a very central territory for the Russia. But they are not idiots for disagreeing with you.
I will agree with you that the HIMARS pothole-maker hyping was very cringe.
This is literally you suggesting that Putin is being more humane than most western powers have been in major military conflicts over the last 70+ years. You’ve just worded it differently. Whether he’s doing it out of cynical strategy or not is irrelevant because we cannot know that one way or the other. All that matters is that the outcome was, in fact, more humane.
Worth noting: the people who were most confused by Putin’s restraint were the same people who advocated immediate and unrepentant carpet bombing (aka shock and awe) in our own military conflicts. This tells you more about those people than it does Putin.
Effectively, perhaps. By design, no. Powers are humane or not based on whether there is any benefit to be had by pretending to be so.
He's a politician. We can know that it's a cynical strategy.
If this was restraint, then I think they mistook his restraint for weakness.
FYI Zelensky attempted to negotiate with Russia twice, both times Russia accepted, and both times NATO stopped him. Clearly Russia was open to some kind of settlement, so yeah I think it makes sense they were holding off on total war.
If you destroy the basic structure of the bridge, that keeps it holding together, no APCs, tanks, trucks or anything heavy will be able to go through without collapsing the bridge. You could, depending on the damage, maybe use a car. But it will be mostly left to pedestrians.
This is why the Kerch bridge is only allowing cars right now, despite Russia saying its damage was insignificant. Trucks will need to use the old method they used to before, by barges.
Just how much military stuff was Russia transporting over the bridge to begin with? Especially now that they have a land-bridge to Crimea. Seems like a shorter route.
The attack seems to be mostly about propaganda.
The Kerch bridge has a railway system, which is always more cost-effective than shipping goods by means of trucks. And the Russian military machine is heavily reliant on railway systems across the Russian expanse.
A lot. Because it was the beyond the range of the Ukrainian HIMARS and other precision artillery strikes and missiles. Now they will have to go through land, which will expose them even more to Ukrainian weapons. This is why people in Crimea were rushing to buy fuel.