I don’t see how this is true. The Ukraine is slowly being reduced to rubble. They might be winning military victories but it is their country that is being destroyed, their civilians that are dying or being systematically kidnapped by the thousands if not tens or even hundreds of thousands. It is the Ukraine that cannot keep this up. Millions have already fled the country, this level of destruction and misery cannot but take a toll eventually. Hopefully the Russian military crumbles first, but it is not a given, honestly it is not even the most likely scenario.
Hard to see any set of conditions that Russia will be forgiven at this point. Maybe giving up previous land taken and pay for some of the damage done. And a video of Putin dropped into a live volcano. With audio.
One of those that believed “Better dead than Red”.
I joined the Navy in the mid 80s.
I grew up fearful of the Soviet Union. I didn’t see Russia or Ukraine as separate countries. I thought they were regions within the Soviet Union. Brezhnev was the evil face of the Soviets. I know now he was from Ukraine.
As I’ve had to have driven into my head, it isn’t “The Ukraine”. It’s just Ukraine.
No snark. They don’t really want to escalate this to include the US if they don’t have to. So for now they’re fighting this as a conventional ground war. But it could change.
So you’re saying that the Russians have just been pretending to be incompetent buffoons for the past two months? Or are you claiming that the systemic rot that has set into every aspect of their society has somehow stayed out of their military tech sector?
Face it: just like with everything else, the Russians talk a big game when it comes to technology, but when push comes to shove they’ll fall laughably short.
In the early 1970’s my parents had the opportunity to tour the USSR with other western journalists – carefully supervised of course. At the time it was still a country very much closed to regular American travelers. My father reported his astonishment at how backward and poor, how ugly and sad and dysfunctional it was. His takeaway was that the American fear of Soviet communism and the Soviet military was entirely overblown, more of an excuse for our own military buildup and internal scapegoating than any kind of real threat.
He’s always been one of the sharpest political observers I know.
They beat the U.S. into space, beat the U.S. to orbit, and even their commercial competitor Elon Musk says they make outstanding engines. Nobody could get to the ISS without Russian space technology. It’s become clear that they have not spent the money on their military that they do on their space program (probably because if you steal from the space program, people will notice), but at least in space technology they do walk the walk.
IANA American but I was in the Canadian Navy in the '80s and was in a large, weeks-long NATO exercise in the north Atlantic. On a daily basis we were overflown by Soviet Bear-D MPAs and had a Krivak frigate steaming through the formation of NATO warships (it was a big ASW exercise and there were probably at least 30 ships).
Unofficially there didn’t seem to be any hostility on our side; instead we all had a sort-of “hey this is really cool, we get to see some of the other side’s kit up close” attitude.
I also worked with folks in the SIGINT community who, while monitoring Soviet comms (a lot of Morse code transmissions) and they told me about unofficial conversations between the counterparts.
Back around 1985 I attended a fund-raiser speech for PBS’ San Jose affiliate by James Burke of Connections fame – he loved Silicon Valley. He was the science reporter for the BBC back in the Apollo and Apollo-Soyuz era and told of having a conversation he’d had with the director of the Soviet space program.
When he asked the director what he feared most about western technology, the reply was a description of something like the PC – which weren’t around yet – would be developed. With that kind of computing power on the desk of every engineer and scientist, he said, coupled with the more free flow of information the west had, he didn’t see any way they’d be able to keep up.
I thought back on that comment when I was watching the Berlin Wall come down and the subsequent developments leading to the collapse of the Soviet empire.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the Russians are using surplus ordinance. Perfect weapon for murdering a large crowd of unprotected civilians.
Guardian blog -examinations of bodies in Bucha…
I hate to be “that guy,” but is the complaint that they are using flechettes, or that they are using them against civilians? Because flechettes don’t sound much different than the MLRS munitions used by the United States and other nations in which rockets detonate and spray a massive spray of steel shrapnel.
If it’s the civilian part that is the atrocity, then surely killing them is an atrocity regardless of what munitions are used?
I was thinking of being on the business end of a claymore mine, myself.
Of course, those are point-defense and (usually) command detonated rather than being fired “over there.”
The shells reportedly have 8,000 fléchettes. Crowds gathered at the beginning of the war. They mistakenly thought they could reason with the soldiers. They share a language.
A couple of these shells would clear several hundred protesters off the street.
The imagery of 8000 small knives hitting a crowd seems pretty gruesome to me. Violates International laws.
I knew the Russians shelled civilians. The fléchettes were an eye opener for me. The description and appearance seems extremely horrific.
I know anything the Russians do shouldn’t shock anyone. They’ve repeatedly demonstrated pure evil.
I didn’t post the description of Fléchettes. They sound more lethal than typical shrapnel.
I wouldn’t want to get hit by either object. 
Guardian blog.
Back in the day, we used to call them “ambush rounds”. You’d park a tank in an elevated location and have them scan the terrain with their advanced night optics. If they spotted an enemy squad heading toward the border, they’d fire a single flechette round at them from the main gun, taking them all out before they even knew they were spotted.
They’re good for open terrain, but once they started using them in cities, they realized that the collateral damage was much too high, and replaced them with more accurate antipersonnel munitions.
I think VP Harris should have made the trip. It would have made a statement of support comparable to other NATO leaders.
Frankly, I want to see Biden landing in Kyiv, with F-22s all around, a total in-your-face statement. Putin would howl and stomp and Biden would camp out leisurely with Zelesnky for a week.
I think for Russia’s purposes, that is a plus. The collateral damage is the point. They are trying to kill as many civilians as possible.