Quote from: be.open on Today at 03:42:08 PM

Quote from: Zlantann on Today at 07:37:25 AM

1) The 13 Border Guides of Snake Island: These brave soldiers refused to surrender to the Russian Navy. They preferred to die as heroes than to surrender. When the Russian Navy onboard the the Moskva told these Ukrainian guides to surrender, their response was ' go f*** yourself'. The Moskva opened fire on them and they all died heroically. They have been identified as one the catalysts of the Ukrainian military gallantry.

It is curious that you started the walk of fame with a fake. On February 28, the Navy of the Armed Forces of Ukraine admitted that all 82 defenders of Snake Island had surrendered. At the end of March, they were exchanged during one of the first prisoner exchanges to take place, and some of them were even solemnly presented with their well-deserved "posthumous" awards personally.
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Also interesting that several of the other examples are in a class of propaganda that bolster the contention that indeed Russia started out so careful about civilian casualties that they were not even allowed to fire upon civilians even when said (possible) civilians were attacking them with primitive and ineffective weapons. Indeed, that was one of the main reasons I thought this whole thing may have been _completely_ staged in the beginning.

This conflict seems to me to be in significant part a civil war with the Donbass Ukrainians playing a pretty significant role (albeit completely at the pleasure of the Russians.) Seems to me that Russia did indeed hope to foster as much 'hearts and minds' support as possible, then adjusted their tactics depending on how that panned out. And that tells me that from the get-go they probably mostly wanted to achieve a vassal client state with certain parts of the former Ukraine. Looks to me as they in the South, they might have just said 'Fuck it' and plan to control that area with whatever force and political structure might be necessary to do so when the dust settles.

be.interested to know your theories since you seem to be one of the very rare people here who have the analytical abilities to know and/or deduce anything about the goings-on on the ground.