Given Russia's recent failures in the war - including its inability to defend its citizens and its domestic military bases from Ukrainian drones - it's no wonder we are seeing more false claims about the beginning of the war recently in propaganda land.
This post includes some reminders of how things started as well as a few hits about where things currently are. As always, this is really just me documenting my thoughts. When this criminal invasion finally ends, I can come back and evaluate what I posted.
I see people on twitter pretending that this war is happening because NATO or Biden prevented Ukraine from surrendering immediately when Putin came for Kyiv. People seem to forget that we offered to evacuate Zelensky and his response. In depth article
here about a common tortured path that the propagandists use to spread this deceptive message.
Zelensky's messaging is largely unchanged - he wants the tools to repel the invasion. He knows there can never be an agreed peace which relies on Putin's compliance with an agreement since time after time Putin has shown that he doesn't care. A "peace" really just means giving Putin a chance to recover and rebuild his military to try again.
And why wouldn't he? The idea that Russia just wants to take Crimea and create an independent Donbas was always a fiction, just like their pretense about NATO. From the start (as I've documented earlier), Putin has claimed that Ukraine has no right to exist and that they aren't a legitimate people. For all of the fake handwringing over Russiaphobia, the real issue is the desire by Putin to genocide the Ukrainian people.
The good news is that Russia continues to struggle - both militarily and economically - from the impacts of this war. They don't have nearly the resources they pretend to have.
They fired dozens of missiles towards Kyiv a few nights ago and all were intercepted.
Meanwhile, Ukraine was able to deep strike into Russia at an airfield and they are sending drones nearly every day to Moscow. Ukranie also struck an airfield in Kursk.
Russia has substantially all of their military capability on the ground in Ukraine and has nothing left to defend itself. If it really cared about NATO, it would be focused on defense but it, like everyone else, understands that NATO is a defensive alliance and has never had any interest in attacking the sh(thole corrupt kleptocratic petro-state that Putin has used to generate his ~$200B fortune. And it will get harder and harder for him to continue his grift with his economy continuing to weaken.
Here's a milblogger examining just one example of how poorly managed Russia's military is:
People judged the Ukrainian offensive too early. It's still ongoing and the outcome has yet to be determined.