Yup. Last go around, they has all the experienced soldiers, and were "fully equipped." Now they're undertrained, unmotivated, poorly equipped conscripts.

Few things on the targeting civilians point.

Since the beginning of this war, Russia has targeted bases, barracks, weapons depots, military facilities, etc. As those are obvious and well known targets, Ukraine adapted to using civilian infrastructure to hide. So when you see a blown up mall or hotel or any large building that can hold weapons and or/hide hardware getting hit, it's plausible that this is one of those.

Secondly, lets think what we are actually saying with the word targeting. When I think of the word targeting I think this rocket or cruise missile has destination X when launched. Do you really think Russia would just launch 5 million dollar each Kalibrs in western Ukraine just to damage some 5 story soviet era apartment building? Ask yourself is that really the intended target? Is the empty street the intended target? Is the playground the intended target? A rational person would say, probably not because the cost-benefit doesn't make sense. Now that doesn't mean that missiles won't land in civilian areas and actually kill innocent people. Obviously it happens, and there's a number of reasons it happens. Missile malfunction and/or is inaccurate being a huge obvious one. For example even one of their most sophisticated weapons being used, the Kalibr, a cruise missile has a 50 m CEP (circular error probable). And these are used few and far between, the bread and butter are much more inaccurate munitions. As the war goes on and Russia gets more desperate and aggressive their willingness to strike at anything and everything will grow and they'll be even more careless about collateral damage, but lets be real here the apartment buildings, streets, playground are in reality collateral damage and not targets.

The difference now between the first time around is they probably wouldn't be looking to surround the city but damage it trying to get Ukraine to negotiate or else. Gomel to Kiev distance is ~250km. Russian MLRS range of systems they use mostly below: There's other artillery non-MLRS they commonly use but not trying to be exhaustive here.

Grad-400km
Smerch-850km
tos1-450km

Point is, they really wouldn't need to go too deep into Ukrainian territory to wreak havoc on Kiev. I could see some backdoor conversation between the two with Russia saying if you storm Kherson we're going to strike Kiev and not hold back.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Oct 16 2022 10:44am

Russia is attacking ukrainian forces taking refuge in large structures like malls and universities but Russia is also actively targeting civilians to terrorize the population.

If this was true then they are doing a pretty shit job at it considering in Kiev people are still going to college, driving around, going to concerts, flying in and out, etc. If they were truly targeting civilians the proper way trying to be as damaging and deadly as possible, Kiev's airport, bus stations, universities, public markets, etc would be targets not some random 5 story buildings.

They didn't reduce the city to rubble so they can't be targeting civilians. Lol k

I mean they could just as easily send a dozen cruise missiles just to the airport, 2 of the larger bus stations, the largest market, the biggest university, etc and that wouldn't be really reducing the city to rubble. What's your explanation for them not doing that? Like doing that would result in massive civilian casualties and would erode civilian trust of safety exponentially more than anything else.

Like there's a reason why terrorists who want to inflict most dmg typically detonate bombs in markets, airports, bus stations, etc. I guess Russia wants to terrorize people but didn't get the memo on how to do it best. Makes sense.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Oct 16 2022 11:26am

I see that as an empty threat

That's because you're committing one of the oldest mistakes of warfare, which is under estimating your enemy. I rather over-estimate and be surprised when they don't deliver rather than under-estimate and be shocked helplessly as a large city is getting destroyed.

You guys keep believing things that you want to be true. I posted the distance and range of mlrs for a reason. You believe Russia won't strike Kiev because they can't (under-estimating them because you want it to be true). I believe they can but haven't because I rather Ukrainian leaders do something to prevent this because I don't want a city of that size to be destroyed.

This post was edited by ofthevoid on Oct 16 2022 12:01pm

Its truly hilarious how quick nuclear weapons get used, destructions of capital cities happens by the logic of generation "Call of Duty".