Has Putin Botched the War?

I don’t know. Maybe we should consult the “Steele Dossier.” Perhaps there’s some wee wee involved in this “story.”

Putin hasn’t botched the war. They’re avoiding large scale casualties and have to deal with Western supplied high tech anti-tank weapons and shoulder fired anti-aircraft weapons. At some point this will change. This on their doorstep not half way around the word like Iraq or Afghanistan. The stakes are infinitely higher and their willingness to take and make casualties is far greater than the West although the US was willing to accept the loss of 55,000 solders, a million Vietnamese casualties and fight for ten years. then walk away. The Russians have lots of options and there is nothing the Ukrainian government can do to push back Russian forces. The best they can do is block or stall, but their heavy armor will be hunted down. The Russians are never going to leave Ukraine and will occupy it in some fashion for decades to come. Russia will use tactical nukes if we get directly involved, it’s part of their published military war fighting doctrine.

He botched it when he started the War. I thought Putin was smart but he's as dumb as they come. There is no way for Putin to win a quick war and then go home, the Ukrainian's will never quit. Sniper and bombing attacks on RU soldiers will go on forever.

Putin used to get spicy if you called him a murderer. Forevermore, he’ll be known as a MASS MURDERER and should get shunned by the entire planet. Needless to say, he probably hasn’t broken any Twitter rules so he’s still probably better than Trump to the lefties.

I'm not buying any of this. There is zero chance that Russia only has enough missiles for 4 days. What has, however, surprised me is the age of the mobile units that I have seen.

I don't know about Putin, but Biden sure has. Gen. MacArthur was known as "Dugout Doug" for the first part of WWII, perhaps "Basement Joe" is an apt moniker for him.

How does this alleged member of the EU know what Putin is/was thinking or that he is "furious"? Sounds like wishful thinking/propaganda to me.

I suspect there is widespread apprehension within the Russian ranks over the substandard nature of their weapons and armaments. As stated on another thread, the photos of so many missile tubes remaining in situ after arrival is baffling. There should be nothing remaining larger than a playing card, had the explosive detonated properly. Such is not the case. Apparently, Russian Quality Control is not any better than the Soviet era OR the weapons being employed are themselves Soviet-era, and highly suspect. Has Putin been lied to all these years about the quality of his weapons? Can he trust his more powerful weapons now, or does he need to slink back to the Batcave and work on Plan B?

The first casualty in any war is the truth, and that is certainly the case here. I've seen more unbelievable garbage in the last few days than in a political campaign even. Most of it appears to benefit the Russians but not all. Trust nothing you hear and you'll be right more often than not.

#8 - I remember the words of our Fleet Commander who visited the ship the morning of my first deployment as a new division officer. Referring to all the guns and missile tubes stacked on every Russian combatant at the time (1978): "You don't think all that stuff works, do you?"

When you read or watch the Western media which has consistently reported that the Russian forces are all incompetent and lost, and have not met any of their planned objectives, it is smart to be cautious at this stage, as you better believe that there is are massive misinformation and psychological warfare campaigns underway by the USA, the UK, plus other NATO countries, and the Ukrainians themselves, that the media is eating up bigtime. If you watch the Western media for very long, you have to wonder why haven’t the Russians surrendered yet?

Russia is going to win this war. They have too many men and too many high-quality weapons to not win against a fairly small country like Ukraine. Whether it takes a few days or a few weeks, it will be done. That is just reality. That is why few other countries are even sending supplies, and none are sending troops. The longer it goes on, the more Ukrainians will be killed or maimed, and the more their infrastructure will be demolished. Buildings, schools, hospitals, churches, etc, etc -- the Russians will have no qualm about destroying them to attain their goals. Sure, Russian troops will be killed too, but for every Russian killed there will be 10, or 50, or 100 Ukrainians killed. Many of them will be women, children, and old people. Since Ukraine gave weapons to civilians without uniforms to fight with, and called on them to do guerilla tactics like Molotov Cocktails, then all citizens are seen as "enemy combatants" and the Russians see that as all the justification they need to kill indiscriminately. Putin is Hitler-level evil. He has unlimited men to send in to the fight, and some of the best bombs and other weapons on Earth at his disposal. He cares little if Russian soldiers get killed -- they are easily replaced. And he cares even less if Ukranian people are killed. Dead women and children in the streets may be horrible to civilized people, to Putin they are just evidence that his troops are doing their jobs. Russia has controlled Ukraine for most of the last century. They will again shortly. There is no scenario where Ukraine "wins" this war in any way. I truly pray that they will put down their weapons, surrender, and live to fight another day.

I hope there are gorillas getting ready to continue to harass and kill russian soldiers, from the woods to the mountains to the cities, Protests in Russia are growing the more parents that lose children the worse Adolph Putin position will feel the heat. Hopefully he got advice from xiden he'd know how to mess it up.

All I know is that there is a lot more to this story. War is hell. Putin is a mass murderer just like Bush and Cheney. The conclusion of this fight is yet to be written and we should think carefully before we get involved.

One can only hope the Russians fail.

Interesting. I already was seriously wondering how long the Russians could fire cruise missiles before running out. Their production capacity for everything is very limited. In ten years of travel all over Russia, I saw thousands of closed and abandoned factories. They make very little these days. This all sounds about right to me. Perhaps a bit of proUkrainian spin on it, but it doesn't sound way off base to me.

Re #5, if Russia fired a hundred the first day, which is what the news stories reported, then 75-100 more each day, they could easily have fired 300-500 of them by tomorrow. Maybe they are tapering off due to shortages. From public sources, I doubt that they had more than 300 or so of their land attack cruise missiles (SS-N- 30, I think) available ready to launch in all their ships before the attacks started. How many were fired from ships? How many remain in stock? Are they firing from other platforms? Even if there are more in warehouses, getting them to the ships and loading takes days or more, not hours. We'll see how it plays out.