Cock up or Conspiracy?

Hi All,

Armchair military pundits - and indeed the Russian State itself - were confidently predicting the war in Ukraine would, well, be over by now. To Russia, the certainty that President of Ukraine and his government would either be dead or awaiting a Stalinist show trial, before being shot- the ‘policing action’ was afterall to overthrow a ‘fascist junta’ that wasn’t representative of Ukraine- Russian tanks would be parading around Kiev. Mother Russia would be one again & the people of Ukraine would be joyfully throwing flowers onto those tanks (well, there's also other bits of the old Russian Empire as well, such as the Baltic States, Finland, Moldova, The Caucasus Republics , and ‘the Stans’ of Asia, but that would be for the next and the next campaign).

Ukraine and her people, from her President downward, have defied this narrative and the only thing being thrown onto tanks has been missiles, grenades and Molotov cocktails. Ukraine- despite being blitzed- is defiant as Britain was in 1940 and prepared to go down with a fight. Russia has failed- despite having more planes- to gain control of the air and her tanks have broken down without fuel or parts. Kiev is still in government hands and Ukraine’s President has admirably donned the mantle of a Churchill, but with his prop being an I-phone and rather than a cigar.

The soldiers Russia has put into the conflict are seemingly young, untrained conscripts, rather than their elite GRU regiments with Russia now calling in Assad’s thugs, Chechen Warlords and a private military outfit ‘Wagner Group’ (named after Hitler’s favourite composer and the Russians go on about ‘fascism’!) to help win the war. Rather than fight solider on solider – which Russia could do at least on paper with her superior forces -it is the Russians would are acting like a resistance or terrorist group, by blitzing cities and attacking maternity wards .

It is as if the whole thing, from the Russian side, was deliberately doomed to fail… had the generals never wanted to invade Ukraine and deliberately deployed their worse soldiers or is the reality of Russian military power being shown to the world? Is all Russia got the nukes? If so that makes Russia even more dangerous, for if a power only has nuclear weapons as their first and only option, then we’re all in trouble…