Birth rate... So few days ago it was about releasing 45k women prisonners in exchange to get pregnant, now Putin is asking women to have 8 children on TV.
"
According to the dictator, it is impossible to solve "catastrophic demographic problems" only with the help of money, benefits, social benefits and assistance. According to him, having many children should become a norm, a way of life for all peoples of Russia.
"Many of our peoples preserve the tradition of a family where four, five or more children are raised. Let's remember that in Russian families our grandmothers and great-grandmothers had 7 or 8 children each. Let's preserve these traditions and revive," Putin said.
"
...

The lines crumbled because there were no lines. It’s was rapidly taken territory that was sparsely manned with insufficient numbers. You know why the numbers were insufficient? Because they didn’t actually intend to take the whole of Ukraine with 200k troops, it was not a “full scale invasion”. The first phase was hoping Ukraine would panic and hoping their military basically turn or run away. When that didn’t happen it was obvious 200k troops wouldn’t be enough. Numbers matter mate, this isn’t 300 the movie where 300 Spartans take on tens of thousands.

The Economist keeps spilling tea about a conflict between Zelensky and Zaluzhny.

TLDR: the military says politicians overpromised, politicians say the military underdelivered.

https://www.economist.com/europe/2023/11/28/russia-is-poised-to-take-advantage-of-political-splits-in-ukraine

Understandable really. Hopefully Zaluzhny doesn't plan on taking any uncharted flights.

I'll pass

So... you're saying the Russians knowingly invaded 80% of Ukraine with vastly insufficient numbers hoping to scare them into surrendering. When that didn't happen, they let their precious few troops (which they knew would have been needed to secure the east) linger around Kyiv and northern Ukraine for weeks while they were getting bled dry. Simultaneously, they tried, and failed, to encircle Kharkiv or to reach Odessa. Then, in spite of knowing about their insufficient numbers and having months to prepare, they still got caught with their pants down by the Ukrainian counteroffensive in the fall of 2022. Sorry man, but that doesn't sound like a carefully planned feint, it sounds like plain incompetence.

The way I see it, Russia expected to take the airfield near Kyiv with one of their best commando squads and quickly airlift troops from there to close the siege ring around Kyiv before Ukraine or its Western allies can react. From this position, Ukrainian troops couldn't have decimated the Russian land convoys toward Kyiv with hit-and-run tactics and Kyiv would have fallen within weeks, leaving Ukrainian leadership no other way than to surrender and negotiate a dictated peace which enshrines their status as Russia's vassal without true sovereignty.

When the Russians failed to capture the airfield, they had to bring all their troops and materiel to Kyiv by land and had no idea how to protect their convoys and logistics chains. Likewise, they failed to encircle Kharkiv and their ground offense toward Odessa also got stopped around Mykolaiv. So their attacks on all three major targets which would have been devastating blows to Ukraine failed because they had spread themselves too thin. The only places where Russia succeeded were those in the south which were stuck between Crimea and Donbass.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Nov 29 2023 06:05am

well look at the israel topic - the israeli intelligence had good information that hamas would attack however due to incompetence / arrogance they ignored it. stupidity explains quite alot of world events.

Is Ukraine Winning ?

You’re being obtuse here. The surrounding of Kiev was exactly to try get the leadership in Kiev to collapse. That make take several weeks, months, to happen and wouldn’t happen in one or two days. So yeah you kind of need them to linger there for the threat to have some semblance of reality.


Russia won a world war sacrificing huge numbers. If there’s any one country that would know how many troops they’d need for a full invasion it’s probably them. Call it incompetence or what ever you want but fact of the matter no rational mind would consider 200k taking over a country of 44 million and a huge land mass as a full scale invasion.