United States | News & Politics

Well, first there’s the fact that it’s happening at all in a war that Russia apparently thought was going to be over and done with in days. Roll into Kyiv, install a puppet government, and be done with it.

Please point out to a single document published by Russia that suggests anything of the sort. This is literally a made up narrative created by the western media that set an arbitrary goal for Russia, and then started claiming that things went wrong when it didn't happen.

It's certainly possible that Russia considered an optimistic scenario where Kiev surrendered early, but it's absurd to think they didn't consider a plan B. Also, worth noting that a surrender was almost negotiated in April, and that was part of the reason Russia pulled forces away from Kiev as a sign of good will. Then Bojo made sure that didn't happen and thousands more people died.

Of course there have always been snags involved. Every war that I can think of that used conscription, I can think of someone who pushed back against it.

Calling up reservists is not conscription, and US calls up reservists all the time I might add.

But if you’re going to use the Vietnam War as a comparison, remember what happened in the final days of the Vietnam War. Wars that become unpopular get lost, and this war risks becoming very unpopular as people’s friends and family start coming home in body bags with few answers for what Russia is truly gaining. That’s something that Russia’s censorship can’t stop.

Well that's the key difference between US invading countries half way across the globe and Russia repatriating territory that's predominantly populated by Russians. Let's take a look at a few slides from this lecture that Mearsheimer gave back in 2015 to get a bit of background on the subject. Here's the demographic breakdown of Ukraine:

here's how the election in 2004 went:

this is the 2010 election:

As we can clearly see from the voting patterns in both elections, the country is divided exactly across the current line of conflict. Furthermore, a survey conducted in 2015 further shows that there is a sharp division between people of eastern and western Ukraine on which economic bloc they would rather belong to:

I think the term masks the broad scope of who might be shipped off to the front lines. It sounds like that includes people who are no longer even in the reserves.

Again, who told you that?