Russia - threadbanned users in OP

I haven't listened to many of them but any I have listened to seem pretty genuine; and I'm not really sure what Ukraine gains from fabricating them.

Forget whether they're real or not for a moment, they are manna from heaven to the Ukrainians. Huge propaganda points. I mean you're willing to paint them as seeming genuine out of the gate. Why? Can you speak Russian to a level of fluency to make such a call, or are they simply reinforcing what you already want to believe?

We've all picked a side. Myself included and it's Ukrainian lest any of the usual mouth foamers looking for reds under the bed are wondering. However both sides, including mine will use all the advantage they can. If they picked up a phonecall where a Russian wife or mother who saw Western media and was dubious about the war and was asking her son about it and he was telling her they weren't raping and murdering civilian Ukrainians(even if he was only saying this to placate his wife/mother) do you think they'd be as quick to release that? Of course not.

From reading reports from Ukrainian people in previously Russian held towns at least in some cases there seems to be some Russian troops who are acting relatively OK and another bunch who are animals. I suspect - and we'll find out when it's over - that the OK ones where they exist are the professional troops, the animals the conscripts and regional cannon fodder.

Historically Russian troops are well known for being looters and rapists. WW2 showed us that and it certainly gets left out of Soviet/Russian history of that conflict. The famous pic of hoisting the Soviet flag over the Reichstag where the Soviets airbrushed(they had lots of practice with Stalin) looted watches off the wrist of the guy propping up the flag waver.

Pretty understandable too given how the nazis treated Russians in their invasion. US, French and Brits were involved too, but more on the looting rather than the raping mass murder front. A couple of rellies of mine were in Germany in the run up and the aftermath of Germany's surrender in WW2 and they told me the Russians were hated by the locals and for good reason. There were horrible events like German mothers dragging themselves and their little kids into rivers to drown themselves to get away from them. Unfúcking real. Though apparently once it was over the Soviets were notable for being kind to German children, bringing them food. The French were distrusted even hated the most apparently, the British and Americans most liked. One who had some minor dealings with Soviet troops told me their officers were usually well educated men, but their ordinary soldiers were mostly barely literate farmboys from the hinterlands with a lot of scarily young troops in tow.

So it's not as if the Russians don't have previous in this kinda horror. They've been revved up over the last ten years by putin's propaganda machine and it seems in the very early days judging by how they were generally dealing with Ukrainians they were told they'd be welcomed. That didn't last long, so they've believed the first lie and the second was made clear by Ukrainian resistance and effective resistance at that. So Russian troops going full on evil wouldn't and doesn't surprise me.

What I still don't understand about Russian tactics from the get go is:

A) why drive for Kyiv when he could have gone for the "independent states" and likely taken them far more easily and likely gotten far more away with it, like he did with Crimea.

B) why didn't his strategists not go straight for infrastructure from the start? The American MO is gain air superiority(the seeming lack of Russian airpower is very weird on its own), hit every military target you can find and blast it to rubble, take out phonelines, power, water and comms. Only then send in boots and tracks on the ground, knowing your enemy is now nearly completely bilnd, deaf and dumb. Costs more to rebuild yes, but your guys get the contracts for that and it risks fewer flag draped coffins and a speedier end to the war/invasion.

I mean they rolled up to the outskirts of Kyiv and nearly surrounded it, but the power was on, people were able to get on the interne and get news out. He has done all of that to Mariupol, but even there he ramped up to it. Just puzzling to me.

The only explanations I can come up with is they genuinely thought theyd be welcomed or get far less resistance so never allowed for this course of action and/or they realised they simply couldn't afford to blast the infrastructure too much as they couldn't afford to rebuild and fix it and/or they simply couldn't prosecute that kind of a war, or a bit from one, a bit from the other.