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This might be a little tougher than Putin thought...

Since then we've worked to help stabilize the politics

When you effectively remove a large partisan contingent from the country, it will change things.
Among the consequences of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Donbass insurgency is it meant subtracting those populations from Ukraine as a whole, pitching the remainder solidly in the western camp.

In 2014 Putin likely had the relative strength to seize Kiev in ‘two weeks’ as he said on the phone to the Spanish PM. But by 2022 that wasn’t the case, and he didn’t know it.
 
NorthDSMHawk said:
LOL, the excuse train just keeps rolling.
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What excuses are you referencing? The fact that Ukraine in 2014 and the political reality there was far different than the political reality this year? If you can't see that and understand how that changes international reaction then there's really no use in discussing it further.
 
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HawkAttackDial911 said:
Russia is going to see a crazy brain drain where anyone of any means gets out the country. Additionally, their demographic crisis is only going to get worse. Their rapidly aging population (high mortality rates, low birth rates) will rapidly age even more as young men get cut down or leave the country. Additionally, the women to men ratio is going to get worse than it already is. Russia is going to look completely different in 10 years.
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I have mentioned this before in this thread, it's estimated that 150,000-300,000 young, educated Russians fled the country at the beginning of the war. They are mostly in places like Georgia, the Stans, Romania, and Turkey. Putin probably doesn't mind because these are the people not loyal to him. Getting them to go back to Russia when he dies/is removed is critical for Russia's recovery.
 
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h-hawk said:
One of the military experts on CNN or MSNBC said that Ukraine is having trouble servicing all the equipment the West has provided. He thinks that we should provide contractors who would work in Ukraine but have to stay a couple of hundred miles from the front. He said that this worked in Iraq and Afghanistan though a total of 120 were killed. He also mentioned a defense rocket system (did not catch the acronym) they could use to defend these contractors as they had used before it in those countries. Just wanted to mention it because countries are ticked enough at Putin now to maybe go ahead and provide this support.
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Alexander Vindman has been saying this, and I have seen other retired military folks say this. I've seen 2-3 depots being suggested. One near Kiev, one near Lviv, and one close to Odessa.
 
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FdNz3-WWYAICoQa
 
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dgordo said:
YIV—Outside the Giraffe shopping mall on the western edge of Ukraine’s capital, a group of locals prepared to meet the Russian armored column thundering their way.



It was late February, and the Russians, from an elite airborne unit, were riding atop their vehicles, as if expecting a warm greeting. One wore a Cossack woolen hat instead of a helmet. Another hadn’t loaded his rifle.



The few dozen Ukrainians from the towns of Irpin and Bucha had other intentions, which they had written on the cement mixer and bulldozer that blocked the road: “Welcome to hell.”



After Russia launched an all-out invasion on Feb. 24, a 32-year-old Ukrainian city council member and solar-power entrepreneur named Volodymyr Korotya had led preparations for a fighting stand. The men were brandishing a grab bag of weapons, including pump-action shotguns and a handful of rocket-propelled grenades. Many were dressed in jeans, and few had body armor. Around half of their number, which included a psychotherapist, a firefighter and a bus driver, had never fought before.



“Look what I do and do the same,” Mr. Korotya, who had seen combat during his time in the Ukrainian army, told the new recruits.



As a vanguard of a dozen armored vehicles rumbled over the bridge between Bucha and Irpin and began to climb the hill toward them, the Ukrainians opened fire.



After a fierce three-hour battle, the Russian vehicles were destroyed or abandoned, and the soldiers were dead or in retreat. The Ukrainians set off across the bridge to finish off the rest of the column.



The Russians never crossed that bridge in their monthlong attempt to seize Kyiv.



It’s hard to know how people will react to a huge invasion force. Resistance requires a core of people in villages, towns and cities to find enough courage and motivation to fight rather than flee. Confidence in communities large and small grows with each person who stays and picks up a weapon.



That’s especially true in a country like Ukraine, whose national anthem starts: “The glory and freedom of Ukraine have not yet perished.” That line reflects the nation’s painful attempts over centuries to establish itself as an independent country in the maw of empires.



Russian President Vladimir Putin sent his army into Ukraine to snuff out its latest, 30-year attempt to establish full-fledged independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He had boasted that it would take only days for his powerful army to take Kyiv.



Over the next month, enough Ukrainians found the will and means to resist him. They formed armed groups with whatever weapons they could lay their hands on. They fed and equipped fighters and billeted them in their homes. They shimmied up trees in search of cellphone reception to report on enemy movements. The result looked like something little seen in modern warfare—a domestic insurgency fused onto a traditional army.



“We are like a hive of bees,” said Yaroslav Honchar, head of an attack-drone crew who make their own armed craft. “One bee is nothing, but a thousand can defeat a big force.”



To a degree not fully appreciated, it was these citizen soldiers, teaming up with active-duty personnel, who turned the tide in the most consequential battle in Europe since World War II and preserved Ukraine’s status as a sovereign nation. The defense of Kyiv allowed the president to stay and rally national support. He could also then procure the weapons from the U.S. and Europe that are now helping the army to dislodge Russian forces in the east and south.



Without Kyiv’s defenders securing crucial spots around the city in the war’s early days, none of that would have been possible.

Saving the Airport



The Ukrainian special-forces team needed to get to Kyiv fast. But the roads from their base in western Ukraine were choked with cars heading the other way.



Civilians were panicking. Russian armored columns were streaming toward the capital from Belarus, less than 100 miles to the north. Information was scarce and often contradictory.



Marik, the team’s 32-year-old leader, focused. He needed to locate the sharpest Russian thrust toward Kyiv and figure out how his team could blunt it, he explained later, using only a pseudonym as required by Ukraine’s military.



A cyberattack had cut communications between commanders and units in the field, leaving unsecured cellphones as the only link. But Marik saw no reason to panic. He stuck to his mantra: You can’t win the war on your own; everyone has his own small front.



As the team threaded its way toward Kyiv, Marik saw videos posted online by civilians of around 30 black Russian helicopters swooping low toward the capital from the north. Their target was Antonov Airport in Hostomel, a cargo and testing airstrip about 20 miles from central Kyiv.



Marik’s commanders ordered him there. An understrength National Guard unit and another special-forces team at the airport had managed to shoot down three helicopters and hold off 200 elite paratroopers for nearly three hours before withdrawing when they ran out of ammunition. They had lost the airport but won time.



The Russians set up machine-gun nests and secured airport buildings in preparation for transport planes to land a larger force to thrust into the heart of Kyiv.



Marik had to get there and stop them. Arriving near the airport as darkness fell, he learned that others were also gunning for the Russians.



This would be no repeat of 2014, when Russian irregular fighters seized the city of Slovyansk in Ukraine’s east, igniting a war that was still simmering when Russia’s new invasion force rolled in.
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This is an amazing read. Kudos and thank you sir. Great insight into the early days…
 
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