Where are the mass protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg?
Pockets of protesters =/= mass protests. If you want to know what mass anti-war protests look like - Google 2003 anti-war protests in London against the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Also, you’re also off with your analysis. The invasion is going to play out the same way Georgia played out in 2008, albeit with regime change in Kiev this time. Once they overthrow the US puppet in power and restore the country back to where it was in 2014 - before the democratically elected president was overthrown by CIA funded fake Arab Spring protests - they have no reason to stay there.
And just because the Russians started Day 1 with their older military hardware - that doesn’t they have “older weapons”. Even the US military said it yesterday but some of you are still in denial. They’re using more modern weapons in Syria than in Ukraine and that should tell you something.
You’re talking to someone who’s had to spend hours studying stupid pictures of an array of Eastern European equipment to regurgitate it back to leadership for “training” (also learning weak spots in armor and learning developing enemy technology) lol. Many people across the board have held a combat arms MOS and know what the Russians have and had been developing.
Aside from that I’ve also served with real Ukrainians (and a few Russians) who’d spent most of the lives there before immigrating to the US. The old President wasn’t very popular as he was loyal to Putin. Living under Putin’s rules is also not popular. You don’t work for the state department/foreign service so why make shyt up about the CIA because you think you have some idea about what they do or did.
With Putin in charge thousands of people protesting together (which there is plenty of footage of from the several major Russian cities) = very much equals mass protests.
There’s been a range of new to older equipment in use (like the KA-52’s), with expects reserves in Russia and Belarus. This hasn’t been anything like Georgia. They were virtually dead in the water by day 1.5. Ukraine is a much stronger state though still relatively weak compared to Russia. I don’t wish it to happen but there’s a real chance this could turn into a lighter version of the battle of Grozny and such.
All that being said. Russia =/= U.S., the UK, or China. They’ve been working to modernize since their invasion of Georgia but they still have a lot to do. They don’t have the same ability to manufacture equipment and field it that fast. You’ve been watching all these countries, on the news, at quarter to half speed, on the news. We haven’t really seen anyone completely go full throttle aside from Armenia and Azerbaijan. Russia IS going pretty hard at the moment only a small majority of the their personnel have real experience doing what they’re doing and are going to have to learn on the fly. That’s essentially combat in a nutshell. This wasn’t a feint or reconnaissance operation we’ve all been watching. This is full on forced entry trying to use a similar playbook that the US Army used in Iraq. They even tried the long range air assault to get a foothold at an airfield but the Armor and mechanized units got held up too long.
their only chance is outside intervention. Thats not happening
