The KGB Oracle Forums General Public Discussion (SPECIAL ACCESS) KGB Political Debate Central Putin on a blitz

Glenn Greenwald - The War in Ukraine:

https://rumble.com/vvrd3t-the-war-in-ukraine.html

I wonder how well Ukraine will hold up. I've tried to get a sense of it, but found it impossible. Russia obviously has the initiative and generally superior air and armor, but holding onto gains should prove rather uncomfortable for them if Ukrainian morale holds up as the West will likely continue to supply them with armaments and such. I have no idea if it will.

My view is that Ukrainian military will do about as well against Russia as Saddam’s army did against USA. I think Ukrainians are motivated to fight and the population is generally armed, so Russian invaders will have to go through urban combat phase and will face partisans if they attempt to hold territory outside of East Ukraine.

I think the question at this point is how much of Ukraine Putin wants to control and how much bloodshed he is willing to inflict on the uncooperative population.

The real danger at this point is neocons convincing NATO to get involved in a hot war with Russia. This can lead to nukes, especially considering that Russia has a policy to use tactical nukes in cases of direct engagment with NATO ground troops. Even without ICBMs flying, it takes only a few to make East Europe a lot less habitable.

For Putin, the danger is that Ukraine will turn into Afghanistan. If Ukrainian military command was at all clear-minded, this is the scenario they spent preparing for since Crimea annexation.

Seeing how Russian military having serious logisitcal issues, seeing how Ukraine still has functional AA and some airforce left, seeing how Kiev still not captured, it looks like Afghanistan is probable and maybe even Winter (Finnish) War scenario is possible.

Video of thermobaric weapon (a type of non-nuclear WMD) used in Ukraine:

It appears that Putin changed his approach to Ukrainian conflict and now uses Syrian tactics. Specifically, targeting civilians and civilian targets to intentionally increase collateral damage.

Links:

Russian troops are intentionally shooting at civilians.
Russian missile attack on a regional government building in Kharkiv,
Grad Barrage Hits Residential Areas

As of 3/2/2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine is unmitigated military and economical disaster for Putin.

Sanctions imposed on Russia exceeded anyone's expectation - the combination of tone-deaf “we are fighting Nazis” Russian propaganda and charismatic Zelenskyy (Ukrainian president) rallied the world against Putin. While this is unexpected, such scenario isn’t impossible.

What is absolutely bewilderedly improbable is how successful Ukrainian military and national guard in stopping Russian military. Russia still does not have air superiority. Russia yet to capture any of the initial objectives. There are reports that Russians are surrendering in significant numbers.
What is going on? Did Russian Military Command rebelled and intentionally sabotaging this invasion? How is it possible that the invasion so catastrophically incompetent?

Last but not least, what is the off-ramp for Putin? He must realize that his regime is now in danger, as failure of this magnitude will result in internal challenges to his rule.

The problem with someone like Putin, is that after letting his regime become so corrupt there isn't much of an offramp because as you noted failures of this magnitude wont be recieved well internally.

Wouldn't surprise me at all if some of the incompetence displayed wasn't intentional, maybe not open rebellion but passive agressive. "Oh, you wanted 10 million gallons of diesel ready not just a million? Sorry, not sure how that zero got chopped off the manifest, I didn't look too hard because I was told we were just doing exercises in Belarus and we only needed a million for that. " type of thing.