Are the Russian military being semi-incompetent deliberately?
Guardian
8h ago 16:43 The Russian advance on Kyiv has “stalled” as its forces face logistical challenges, including a shortage of food for some units, according to a senior US defence official.
The official claimed the Russian advance on the Ukrainian capital remains “basically … where it was yesterday” and cited a number of possible reasons, including Ukrainian resistance.
They said it was also possible the Russians were pausing their advance by choice:
One reason why things appear to be stalled north of Kyiv is that the Russians themselves are regrouping and rethinking and trying to adjust to the challenges that they’ve had.
But the official also noted that the Russian military had shown evidence of “risk-averse” behaviour when it came to its own troops.
You’ve seen it on the ground, where units are surrendering, sometimes without a fight. And they’ve got, a lot of these soldiers are conscripts, never been in combat before, some of whom we believe weren’t even told they were going to be in combat.
Updated at 4.44pm GMT
All science is either Physics or stamp collecting - Ernest Rutherford
the apparent difficulties the Russians are having do give me some comfort they won't invade any of the eastern NATO countries (not that I thought they were going to). If they are struggling this much with the Ukrainians, imagine the difficulty they'd have with NATO. Goes to show you the importance of effective command & control systems. And even if/when Russia does gain control of the country it will be an absolute quagmire too with resistance fighters popping off tanks and helicopters with missiles supplied from the west. I'm sure China is watching this carefully. A Chinese invasion of Taiwan by sea has got to be 100x more difficult than a land invasion across a border where you are already operating. These javelins and stingers from Europe and the drones they purchased from Turkey are phenomenally effective at expensive big Russian kit. Taiwan doesn't need to purchase any more tanks or planes - they just need loads of portable missiles and drones to become indigestible.
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