5 ms·

They may have logistical problems, but they are also encircling/taking major cities, now with many more civilian casualties than early in the war. I would take

by muro 5y ago

They may have logistical problems, but they are also encircling/taking major cities, now with many more civilian casualties than early in the war. I would take the (sadly looks more like wishful thinking) incompetence over the current destruction.

raverbashing 5y ago
Incompetent armies can still do damage But yeah let's hope they keep like that
- kergonath 5y ago
  If the point is to take a country, competent armies minimise damage. Otherwise at the end you’re just king of the ruins and have trouble extracting all the resources you came for. Mass bombings is almost the bluntest last-resort weapon you can use. A bloodless coup followed by a (probably quite bloody) purge would have been the best outcome for the Russians.
atoav 5y ago
> I would take the (sadly looks more like wishful thinking) incompetence over the current destruction. You get me wrong there. The current destruction is a result of the incompetence, not an alternative to it. If they were a well organized well maintained troup going full Blitzkrieg they would have overwhelmed the Ukrainian forces so fast they already would have taken the capital more than a week ago. This is what they intended to do. Now if they can't get forward because the majority of their transport can only happen on roads they are definitely in dire need of air superiority, because air superiority would keep the convoys safer. They started shelling civilian infrastructure because they want to break the unexpected fighting spirit and they have no other ways to do it. But this was definitly not what the leading heads in Russia would have preferred, they thought they would go in full Blitzkrieg and after 3 days the capital would have fallen due to overwhelming force.
- random_upvoter 5y ago
  > The current destruction is a result of the incompetence, not an alternative to it. Does "Fallujah" ring a bell? The mirage of the clean, surgical war was created by the Clinton administration for the first war in Iraq. Such a thing does not exist and has never been observed accept in carefully manufactured narrative.
  - hn_zorba 5y ago
    The first Irak war (aka "Desert Storm") was not under the Clinton admin, but Bush I, but I agree that the lingo it gave us ("surgical strikes" and the rest) is mostly bullshit.
  - orwin 5y ago
    Wasn't Bush Sr the one that went to Irak for the first Gulf war? And this one was clean, at least compared with US war that followed, and way cleaner than any European war of the 90s.
  - anothernewdude 5y ago
    > Paired with the total sell-out of the Democratic Party to the military industrial complex in the 1990s came the demise of that thing called "pacifism". I find it grating how literally nobody seems to take that idea seriously anymore. If there's any thing I'm taking away from this, it's that Pacifism is dead. You need serious deterrence. Pacifism is what let Putin get this bad.
  - notahacker 5y ago
    No war is perfectly surgical, but Russia itself recently fought successful wars with all objectives achieved with minimal casualties within days (certainly Western narratives around those Russian invasions weren't manufactured to praise them). It's also currently fighting a war in which the main advances stalled because they couldn't supply their troops, and as such has resorted to artillery bombardment of cities it can't seize or in some cases even surround despite incurring more casualties in two weeks than the famously messy US conquest and occupation of Afghanistan suffered in decades.

by muro 5y ago

raverbashing 5y ago

Incompetent armies can still do damage But yeah let's hope they keep like that

kergonath 5y ago
If the point is to take a country, competent armies minimise damage. Otherwise at the end you’re just king of the ruins and have trouble extracting all the resources you came for. Mass bombings is almost the bluntest last-resort weapon you can use. A bloodless coup followed by a (probably quite bloody) purge would have been the best outcome for the Russians.

atoav 5y ago

> I would take the (sadly looks more like wishful thinking) incompetence over the current destruction. You get me wrong there. The current destruction is a result of the incompetence, not an alternative to it. If they were a well organized well maintained troup going full Blitzkrieg they would have overwhelmed the Ukrainian forces so fast they already would have taken the capital more than a week ago. This is what they intended to do. Now if they can't get forward because the majority of their transport can only happen on roads they are definitely in dire need of air superiority, because air superiority would keep the convoys safer. They started shelling civilian infrastructure because they want to break the unexpected fighting spirit and they have no other ways to do it. But this was definitly not what the leading heads in Russia would have preferred, they thought they would go in full Blitzkrieg and after 3 days the capital would have fallen due to overwhelming force.

random_upvoter 5y ago
> The current destruction is a result of the incompetence, not an alternative to it. Does "Fallujah" ring a bell? The mirage of the clean, surgical war was created by the Clinton administration for the first war in Iraq. Such a thing does not exist and has never been observed accept in carefully manufactured narrative.
- hn_zorba 5y ago
  The first Irak war (aka "Desert Storm") was not under the Clinton admin, but Bush I, but I agree that the lingo it gave us ("surgical strikes" and the rest) is mostly bullshit.
- orwin 5y ago
  Wasn't Bush Sr the one that went to Irak for the first Gulf war? And this one was clean, at least compared with US war that followed, and way cleaner than any European war of the 90s.
- anothernewdude 5y ago
  > Paired with the total sell-out of the Democratic Party to the military industrial complex in the 1990s came the demise of that thing called "pacifism". I find it grating how literally nobody seems to take that idea seriously anymore. If there's any thing I'm taking away from this, it's that Pacifism is dead. You need serious deterrence. Pacifism is what let Putin get this bad.
- notahacker 5y ago
  No war is perfectly surgical, but Russia itself recently fought successful wars with all objectives achieved with minimal casualties within days (certainly Western narratives around those Russian invasions weren't manufactured to praise them). It's also currently fighting a war in which the main advances stalled because they couldn't supply their troops, and as such has resorted to artillery bombardment of cities it can't seize or in some cases even surround despite incurring more casualties in two weeks than the famously messy US conquest and occupation of Afghanistan suffered in decades.