Russia - threadbanned users in OP

It was almost entirely happenstance. They wanted to take Kyiv and topple the government and install their puppet. That was abundantly clear. They threw the kitchen sink at it, only later learning from that and regrouping and pushing east. How many generals have they replaced now and by their own reports? You don't do that if that's the plan all along. You don't have to do that.

As for inroads, what has long surprised me is that Russia, who overwhelm Ukrainian forces on paper and reality(though a few don't like that reality) are taking so long, fighting yard by yard in remarkably slow progress. Imagine we swapped out the Russians for Americans. I would bet the farm Kyiv would have fallen within the first month. In the first days Ukrainian comms including mobile and web coverage would be toast, they'd almost certainly have tracked Zelensky and his movers and shakers and would have had near total air superiority and drones flown by a 21 year old in a portacabin in Nevada would be having a firework party with anything bigger than a family car.

On the foreign power front there was certainly far more Russian involvement, but if you don't believe there were proxies and "observers" on both sides in the Donbas civil war and Ukraine as a whole, I've some magic beans to sell you. However I really don't think the Americans thought it was the sore point and tinderbox it turned out to be.

" Imagine we swapped out the Russians for Americans. " Its all wishfull thinking and imagination here.

The Yanks are dicks geopolitically but as far as the prosecution of wars go, they make the Russians(and anyone else) look like Dad's Army. Not exactly surprisingly given how many trillions they throw at it and the practice they've had. They've never had much luck with insurgents, though nobody has, or can really, but they stayed in and controlled far more of Afghanistan than the Soviet Union at her near peak did.

Ukraine had a standing army (including reserves) not that far off the Russian army and Ukraine has barred all males 18-60 from leaving. Plus Ukraine is receiving arms from 30+ nations. Yet on the battle field they are not making progress. Maybe someone needs to face up to that and figure out why and fix it.

They got a fair number of anti tank weapons, a few drones, a few antiaircraft systems, a handful of heavy artillery, decent intel, no aircraft, no tanks. Dribs and drabs for the most part. If it were more than that Ukraine wouldn't be screaming for more on a daily basis, they know the "REALITY". Russian forces still overwhelm them in numbers of men and materiel. These are "FACTS" as you like to type it.

If the Ukrainians had anything near parity with Russian forces why didn't they decimate the miles and miles long Russian military convoy of men and materiel open on all sides on the road to Kyiv in this "feint" at the start? As I said way back when this was current, if a squadron of WW2 German Stuka dive bombers had fallen through a a crack in time and saw a target that big lined up like that below them they'd have had a collective orgasm and a field day. That convoy remained pretty much unmolested because Ukraine simply didn't have the men and weapons to hit it effectively, or at all. And at the time I got static from the Slava Ukraine! lot for the suggestion.