Yeah I don't think it would be 'easy', but they clearly have the capabilities to bomb it into oblivion or to undergo long and protracted sieges. Kiev suffered neither.
We saw it in other cities. I don't think it should be a point of contention whether Russia invested that kind of force or not, they didn't. We can question why, what their strategy was, was it pure miscalculation or was it just a hopeful gambit with the long term war being prepped anyway. I don't know. But I know they didn't siege Kiev.

They are not "capturing" anything, they are razing town after town to the ground, 90% of buildings where fighting takes place are destroyed in the east. And in the end whether Ukraine falls or not, it will be the russians paying for reconstructions of these cities one way or another. And they are already doing so by capping wages of government employees in Russia "to help rebuild brotherly cities taken by heroic russians"

And with Putin regime being as corrupt as it is, back in 2010s Putins projects such as stadiums for Olympics/Crimea bridge constantly required more and more money as it was being built, and constant scandals over theft of funds taking place. Financing those "reconstructions" will be extremely painful for ordinary russians. Now add sanctions/isolation/Russia being pretty much a 3rd world country in terms of income outside of large cities and its a train-wreck waiting to happen. Imagine trying to lay siege on Kiev and maintain effective logistics when 60% of resources in one way or another are embezzled on the way there (one of the main reasons Putin got rid of so many generals/commanders)



As for the whole "great warfare" people here fail to realize just how expensive waging offensive warfare is in 21st century and near impossible to do so with widespread corruption throughout russian government, just because Russia invaded Ukraine doesn't mean Ukraine has to go and conquer Moscow and claim all out conventional victory to end the war and retain its territories.

Well Russia could launch nukes and send earth into nuclear winter.. But if we are talking about conventional means, there was and still no proper base to launch such an assault from present, doing so without proper reformation of the entire military would be a economical suicide.

So hypothetically capability might be there, but no way would putin ever take such a gamble and weaken his silovik state, every brute needs a mansion and luxury lifestyle for his entire family for the cronyism system to not start folding and to keep "towers of kremlin" or rather mafia clans from uniting and turning on putin altogether. Its in the Russian culture for the great leader to suddenly pass away during rough times...

This post was edited by Lvivz on Jun 28 2022 06:09pm

They have cruise missiles and bombers. They have the capacity to flatten a city like Kiev using conventional munitions. I've said it several times before this thread, anyone who thinks what America did to Tokyo, Hamburg or Dresden in WW2 is somehow beyond the capacity of the Russian military in 2022, is fooling themselves. This is not what happened to Kiev:

There was almost no resistance in Dresden
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/apocalypse-dresden-february-1945

Complete opposite of what Ukraine is for russian pilots.

In the nature of this thread, the better suggestion would be Risk. And I may consider it for another time.

Or better yet, Axis and Allies.

The Soviet Union fell a few decades ago. Risk is appropriate.

BTW, last I checked, the USSR was an Allied power. Weird, huh?

The Russians didn't have enough resources to successfully lay siege to Kyiv. They tried to surround the city (Bucha, Irpin, Gostomel, Vasylkiv, etc.) and they tried to reinforce their troops through Sumy and Chernihiv "axes." They tried to do the same to Kharkiv too. At the end of the day, it was a miscalculation on their part and it cost them severely. They lost A LOT of special forces trying to shock Kyiv into submission.

Comparing Mariupol to Kyiv is strange because Mariupol was able to be surrounded due to the Russian Navy and is significantly smaller. We've been saying since early March that for Russia to take Ukraine, they would need at least 500k troops. 100k of those would have to be dedicated to Kyiv alone.