Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Here's the google translate link, Hope it works.

Some of the text:

No one will meet the Russian army with bread, salt and flowers in Ukraine.It seems that the events in the south-east of Ukraine in 2014 did not teach anyone anything. Then, after all, they also expected that the entire left-bank Ukraine, in a single impulse and in a matter of seconds, would turn into Novorossia. We have already drawn maps, estimated the personnel of future administrations of cities and regions, and developed state flags.

But even the Russian-speaking population of this part of Ukraine (including such cities as Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk, Mariupol) did not support such plans in their vast majority. The project "Novorossiya" was somehow imperceptibly blown away and quietly died.

Sometimes it is asserted in the Russian expert community (by fans of the Douai doctrine) that since the hypothetical military operations in Ukraine will take place under the conditions of complete dominance of Russian aircraft in the air, the war will be extremely short and will end in the shortest possible time.

At the same time, it is somehow forgotten that the armed formations of the Afghan opposition during the conflict of 1979-1989 did not have a single aircraft and not a single combat helicopter. And the war in this country dragged on for as much as 10 years. The Chechen fighters did not have a single aircraft either. And the fight against them lasted for several years and cost the federal forces a lot of blood and casualties.

Now with regard to the assertion that Western countries will not send a single soldier to die for Ukraine.

It should be noted that this is likely to be the case. However, in the event of Russia's invasion, this does not at all rule out massive assistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the collective West with a wide variety of weapons and military equipment and bulk deliveries of all kinds of materiel. In this regard, the West has already shown a consolidated position, unprecedented until now, which, it seems, was not predicted in Moscow.

There is no doubt that the United States and the countries of the North Atlantic Alliance will begin a kind of reincarnation of Lend-Lease, modeled after the Second World War, there is no doubt. An influx of volunteers from the West, which can be very numerous, is not ruled out.

In general, there will be no Ukrainian blitzkrieg. The statements of some experts such as “The Russian army will defeat most of the units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 30-40 minutes”, “Russia is able to defeat Ukraine in 10 minutes in the event of a full-scale war”, “Russia will defeat Ukraine in eight minutes” have no serious grounds.

And finally, the most important thing. An armed conflict with Ukraine is currently fundamentally not in Russia's national interests. Therefore, it is best for some overexcited Russian experts to forget about their hatred fantasies. And in order to prevent further reputational losses, never remember again.

Bloody hell, this guy nailed it pretty much to the letter four months ago. 😮 I doubt he was alone in these notions. How dumb was putin and his minions. Clearly this guy's memo never reached them. Or their hubris was that high.

I have near zero expertise and even I could see from very early on and before we saw how ramshackle many of the Russian forces could be that this was no walk in the park and I couldn't understand why putin was gunning for Kyiv. Like I said back then if he'd "just" invaded the Donbas with his combined forces he would have taken it, at least for a while. Even with heir fcukups they have taken a goodly chunk of it as it is. Invading was moronic and has fcuked Russia, but IMHO his run for Kyiv was his biggest tactical and strategic mistake.