According to a friend of mine who served as a flight engineer in the red army until somewhen in the nineties your post pretty much nails it.
He called a former Ukrainian colleague today. According to him Russia obtained complete air souvereignty today. Ukrainian air defence was destroyed by sea-launched cruise missiles. Regular Ukrainian troops are not fighting. They leave their weapons behind and go away. High ranked russian staff promised not to chase them. To the majority of Ukrainian soldiers it just feels not right to shoot russians. So Russia covered a lot of ground today without firing much. Extremist formations on both sides and Russian mercenaries are the ones who do real fighting.
This is consistent with the media insofar as you would usually expect: x killed troops in y, z troops caught, strategic installations damaged etc. You cannot get these reports if one side literally throws their guns away and goes home.
In my friend’s opinion Kiev will fall within the next few days if not tomorrow, the government will either flee or get captured and he joked there will be elections next week.
This is very false, there have been forces deserting, but not in any significant numbers.
While in the morning, attack was sudden and situation looked very bleak for Ukraine, towards the evening, army has been more or less mobilized and started to take back territory.
Unfortunately, the worst is to come.
>In my friend’s opinion Kiev will fall within the next few days if not tomorrow, the government will either flee or get captured and he joked there will be elections next week.
He called a former Ukrainian colleague today. According to him Russia obtained complete air souvereignty today. Ukrainian air defence was destroyed by sea-launched cruise missiles. Regular Ukrainian troops are not fighting. They leave their weapons behind and go away. High ranked russian staff promised not to chase them. To the majority of Ukrainian soldiers it just feels not right to shoot russians. So Russia covered a lot of ground today without firing much. Extremist formations on both sides and Russian mercenaries are the ones who do real fighting.
This is consistent with the media insofar as you would usually expect: x killed troops in y, z troops caught, strategic installations damaged etc. You cannot get these reports if one side literally throws their guns away and goes home.
In my friend’s opinion Kiev will fall within the next few days if not tomorrow, the government will either flee or get captured and he joked there will be elections next week.