Which is a way to get around that the "special military operation" has been a massive failure for Russia.
A joke from Moscow: "According to Putin the special military operation is really a conflict btw Russia and NATO about World dominance. Whats the situation now?" "Russia has lost 15000 troops, 6 generals, 500 tanks, 3 ships, 100 planes and 1000 trucks. NATO hasn't arrived yet."
Moscow could have mounted a much more limited offensive if capturing the whole of Donbass had been the objective from the start. That would have eliminated the effort and losses involved in invading Ukraine from the north, east and south.
"Obviously they have completely failed in everything they've set out to do and so now they are redefining what the purpose is so they can declare victory," said Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. army forces in Europe who now works for the Center for European Policy Analysis. "Clearly they do not have the ability to continue sustained large-scale offensive operations... Their logistics problems have been apparent to everybody, they've got serious manpower issues and the resistance has been way beyond anything they could have possibly imagined."Another problem for Russia was that the "liberation" was unwanted as evidenced by peaceful resistance. I wanted to do a piece on the Bayraktar TB2 drone, but that has been covered very well. On the other hand, here we have protesters in Svobody Square in Kherson singing the Byraktar Song:
Here we have a crowd of residents of Russian-occupied Slavutych in northern Ukraine forcing Russian troops to run with just their chants of “fuck off”, “go home, murderers”, and “glory to ukraine” despite being shot at.
So, what we are seeing is poorly equipped troops in an ill-conceived action meeting resistance both non-violent and military with predictrable results.
And the Ukrainian Minstry of Defence provides the information if you want to steal a Russian tank: