Russia - threadbanned users in OP

There's no-one who a 'veneer of legitimacy' would benefit at this stage. The Russian people (at least the ones believing Putin's lies) probably don't care if Zelensky were beheaded and strung up. Everyone in the West is pretty clear on the positions of each leader, and nobody's buying Zelensky turning around and agreeing to be a part of any puppet regime. Everyone would know the barrel of the gun was being pushed fairly hard into his back on that one.

If the Russians want to take over Ukraine, they might as well go the whole hog and just parachute in a full-fledged pro-Russia regime and let the people of Ukraine battle against it for years to come. Mainly, the point of this whole invasion, anyway, is to destabilise Ukraine even further than it already has been. If Putin cannot have an obedient Ukraine, he can at least have one that is perpetually in chaos and unable to join those dastardly institutions of the West he so fears encroachment of.

Every country in the world has a continuity plan in case their President/Prime Minister/Monarch/whatever head of government dies. There's someone who automatically steps into the role, at least temporarily (even in a democracy). They don't just leave a big vacuum and wait to see what happens.

The Ukrainian continuity plan may be of interest to us in the short term, however it's the Russian one that's of significant interest in the longer term.

Don't look at twitter etc. but it's quite weird to see here imo. Think there's a few of them who spent years/months raising alarm about the dangerous creeping authoritarianism in the West under guise of restrictions to deal with a fake or exaggerated (their terms) Covid-19 danger. Now an in the flesh tyrant is making a huge war in Europe again to try & do the ultimate (to me) in "taking freedom away" (conquering/laying waste to a nation), they decide, at best, to do a bit of "both-sides" and reserve their opinion on rights & wrongs of it!

I thought you'd been threadbanned? (at least!)

Compared to footage of prisoners forced to make video statements in the past, such American POWs in Vietnam or shot down British and American aircrew during Desert Storm, this guy looks positively relaxed. He's obviously not reading from a script and seems naturally talkative. Of course, the gist of what he was going to say would have been cleared with his captors first.

There's a surprise. Ukrainian forces allegedly used a captured GRAD rocket launcher to attack a Russian Navy vessel.

If this turns out to be legit, massive blow to Russia and huge win for Ukraine.

If you don't think deploying anti-terrorism squads in armoured vehicles, rubber bullets and tear gas against those protesting the forced vaccine mandates was an overreach, you're very tolerant of authoritarianism.

What we've seen in Australia and Canada in particular would not be out of place in Russia or China. These are facts.

Even better if true, it was one of the ships that attacked snake Island.

https://www.maritime-executive.com/article/ukrainian-navy-garrison-of-snake-island-survived-bombardment

I think it's a mixture of poor training, paranoia and a very different theatre of operations compared to Syria. Russia knows that there is now a pretty strong SAM threat in Ukranian airspace, with both Russian built high altitude units and low level, shoulder-launched systems. There is also a major Overwatch operation of Ukranian and, to some extent, Russian airspace by both NATO and US aircraft with Radar and Signals gathering systems. Yesterday, the US denied that they are giving the Ukranians raw data on Russian movements, but I'd say they are covering their assessments.

Russian pilots train less than 100 hrs a year. They are also not used to multi-aircraft, multi-objective operations. This is why, in Syria, you only saw one or two flying missions.

Finally, Russia do not train in a Red Flag type of scenario ( I'll let you Google Red Flag for a reference..). NATO are much better at launching multiple platform, multi-role and multiple target missions in one foul sweep. Putin knows this. He knows that Nato have everything in place to hit Russia in one night, conventially, that would destroy the Russian military infrastructure. Hence the Nuclear threat.

This is why there is a massive sub hunt going on at the moment. The West needs to account for every single sub at the moment.

It must have been the Indian version of the Jeremy Kyle show you were analysing!