Latvia wants permanent U.S. troops, foreign minister tells Blinken

Re:Latvia wants permanent U.S. troops, foreign minister tell... by moralestapia on Monday March 07, 2022 @11:41AM (#30589978)

Great comment. Some fresh air among a sea of armchair generals that think they could take control of Ukraine in 24 hours "if they wanted to".

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Re:Latvia wants permanent U.S. troops, foreign minister tell... by ericmay on Monday March 07, 2022 @12:02PM (#30590270)

Well, by all accounts (and I'd love to read others that diverge from this) this was actually Russia's exact strategy. Move to Kyiv quickly, destroy the existing government, install a new puppet government, and announce it to the world quickly before the west could react. Russia doesn't have the manpower deployed to actually occupy Ukraine. 200,000 soldiers is not enough when the Ukrainian state is actively resisting. This is why they tried some absolutely suicidal paratrooper missions and they are having all of these apparent logistical issues (again if there are other sources I'd like to learn more please share).

I think if I were to summarize the "Russia is failing" narrative it's that Russia expectations of a quick, easy victory were completely unmet, and now even if Russia does want to occupy Ukraine it's not going to be the quick and easy decapitation strike that they thought it would.

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Re:Latvia wants permanent U.S. troops, foreign minister tell... by kamaal on Tuesday March 08, 2022 @01:23AM (#30597014)

>>I'd love to read others that diverge from this

So your argument is you assume Russia wanted to take Ukraine in 100 milliseconds, and if people can't prove you wrong you win?

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Re:Latvia wants permanent U.S. troops, foreign minister tell... by ericmay on Tuesday March 08, 2022 @07:05AM (#30599005)

No?

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Re:Latvia wants permanent U.S. troops, foreign minister tell... by moralestapia on Monday March 07, 2022 @02:44PM (#30592423)

>this was actually Russia's exact strategy >Russia expectations of a quick, easy victory

I'd actually like to read more of this, if you have happen you have a source at hand.

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Re:Latvia wants permanent U.S. troops, foreign minister tell... by ericmay on Monday March 07, 2022 @03:05PM (#30592671)

Keeping in mind that Russia of course isn’t going to come out with a 1-pager on their strategy, there are a lot of sources on this. Understandably if you are hung up on the 24 hours thing I mean there isn’t a source for that but suffice to say the sooner the better was their goal.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us-believes-russia-planning-de...

https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/2022/03/05/ukraine...

https://breakingdefense.com/2022/02/russia-aiming-to-decapit...

https://www.axios.com/russia-seeking-decapitate-ukrainian-go...

https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-invasion-of-ukraine-w...

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Re:Latvia wants permanent U.S. troops, foreign minister tell... by moralestapia on Monday March 07, 2022 @08:38PM (#30595510)

Thank you, that's interesting to know. I had the impression that the Russian plan was to just get there and just never leave until Ukraine kind of surrenders or whatever.

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Re:Latvia wants permanent U.S. troops, foreign minister tell... by ericmay on Monday March 07, 2022 @09:59PM (#30595951)

For all we know that’s the plan now… who knows at this point.

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