I shortened it to 4x tik tok length lel nice
Still don't know what he meant by the 'invasion is all' part nor do I understand how it's related to my comment. It was supposed to be a partial invasion? Sure, if you say so, but trying to invade Kyiv in the process only to pussy-out and say it was your plan all along? So what's this point?
pussy out
Far from it. The civilians the Ukranians didn't arm and forcibly conscript are being used as human shields. If the Ukranians get enough stinger missiles and javelin weapons systems and take up protected firing positions you'd be looking at easily 50,000 dead before a block by block campaign clears the city plus however many Ukrainians end up dying. By pulling back from Kiev they force the fighting to occur away from the civilian population centers. By encircling Kiev in the first place they kept the conscripts and partisans from showing up on the front lines in the separatist areas. It lets them fulfill that 'this I shall defend' itch without having them baited into open combat
So by defending a city that is being invaded you are hiding behind human shields? Are they supposed to meet face-to-face somewhere on a field just like in the 17th century? And by encircling Kyiv (which they never fully managed) they prevented partisan attacks half across the country? Yes, Russians get a big advantage by not fighting in cities, but why bother encircling the capital that is almost a thousand kilometres from the separatist areas that were the excuse for invasion in the beginning? My point is that it was a full scale from the beginning (if we are still talking about that guy's comment) and 'muh poor ruskies in Donbas' was just an excuse to take control of a developed industrial centers Putin could never build himself
So by defending a city that is being invaded you are hiding behind human shields?
If you quarter or station troops in a building that also has civilians, for anything but the evacuation of those civilians, yes.
My point is that it was a full scale from the beginning
Not really. They moved to secure Chernobyl because you'd absolutely have to push beyond the exclusionary zone because you don't want that on the battle map. They effectively dominated the skies in the first week and then didn't push the air cover advantage for the subsequent weeks. They could have pushed the shock and awe factor into major cities but slowly have encircled them and allowed for humanitarian corridors while allowing defecting Ukrainian troops to flee the country through those corridors. If they wanted it to be over, it would be over. If they didn't mind stacking civilian bodies they'd be stacked.
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