[FarCenter]

I’m surprised they went for Kiev. I doubt they will take Lviv. It is likely to be too costly to take and hold the old Austro-Hungarian provinces around Lemberg.

I thought that the Russians would slice off the part east of a line southwest from Karkiv to the Dneiper and then west to the Moldavia border. That’s a lot for the size of their forces and it would achieve the objective of destroying the Ukrainian forces on the line of contact with Donetsk and Lughansk.

[Wallace T.]

I believe that Biden gave Putin an out by saying the US would not react if the Russians made a minor incursion, which would seem to be a green light for them to take the Donbass region, which is majority Russian due to Russian resettlement in the Stalin era. Ukraine has lost effective control over Donbass after the pro-Western government came to power.

However, it appears that Putin has gone for the whole hog and not just a few strips of bacon. As far as it goes, the reporting in most American news outlets, Fox included, is unreliable due to its dependence on State and Defense Department official statements plus a "Russia bad" mentality. A lot of "fog of war" stuff going on as well. Only time will tell if the Putin regime will succeed or fail.