Personally I do think it was a failed blitzkrieg attempt
Have you seen the supposed FSB whistle-blower letter?
https://twitter.com/pourteaux/status/1500207988321226754
The writer, supposedly an FSB officer, actually uses the term “Ukrainian blitzkrieg.”
He describes the political imperatives compelling the blitzkrieg approach, but points out that even in the event of the successful capture of Zelensky in the first few days of the operation, the political options for the Russians would be rather less than ideal.
If it is a fake, it is very interesting fake and kudos to the faker
Another note on official Russian casualties - 500 in 1 week - on average, I’d say the average person *anywhere* today isn’t quite as thrilled to be the equivalent of toilet paper for some national leader to wipe his rear end with, no matter who that leader is. 500 is 1/2 the average Russian KIA in Afghanistan for an entire year. I suspect Putin is going to run into serious problems taking casualty numbers at ~25x its reported Afghan War rate per week with half the Russian population that it had during the Afghan campaign. All those single son families are gonna be screaming bloody murder.
When you compare Afghanistan to Vietnam, it’s remarkable how much less punishment in body count terms the Russians were able to take before hitting their uncle point. The official Russian KIA number in Afghanistan was 13,000 over about 10 years, which is roughly 1/5 the US number in Vietnam. When you think about the coercive powers of the totalitarian Soviet state vs the anything goes milieu of 60’s and 70’s America - it’s amazing the US hung in there so long.
[Personally I do think it was a failed blitzkrieg attempt
Have you seen the supposed FSB whistle-blower letter?
https://twitter.com/pourteaux/status/1500207988321226754
The writer, supposedly an FSB officer, actually uses the term “Ukrainian blitzkrieg.”
He describes the political imperatives compelling the blitzkrieg approach, but points out that even in the event of the successful capture of Zelensky in the first few days of the operation, the political options for the Russians would be rather less than ideal.
If it is a fake, it is very interesting fake and kudos to the faker]