Putin now faces only different kinds of defeat

Putin's foreign military successes around the world after 2008 were all achieved by using small units of elite forces, mercenaries and local militia groups alongside Russian air power.

This gave Moscow considerable leverage at low cost during interventions in Georgia, Nagorno-Karabakh, Syria, Libya, Mali and twice in Ukraine during 2014, first in illegally annexing Crimea and then in creating self-declared Russian statelets in Luhansk and Donetsk.

In every case, Russia moved swiftly and ruthlessly in ways the western world was unable to counter except through graduated sanctions regimes - nothing that could reverse the reality. Putin was adept at creating "new facts on the ground".

In February he tried the same again on the grandest possible scale in Ukraine - to grab governmental power within about 72 hours in a country of 45 million people occupying the second biggest land area in Europe. It was an astonishing and reckless gamble and it failed completely in the first crucial week.

...Having failed with Plan A to seize the government in Kyiv before President Zelensky's forces, or the outside world, could react, Moscow then switched to a Plan B. This was a more "manoeuvrist" military approach to surround Kyiv and move in on other Ukrainian cities - Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Mariupol and Mykolaiv and simply snuff out Ukrainian armed resistance while Kyiv itself would be threatened with capitulation or destruction.

First, you are rooting for an aggressive state to occupy another?

I'm rooting FOR the side with moral high ground, the ones destroying the neo-Nazis and Ukrainian nationalists that have persecuted and killed those in ethnically-Russian parts of the country for eight years and who have been using civilians as human shields and killing them if they try to escape.

Yes, the Russians are views liberators in the Donbass by the people there and those people will be better off under Russian rule.

And, it isn't the least bit surprising the majority of frontline fighting in Donbass is being done by former Ukrainian citizens if the DPR and LPR.

We fomented a revolution that caused all this. It was meddling that set this war off. We installed a puppet government and used it to try to harm Russia. And, we asked Russia to put up with threats to their national security, we never we have put up with in Mexico.

I pray that Russians wipe the neo-Nazis bastards off the face of God's green earth AND build a land bridge from Transnistria all the way to Crimea so we can't stick our nose in the Black Sea again. We have absolutely no national interest in Ukraine or the Black Sea.

Death to globalists, the new world order and neoconism!

Kazan “I’m rooting FOR the side with moral high ground,”

Putin’s army does not have moral high ground.

The neo nazi supporters are less than 2%. They don’t even have seats in Ukrainian parliament.

Russia has more percentage of neo Nazis

gullible people in the west have swallowed Kremlin propaganda “Nazi AZOV” bait.

AZOV battalion was initially an all volunteer militia unit, that sprung up as a response to Putler’s 2014 invasion of Donbass and Crimea. Patriotic Ukrainians banded together, and gave their military a hand in defending from the invasion.of 2014.

What needs to be said is, among those people there were some volunteers with questionable political beliefs. The unit existed in that form for about 6 months, until 2015, when it was incorporated into the Ukrainian military, specifically the Ukrainian national guard.

When under National guard control, the unit no longer controlled who commanded it or who was recruited. Ukrainian national guard command assigned unit commander and his staff, as well as assigned recruits to the unit. At that point those people with questionable political beliefs had absolutely no control over the unit. That is why nowadays AZOV is just a regular Ukrainian national guard unit with a somewhat unusual story of origin.

All those pictures of AZOV with neonazi stuff, they are all from 2014 and 2015, when the unit was not under the Ukrainian military yet. Since incorporation into the Ukrainian military, the unit was actually cleansed of the worst extremists, some of whom were prosecuted and convicted, and they served prison sentences for breaking Ukrainian law.

It’s really weird, that all those people screaming “Nazi AZOV” don’t tell you all these things, isn’t it? If they are such experts on AZOV, they should be aware of all these facts, shouldn’t they? They are all verifiable facts, and a matter of public record in Ukraine.

You bring up a 2018 bill by a Democrat. That’s outdated and false

Next you bring up Bandera. Bandera was a nazi collaborator, a butcher and a mass murderer, yes.

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