steelheron25 said:Heh, who thought so? Pretty much everyone did, or at least the vast majority.
Had you even revisited the topics of Russia and Ukraine before February 24th? If you go back and leaf through those old threads—better yet, look at what was being said in 2014 and the years following—you'll see a prevailing trend of mocking Ukraine and its military capabilities, especially during those battles for the Donetsk airport and the months that followed. There was this general consensus that Ukraine was essentially a failed state; that narrative was actually spearheaded by a certain moderator we have here today, and anyone who wandered into those discussions would find that people were suggesting the Ukrainians would be better off committing collective suicide given how pathetic they supposedly were.
Then, if you jump forward to the posts from the first few days of the invasion, you'll see people leaving comments predicting that nothing more than a local National Guard unit could put up any real resistance. Even that same moderator felt the need to rush and change the thread title because the Russians had already pushed into Kharkiv.
That fart from the Kremlin and his sycophants are still mentally stuck in 2014, back when they easily seized Crimea from an unorganized and confused Ukraine, only to turn them into punchlines in the Donbas, constantly ridiculing them as if they couldn't handle a small group of miners. That's exactly why they convinced themselves that Ukraine would simply collapse. Clearly, they slept right through the massive shifts happening within Ukraine itself, and indeed, within the world at large.
Well, Ukraine actually was a failed state back then; Crimea fell almost without a fight...
And I suppose one should keep in mind that at the very start of the invasion in February, things could have gone quite differently.
If Ukrainian special forces hadn't managed to break that Russian landing at the Kyiv airport, or if the ruling administration in Ukraine had decided to flee the country... who knows how this whole story would have played out.
That one decisive historical statement from Zelenskyy: "I don't need a ride, I need ammunition!" echoed everywhere; it rallied Ukrainians toward an uncompromising resistance.
It also shamed a lot of world leaders, many of whom were seemingly ready to just shrug their shoulders at the Russian invasion. After that statement, I guess hardly any Western politician escaped hearing their own voters ask: 'What are you waiting for? Send weapons to those brave Ukrainians!'
Quincy:
| that Kremlin hack and his lackeys are still stuck in 2014, when they easily snatched Crimea from an unorganized and confused Ukraine, and then turned them into punchlines in the Donbas, constantly ridiculing them for failing to defeat a handful of miners. Because of that, they convinced themselves that Ukraine would just fall apart. Apparently, they slept through some significant changes that happened within Ukraine itself, and in the world at large. |
A lot of people seem to love forgetting that the real shifts in Ukraine started during President Trump's term. During his mandate, Ukraine began receiving Javelins and other sophisticated military hardware, and the training for Ukrainian officers finally kicked off...
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