Not beyond the realm of possibility, certainly.
Many people in Eastern Europe hate both Jews and Nazis. Although clearly not all, as Zelenskyy is an elected president.
Frankly the fact his own brother died in the Siege of Leningrad is probably more a cause.
I think Putin refers to Nazis because everyone in Russia had lost someone to them in WWII. By calling Ukrainians ‘Nazis’, he hopes to stir up hatred. It doesn’t matter that the Ukrainian government isn’t fascist. He just wants Russians to believe they are.
But in actuality…
The Iraqi army lasted about two weeks, so yes.
Iraq isn’t Ukraine and Putin has no intention of sticking around ten years trying to build a democracy.
Putin’s Nazi comments will also resonate with some westerners, as it’s become the thing to call everyone or everything you don’t agree with a Nazi or fascist. Certainly, it will resonate with many Russians, especially if he can convince them that the Ukrainian government is fascist or even direct Nazi supporters.
If Russia just leaves, they accomplish nothing. If they want to change something for Ukraine long term, they have to stay.
Kiev will probably fall soon, but that’s not the end. Then Ukrainian forces can withdraw to the west, and the further west they go, the friendlier the population and the closer they are to western weapons and supplies. They might be able to hold out for quite a while, and even if they surrender that’s not necessarily the end of fighting.
I still don’t think this will be easy for Russia. We’ll see.
Only up until they hit the border with Transnistria. Then they’ll be sandwiched in by Russians.
ETA: I seem to have misremembered Kyiv being quite a bit farther south in the country. What I wrote is true of many Ukrainian cities, but not Kyiv.
They certainly could fight on. But whether they will if the capital falls is a real question. I’m not seeing a lot of indications that Ukraine has really planned out what they will do in the events of the fall of the capital, or even what they will do as Russia pushes west. I thought they would have been considering all of this and planning for it, but…well, it doesn’t seem like they were. I had hoped that their seeming unconcern for a Russian invasion was just them mouthing that stuff for the press, but, again…it doesn’t seem like that’s the case. I hope my early impressions of what’s happening are wrong.
They’ll leave behind a puppet government and perhaps a small force. Belarus South.
It looks like Zelensky was only elected in 2019. Ukraine has been increasing their military spending year-on-year by about 25% but…that’s really only three years to try and turn things around.
To some extent, building fortifications is just a matter of slopping down some concrete but I would expect that you really need at least a good decade to properly get things into place, systems set up, and all the kinks worked out.
It’s quite possible that Zelensky was quietly working on turning everything around and he’d still, pretty much, end up coming out looking like he’s completely unprepared for an attack. I’d venture to guess that a primary reason for Putin to attack is to get Ukraine before it became a hard target.
I would NOT assume that Zelensky was completely unprepared for the attack, though. He had Russian operatives in his own government and large chunks of his land were being held by Russian elements. I expect that he was pretty careful about what he said and who he said it to, so if there’s been no news that he had plans within plans within plans to deal with all contingencies, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. And, as said, if the Ukraine army is losing the battle at the moment, that’s not really a surprise given how long they’ve had to try and build their nation for themselves - it isn’t reasonable to take it as evidence that they have no plan.
In general, I think we can be certain that Zelensky had a long-term goal to build up the nation’s defenses and slowly push Russian elements out of the government. We really have no way of knowing if he had any plans for what to do if Putin attacked in the interim. Likely there were none. But just as likely, there were. We’ll have to see.
I’ll also note that Ukraine has a pretty strong home-team advantage on this one.
Ukraine isn’t full of terrorists, like Syria, and for as much as Putin might call them Nazis I would expect that most of the Russian military recognizes that Ukraine is a relatively friendly nation - a tourist retreat of former years - and that the invasion is not justified.
Whereas, the people of Ukraine are defending their home. They don’t have any other place to go and it’s completely shameful of all the invading soldiers to come at them. They’re going to be swinging bats and pans, throwing Molotov cocktails, and even just booing the Russian troops. Being booed at, when you know that you’re the bad guy, is going to put a pretty strong hit on Russian morale.
A military of the shameful isn’t going to be the most effective that it ever could be.
Zelensky should offer them a good wage and free land, for switching sides.
There’s quite a good real-time conflict map on Wikipedia:
Well…honestly Ukraine DOES have a serious problem with far right trash. It’s absolutely not an invitation to invade, but it is a carefully targeted bit of overheated rhetoric referring to a real issue.
This is behind a paywall so I cannot read it, but is that far-right trash the Ukrainian government?
Odd, not paywalled for me. But yes, though thankfully a pretty small proportion, representation-wise. But Ukraine legitimately has an explicitly neo-Nazi military unit, which is…so very not cool. Again, no excuse to invade.
But Putin isn’t exactly lying on this one - they’re real.
Any such puppet government would be very likely to be promptly overthrown by the people, especially if they haven’t been totally demoralized and “squashed” by a long and bloody occupation.
According to the Pentagon,
“*Russia has not yet established air superiority.
*Russia has not yet taken any population centers.
*There are indications of an amphibious assault to the west of Mariupol, a city on the Black Sea.
*Roughly ⅓ of the Russian troops previously amassed along Ukraine’s border are now in the country.
*Russian momentum in this “initial phase” has slowed, but this may change.
*Russia is not moving as quickly on Kyiv as expected.
*Ukrainian command and control is intact.”
(bolding mine)
Is it 1939 in here, or is it just me?
Of course, nothing close to a reliable source that that ever happened. I find the accidental leak unlikely.