Russian soldiers abandon Russian city to foreign powers in first time since WWII

Honestly, no. If you find one, link me it and I’ll send you 100 DC. The short version is that Russia underestimated Zelensky’s willingness to fight since Ukraine didn’t have the most robust government, and underestimated the west’s willingness to invest in the conflict (since Ukraine didn’t have the most robust government).

In both cases it was Russia’s hubris.

The Russian government basically handled this in the absolute stupidest way possible from the onset of the conflict. That's not to say the Russian military isn't in worse shape than many thought, but the upper-level decision-making has basically gauranteed that this entire conflict has been a clusterfrick from top to bottom.

In terms of NATO support, intelligence and supply logistics have been far more decisive than any NATO weapons systems given to Ukraine.

Ukraine has been building up since the writing was on the wall in 2014

Russia severely underestimated them and went for a quick and easy regime change, sacrificing a lot of their highly skilled assets as they went into the jaws of heck without any support. They lost a lot of irreplaceable men for no real gain

Ukraine has an overwhelming advantage in numbers and has a lot of strategic intelligence from the US. The effect of high quality American weapons like the Javelin is overstated and it’s mostly funding and intel that are keeping them ahead as far as US support goes, but Ukraine is also doing a great job committing to the fight in its own right.

Things looked bad as they mostly sat on their hands for a good while, only responding instead of taking the initiative. When they finally counterattacked the Russians folded like a house of cards, it was better than the best-case scenarios Ukraine planned on

American weaponry is probably being misused the Ukrainians. Yet Ukraine is more determined to fight than Russians lmao

also Putin’s kinda dumb to have started the invasion with a small butt force of 40k(?)

A beautiful mix of

• underestimating the West’s willingness to keep throwing weapons and money at it and apply actual sanctions.

• Underestimating the Ukrainian resistance.

• Overestimating the quality of Russian leadership.

• Not taking into account good old Russian corruption regarding their supply of arms and vehicles. (All the good shit got sold to african warlords years ago)

• Sprinkle in a little bit of Putin’s hubris and refusal to throw in the towel

Morale is a pretty huge factor in war, and the Russians seem to be lacking in it.

A part of it is that Ukraine are fighting with a mix of Russian and NATO equipment, the NATO stuff is in general far superior to anything the Russians have. Take Javelin or HIMARS as examples, they are vastly beyond anything Russia has access to.

The other big factor is access to NATO intelligence and ISR data. Have a look on any flight tracker and you'll see that NATO is keeping 24hr coverage over Ukraine with AWACS and a variety of specialised glowie aircraft. That's without even counting the satellites and SIGINT that NATO has. So basically the Ukrainians have cheat codes that let them see any big moves the Russians make. This is also why they were able to kill so many Russian generals early in the war

85% has been stupid Russians doing very stupid shit cause a corrupt very inexperienced general told em to.