Russia - threadbanned users in OP

Ah yes the famous Russian tactical feint, after the fact. According to "pro war, sorry "special military operation" Russian propaganda". If you believe that I've got magic beans to sell you. It's up there with the pro Ukrainian eejits claiming Russia was going to run out of weapons within a fortnight.

It was pretty clear they were going for a cut the head off the snake attack on Kyiv, thought they'd face a lot less resistence, but simply couldn't do it. They tried and failed to secure airports and other zones and lost a lot of men and materiel to do so. They were too far away, their logistics were for shíte, even with the scattered forces of Ukraine not being able to hit their tens of kilometres long truck lines. They screwed up in the north east too. They couldn't even manage air superiority. The latest angle of the Russian BS is that Ukraine had one of the best armies in Europe and that's why it's taking so long. That and it's NATO that were doing much of it. Remember the Russian scuttlebutt about French military advisors in Mariupol... A bit of a shift from the first month when the same Ukrainian forces were a rabble. Russian sympathisers high on their own supply were talking of taking the whole of Ukraine eventually and some odd stuff about Poland wanting their own bit of Ukraine in the west. That's gone silent lately.

And yep Ukraine have bugger all hope of taking Crimea. Same for Donbass. That's a pipe dream alright. They do have more hope of keeping the Russians where they are and even pushing them back across the Dnieper and stopping them taking the rest of the Black Sea coast. The Russian Black Sea fleet is essentially out of the fray for the foreseeable and when it was in it it was a farce. They lost to a nation who doesn't have a navy. Slow handclap. Their airforce is reduced to flights over already held territory. There's a reason we're not seeing downed Sukhois like we did in the early days. They're not risking them. There are tens of thousands of Ukrainian forces being trained overseas by their allies and more and more weapons and cash is being fired at them. North Korea is saying they'll send some troops for Russia. Five foot tall lads who haven't had a square meal in years. Great. Russia is going to be dealing with insurgency for years in the territory they do have. Never mind the costs in rebuilding what's left of the place.

Their economy is increasingly cut off from international markets and no China won't be much use to them. Thailand alone is a bigger market for China's economy. The EU is seven and a half times larger a market for China than Russia. The Chinese are no fools, but they will take their oil at firesale prices. India is in the mix, and always was, but throughout the cold war they played both sides and with more and more western money being fired into India they won't screw that pooch for Mother Russia.

And yep the US will keep ploughing cash into this war. It's somewhat of a "bargain" for them to bleed Russia by proxy in a conventional land war. The British will go along with the US as usual. France will throw their oar in too. Germany's a wild card, but their current wishy washy government is about as popular with Germans as a guniness wet fart in a spacesuit. The Baltic states hate Russia with a vengence and for very good reasons so they're in it for the long haul.

I knew a Ukrainian lass back in 2010/11 and asking about her place as is the polite thing to do and interesting, I do remember her describing and explaining Donbass as like the North of Ireland as far as the factions went. She was half Ukrainian, half Russian, though grew up in the west of the country. She also had Russian friends here at the time. A Russian I also knew at the time suggested she should come over with me to their place for dinner some evening. Fast forward to around 2018 and I hadn't talked or seen the Ukrainian in years that same Russian when I mentioned her in passing took a very different tone. They also had Ukrainian mates back in the day, but no longer.

The general gist I got was there has long been partisan stress in that neck of the woods. That it was on the down low when Russian puppets were running Ukraine, but after Maiden the narrative of both sides changed and that partisan stuff got far more polarised and then went full civil war, blowing hot and cold.

It was always somewhat present, but yeah the Russians egged it on in a big way and the Ukrainians responded to that in their own way.

Actually the BBC initially had Russia likely to take Kyiv. Others didn't. And that's the major difference between "pro western propaganda" and "pro Russian propaganda". In the west we're exposed to far more different narratives and slants and we have the choice to pick and choose which one, or a mix of them, rightly or wrongly. In Mother Russia there's just the one narrative and other narratives get short shrift.

Their cognative dissonance, lack of irony, or self awareness is truely staggering, even impressive in it's own insane way.