How do you fail to burn a field full of wheat/corn? Toss a molotov out of a car window while driving past. Sounds to me like they haven't tried very hard.
You would obviously have to do it with black ops undercover, infiltrate deep behind enemy lines. All the top 30 major cities and especially where nearby military camps are located.
Burn the forrests, take out bridges and railways cut the powerlines all that commando shit.
You can infect stock with foot and mouth virus very easily that shit deadly. Heck even poisoning some food in the supermarket is enough to issue a recall and massive disruptions. Soviet blocks where thousands of people are crammed into one building are just too convenient of a target for an accident waiting to happen.
War is not pretty and if you get invaded by some dictator you need to take them out.
If you are thinking about "we'll they will just poison my well in return" then you already lost. You need to increase your negotiating power if the enemy wants to take your land you need to let them know it will cost them dearly. The question becomes how much are you willing to sacrifice either go all the way or bend over and submit.
Wrong. They tried very hard to escalate I guess you forgot or you're simply poorly informed
- Dozens of high ranking commanders were killed, many in the field with help of Western intelligenge, some by Ukrainian agents on the ground in Moscow and some by long range strikes using Western weapons and intelligenge. Even journalists and bloggers were targeted.
- Multiple Belgorod incursions along with "bringing the war home to Russia" propaganda campaing by all Western MSM.
- Dozens of strikes on the Black Sea fleet and even the command center in Sevastopol using Storm Shadow missiles provided by the West
- Strike on early warning radar used to detect incoming ballistic missiles
- Multiple strikes on Crimea and the Kerch bridge using long range weapons / drones and car bombs.
- Kursk incursion
- Drone strikes on Moscow and the Kremlin itself.
- Operation spider web striking Russia's nuclear bomber fleet ffs with the help of the West of course.
That's from the top of my head but there's more. Like the ATACM strikes in Russia and so on.
What did it yield? Russia ramping up their campaign, producing more weapons of all types, setting up an elite drone team (rubicon) and Ukraine getting completely wrecked.
Explain to me how you're going to make Russia bend over when you failed to make a country like Afghanistan bend over.