“This is blowing up in his face.”
My guess is that he doesn’t want to blow up a bunch of civilian buildings and cause mass casualties. Not because he cares, but it’s a bad look with the folks back home.
I also guess that he’ll do what it takes to get this done, that is, replace the Ukrainian government.
No one ever addresses it, but how would life change for the average Ukrainian? Their current government is corrupt, so it gets replaced with a new corrupt government, so what?
Meet the new boss.
Same as the old boss.................
I have similar thoughts. I just do not see the conquest of Ukraine as his goal. I think he has specific targets in mind (think think certain labs) and a better grip on the secessionist territory’s. Outside of that the desire to replace a pro west corrupted government with a pro Russia corrupt government.
Killing a lot of civilians just does not work to his favor in any of those goals.
That will likely be the case. Corrupt but Russian oriented instead of Western oriented. Probably not a noticeable change to the average Ukrainian.
Inquiring minds want to know, will our elites still have offspring be on the gas board?
My guess is that he doesn’t want to blow up a bunch of civilian buildings and cause mass casualties. Not because he cares, but it’s a bad look with the folks back home.
~~~
I agree. That’s my suspicion. Not just for the folks back home, but he knows that the world views him as the aggressor, despite his claims about being some sort of victim in all this, and if they go full bloodbath it will be harder on them in the long term.
But his strategy will change sooner or later if he needs to.
The Ukies chose this govt. They seem to be willing to fight for it.
He probably knows that is the one thing that might bring on Western air attacks or a no fly zone.
You are correct. Putin is trying to save face with both his people and his supporters in Ukraine. If he blows the H*** out of everything, everybody gets angry. If he shows patience and some grace, the Russians in Ukraine will welcome his arrival.
They haven’t taken Kiev because they didn’t blow everything up they could have. That is why you are starting to see reports of people tearing down their Ukrainian flags and putting up Russian flags.
As for corruption, the corruption of Russia is not quite as bad as it is for Ukrainians. Putin is quite hard on lower level bureaucrats fleecing people.