Well, many Western pundits also thought that Putin was just flexing and trying to extort some concessions, but wouldn't ultimately be willing to pull the trigger and risk huge economic sanctions. I myself am also guilty of not believing in a Russian invasion until four days before it happened.

Chopstickz, however, is clearly a Russian propaganda troll. He kept denying the invasion while it was already taking place and even now sticks with ridiculous talking points like "the Ukrainian military was planning an offense against the Donbass is March". Yeah, right, while the Russian military was concentrating hundreds of thousands of soldiers around Ukraine for weeks on end and while the Ukrainian government was desperately pleading for help on the international stage, they were secretly stiill plotting to attack separatist regions because they are morons with a death wish... they are such rabid nazi maniacs. Ha! See, it all makes total sense!!!!

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Apr 2 2022 06:31pm

Don't mind him. He's a simpleton who doesn't have a full grasp of the meanings of words, like battalion.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/battalion

https://www.rferl.org/a/deputized-as-election-monitors-ukrainian-ultranationalists-ready-to-punch-violators/29809207.html

It's just a brand tied to many nazi paramilitary organizations over Ukraine like National Corpse, National Militia and Azov Civil Corpse. These three were recruiting during the conflict and use Azov symbols. Azov itself expanded to a regiment 7 years ago.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion
Read the first sentence not just the title.
Hell, it's like keeping thinking that SS is still a squadron simply because it's named so.

This post was edited by Norlander on Apr 2 2022 11:20pm

Maybe in Europe but American reporting made it seem pretty likely Putin was going to invade in the month building up.

Because the organization is called Azov Battalion it has to be actually battalion-sized... funny shit

Yeah, American intelligence was pretty clear for like a month ahead of time that invasion was imminent.

"Ha, you trust American intelligence?"

Yeah, when they're telling me something literally nobody wants to happen is gonna happen.

This post was edited by NetflixAdaptationWidow on Apr 3 2022 12:58am

Yea but 20 years ago they got it wrong on the Iraq war. They clearly were 100% right on this one but ???

meanwhile they were wrong (spread propaganda) about a lot of other stuff since then, but people have a short memory

congrats to them for hitting 1 out of 50

I'd still really like to know what's actually going on in Ukraine. Because it still doesn't make much sense
Other people doubted the warnings of invasion based on some thought of sanctions pressure or oligarchs holding sway or whatever. It seemed to me the biggest part of the calculation would be the question- why? What does Putin stand to gain? Most of Ukraine's natural resources and productive farmland are already in the separatist regions under Russia's sphere, whereas West Ukraine is mostly a true shithole, the poorest region of the poorest country in Europe. Was there some real goal in mind that could only be accomplished taking the whole country instead of the just the best cut of it? Then even when Russia did invade, they encircled major cities and basically stalled out. So at that point and on, we know Kiev was threatened but never actually being flattened. Lets not pretend otherwise, Russia clearly has the conventional weapons power to wipe out a city like Kiev. The allies had far lesser technology in WW2 and look at the bombings of Dresden, Tokyo, Hamburg, etc. If the goal was to massacre everyone, they easily could. But instead we see Kiev is intact enough it still has all major infrastructure and utilities functional. Water, gas, electricity, internet, etc. But we also saw the siege and bombardment of Mariupol, far harsher. So the presumption there was that Russia was making an example of one city, chosen for its far-right contingent, and use that to convince other cities to surrender or face the same fate. But then Russia withdrew from Kiev. So clearly, that's not the case. And its not like Putin is some humanitarian afraid of killing innocent people, look to the atrocities we see in the wake of the Russian withdrawal from Irpin, the slaughter there. And yet, for everything that's happened, the gas is still flowing through Ukraine, from Russia to the EU. The pipelines haven't been shut down or attacked. The Ukrainians are still permitting it. Why? Nord Stream II has been frozen and abandoned, but Russian gas still flows. For all the geopolitical manuevering to literally go around ukraine's transit leverage, that's seen no action so far this war.