What happened was, I asked a question, and you came flying in about phones and making things up. Obviously, I’m on a computer drinking coffee at 8 in the morning, since I’m not some working stiff without the means to retire.
While the siege is certainly about to start it looks like a lot of the violence is currently in Kharkiv. Telegram channels are pretty abuzz with videos of destroyed city center etc. obviously everything should be taken with a grain of salt but still
For sure I just hope he doesn’t decide that it’s time to show some more force but yes the numbers coming out in terms of civilian deaths are bad but nowhere near as terrible as possible given the amount of force on the ground.
Also the videos of parts of the ukranian cities are just parts of them. Other remain untouched. There are dozens hundreds of buildings in cities of tens of thousands of buildings.
Again doesn’t mean any of this good. It’s bad it’s horrible but still agreed.
What force on the ground? The 40 miles of unarmored troops transports, crammed nut-to-butt with privates smoking and joking like they’re back on the block?
The broken down Russians laughing with Ukrainians offering to give them a ride home?
I suspect Putin expected the Ukraine government to give up and flee, and then Russian “peacekeepers” would March in and instal the new government and all would be well.
Now they are faced with the reality and need to figure out how to take the city without having it look like another Stalingrad.