https://news.yahoo.com/russian-state-news-accidentally-publi...
Was this published on accident? Or was it intentional? There is no way to know for certain.
Think about this piece of evidence as a data point, but one that is nowhere near damning proof.
So, true, it’s not proof, but Occam’s Razor comes into play here.
That's the only way 200k soldiers can control a nation of 40 million who are united against invaders and united behind a democratically elected government.
Even if half of the first objective can be attained in a few weeks, it will not lead to the following necessary objectives being met. Putin has no viable plan.
Which, if you are making an analogy to Iraq, is somewhat similar: The US had no viable plan to stop patrols being ambushed using the same tactics on the same roads week after week.
I find it harder to believe that he went all-in betting on that gambit.
The Russians were getting high on their own supply and believed their own propaganda that "brotherly" Ukrainians and the ethnic Russians would surrender immediately.
They didn't think they would win in a few days, they thought there would be nothing but token opposition.
To name a few areas. Comms have been a disaster, with lots of coordination over unencrypted shortwave. Likely as a result, air support has been spotty, and EWar has been completely ignored. Air missions have been with small numbers of planes at low altitude to evade active air defense and drop dumb bombs, which means unexpected losses to stingers instead of higher-altitude flights outranging them. 2 weeks in and Ukraine C2 is largely intact, with even some operational air defense and possibly limited Tochka-U strikes. Ground logistics have been uncoordinated with heavy losses to unconventional attacks, done with unexpected effectiveness by Ukraine, and overall morale is far higher than anyone would have expected.
Obviously, information operations play a huge role. That also wasn't predetermined, in large part it's an upset by Ukraine. Who could have predicted that a Zoom call with Zelensky would convince Europe to cut Russia off from Swift when it was impossible to convincingly precommit to it?
There are also signs that Russia at least hoped to win within 1-3 days, like the day 1 VDV assault on Hostomel that ended up failing, and the domestic portrayal of a "special military operation" leaving the population unprepared for the sorts of casualties and bloody warfare that ended up happening.
Here are a couple articles:
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ukraine/2022-02-21/r...
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentar...
No rational actor throws its weight behind an entity doomed to failure. So, we need a narrative that Ukraine is not doomed to failure despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
The most optimistic thing we can say is that the people have fought valiantly and Russia did not sweep across the nation at historically unprecedented speed. By claiming that Putin's inner circle expected to win the war in 1-3 days, we can claim that Ukraine is actually winning. And if Ukraine is winning, then everybody who can sanction Russia in any way should do it right now to accelerate Ukraine's now inevitable victory.
In some sense, it is a necessary narrative. If Ukraine doesn't get global support it will fall. Recasting them as the inevitable victor, therefore can be seen as an attempt to create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
And it might work (hopefully!)
Society doesn't demand triple-confirmation proof to retell stories that comport with our ideology. This case has some weak concrete evidence in its favor, but that's not the _point_. This is an active war, which means that most of the public information coming from authoritative sources is closely managed to suit the authority's goals.
The supermajority of power in the West wants Putin's conquest to fail. So the narratives we hear will be angled in whatever way to maximize the possibility of that outcome.