Quote (Norlander @ Apr 11 2022 01:30pm)
Mariupol isn't. What about Tchernihiv, Kharkiv and Odessa? Not to mention reatreat from Kyiv.
Russia did not have enough forces around Kiev to physically storm the city, so they withdrew to focus on Donbass. Taking Kiev isn't necessary to secure DPR/LPR and will lead to massive losses of life on all sides, especially civilians, so why bother?
Odessa is a likely target in the coming months and will be taken by storm, like Mariupol if necessary.
Kharkiv is a large city with a sizeable Nazi contingent & forced conscription, it won't be easy to take and there have been no serious attempts as of yet to storm it.
There are 60-80 thousand Ukrainian soldiers occupying the parts of Donbass that have not yet been liberated. There are no "important" cities in their area according to you, and yet Russia obliterating them would still be a massive victory, and a crippling loss of tens of thousands of troops for Ukraine.
Point is, it's not all about Kiev.
Quote (dro94 @ Apr 11 2022 01:34pm)
Mariupol isn't fully under Russian control yet. It's taking Russia's best and most well equipped forces 7+ weeks to clear Mariupol, likely taking heavy casualties in the process
If NATO or even the US on its own attacked a city like Mariupol it would have been over in a week. Russia's reputation as a country with military strength has been utterly crushed
The part highlighted in bold is significantly delusional. Russia could have taken Mariupol in a week if they leveled the whole city and killed everyone like what the US did to Fallujah or Raqqa, but they did not.
Their reputation as a country has only been "crushed" in the minds of people who have no idea how the war is actually going and get all their news from pro-Ukrainian sources whom are still even now spinning fairytales about 20 thousand killed Russians and how they are gonna be pushing an offensive to Moscow at this rate.