Man of Honour
- Joined
- 16 Jul 2009
- Posts
- 8,752
- Location
- Edinburgh
With all due respect to the dead and the people of Ukraine, something confuses me a little.
When the Russian Army was sat just outside their borders, amassing for about 3 weeks, they didn't seem to care.
I saw AMAs on reddit with people who lived near by who said they were just getting on with life and weren't worried.
To me this seemed a bit mental and I don't think it required any hindsight to see this coming. So much so that I'm confused why they didn't have everything they had pointed at that area.
I would bet 100% that the dead civilians thought nothing of it, rather than doing a runner weeks and weeks ago.
You can't blame the Ukrainians, but I feel a little like they were to nonchalant about Russia and hoped being diplomatic with a lunatic was the best course of action.
To be fair given projections from every military expert before this started I suspect Ukraine thought it didn't matter much where their military was, expectations were that this would last a matter of days in a crushing Russia victory, I do recall though the Ukrainian Govt being less "hawkish" on Russian military intent than Western Military sources though, I suspect an effort to prevent panic but it will have made people stay.
Ukraine didn't have the forces to dig in and cover every area - they clearly were looking to protect key areas like Kyiv and strategic cities further East.