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"Based on how little progress Russia is making..." I see this narative everywhere, but I wouldn't call it "little progress" when the land occupied in a mere mo

"Based on how little progress Russia is making..." I see this narative everywhere, but I wouldn't call it "little progress" when the land occupied in a mere month is the size of the UK. It took NATO 78 days of intense bombing of a much weaker and smaller Serbia to make any kind of progress. They even avoided the ground offensive. Imagine the disaster if the US went in with the ground forces. The US first spent months clearing out Iraq, then it spent years trying to hold it by a thread. Still we don't have the right number of casualties from that war. Russia could have just carpet bombed the entire Ukraine like it did with Mariupul recently. Why it didn't do it, we can only guess.

KptMarchewa 5y ago
>Why it didn't do it, we can only guess. Because strategic bombers are extremely expensive, and way more susceptible to long-range SAM systems that Ukraine still operates.
colechristensen 5y ago
>Russia could have just carpet bombed the entire Ukraine like it did with Mariupul recently. Why it didn't do it, we can only guess. Russia wasn't looking for territory but to annex a population and possibly create a puppet state justified with the idea of ethnic strife between ukranian-speaking and russian-speaking peoples and "saving" the historically aligned russian population. I.e. to keep hearts and minds of a population on their side. You can't do that if you carpet bomb cities and a lot of the positive Russian sentiment in Ukraine is obviously gone with how the war has progressed. Russia is now a bit stuck because Putin's power is largely based on image and support of older generations which remember a strong Soviet Union, just a reset to before this happened would be a serious blow to him and possibly the stability of Russia so they're ramping up the aggression and still not finding the easy success they expected.

KptMarchewa 5y ago

>Why it didn't do it, we can only guess. Because strategic bombers are extremely expensive, and way more susceptible to long-range SAM systems that Ukraine still operates.

colechristensen 5y ago

>Russia could have just carpet bombed the entire Ukraine like it did with Mariupul recently. Why it didn't do it, we can only guess. Russia wasn't looking for territory but to annex a population and possibly create a puppet state justified with the idea of ethnic strife between ukranian-speaking and russian-speaking peoples and "saving" the historically aligned russian population. I.e. to keep hearts and minds of a population on their side. You can't do that if you carpet bomb cities and a lot of the positive Russian sentiment in Ukraine is obviously gone with how the war has progressed. Russia is now a bit stuck because Putin's power is largely based on image and support of older generations which remember a strong Soviet Union, just a reset to before this happened would be a serious blow to him and possibly the stability of Russia so they're ramping up the aggression and still not finding the easy success they expected.